Article by Sally Zelikovsky in The American Thinker

 

Joe's Long Decline

In their desperation for a president they could manipulate and in her zeal to be FLOTUS, the Democrat Party and Jill Biden offered Joe Biden as a sacrificial lamb to gain power -- forcing the rest of us to watch, in real time, the disintegration of a human being suffering from dementia.  As far as I’m concerned, this is elder abuse that ranks right up there with the criminal actions of Democrat governors in sending tens of thousands of seniors to their early graves via COVID. 

They can prop Joe up, but he increasingly stumbles in interviews, his public appearances are shorter, his press conferences nonexistent, and his jogs up to the dais have been replaced with him tottering off stage like Tim Conway’s Duane Toddleberry.

Not only does Kamala escort him off stage after standing legs athwart, masked in black like the Hand of the King, but Jill, the quintessential helicopter spouse, is ever-present, holding his hand.  They call it affection but it is really for backup. 

This is astounding behavior for a POTUS and FLOTUS but common among spouses in denial or trying hide what is happening at home.  Jill is the latter -- clearly by his side for reinforcement and to whisk him away when the time is right because he won’t know when to leave a situation, where to go, or how to extricate himself -- as we saw when he asked for questions at a House Democratic Caucus event and the live feed was abruptly terminated.

We saw Jill swoop in when he faltered in a Univision interview about kids in “facilities” on the border.  She interrupted clarifying they were “shelters” and insisted it was being handled “in a more humane way.”   Turns out that Jill has been tasked with supervising immigrant family reunification at the border -- appearing more co-president than dutiful First Lady. This goes way beyond the routine reading, online bullying, and diet initiatives of recent First Ladies.  With life imitating art, one wonders if 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue isn’t starting to resemble House of Cards?

This is not okay.  The President is indisputably on the decline and no one seems to care about his well-being or the nation’s security.     

Stress and anxiety don’t cause dementia but can exacerbate a dementia patient’s confusion. It can be brought on by something as mundane as a large family gathering, a change in routine, a fall, a visit to the hospital, or stress from a job.  While “sundowning” or decompensating after a family event are common fallouts from stress, the real challenge is the accumulation of stress and anxiety over time that leads to confusion and, ultimately, delusions, which, in turn, can foster increased levels of anxiety that can exacerbate the confusion experienced and result in even more delusions, and so forth and so on.  It’s a hellacious cycle.

It goes without saying that the daily pressures of being POTUS dwarf anything we normally experience.  On a given day, Biden will encounter bustling mobs tending to daily White House routines; multiple meetings; travel; calls with congressional members, party leaders, governors, and leaders of foreign nations -- all disruptive and potentially triggering to an elderly dementia patient.  We already see, only six weeks into his presidency, that early bedtimes, calming fires, strict routines, limited schedules, and lowered expectations for public appearances, cannot fend off the effects of this disease.  As POTUS, there is no escape from the stress on which dementia feeds.    

It doesn’t take much for these daily stressors to snowball into the kind of monster that sometimes can only be controlled with heavy-duty medications like Seroquel, which is basically a pharmaceutical lobotomy, or Depakote to control outbursts and agitation, both of which cause incredible fatigue and listlessness.  A president cannot function taking these medications.

For Joe Biden and every other dementia patient, this disease doesn’t improve, stabilize, or go into remission.  The remaining days of those afflicted are a downward spiral of “new normals” to which loved ones have no choice but to adjust. 

The real issue for Biden isn’t what we see, but what is happening behind the scenes. He might pull off a ten-minute address reading from a teleprompter -- albeit with increasing difficulty and such strain on his face and in his voice that it hurts to watch.  But afterwards and behind the Oval Office doors, is when the bedlam begins -- repeated questions about where he is, what is going on, who is with him; difficulty recalling events; garbled speech; and temper tantrums.  Some withdraw; others become belligerent. Speech is nonsensical, anxiety acute, and paranoia common.

As Biden himself would say:  this is serious business, folks.  No joke.

How does this end?  Biden will be forced to resign probably within six months, a year at the latest.  If the powers that be meet any resistance from the Bidens, they’ll threaten to 25^th Amendment him and Congress will determine his fitness to hold office.  That requires a 2/3 majority vote each in the House and Senate -- a higher bar than the alternative of impeachment, which requires a majority in the House and 2/3 of the Senate to convict/remove.  While impeachment is a viable alternative, it requires high crimes and misdemeanors.  Thus, to force Joe’s hand, those in charge will circle back… to his Ukraine and China “dealings.” 

Faced with tying up Congress with a messy 25^th Amendment process that puts his health on full display or an ugly impeachment with all that implies, Joe will capitulate and resign, and Kamala will be president.  Under the 25^th Amendment, her pick for VP requires a majority vote of the House and Senate.  If they wait until the mid-terms to force Joe’s resignation and they lose the House, House Republicans could stonewall vote after vote and the VP position could remain vacant.  Not only would we lack a VP, but there wouldn’t be anyone to break ties in the Senate -- all the more challenging if the Senate remains at 50-50 or close to that after 2022.

Then again, even if Kamala is installed before 2022 and the House approves her VP, it’s highly likely the Senate vote would be tied… and there won’t  be a VP to break the tie!  According to the Senate website, in the absence of a VP, the President Pro Tempore presides over the Senate but authority to break ties lies strictly with the VP.    

I’m not sure if this constitutes a constitutional crisis or just a conundrum, but it would be choppy nonetheless.  Congress would likely craft legislation to fill the vacant veep position.  That would raise hotly debated amendment concerns but, given the last four years, we should be used to the extraordinary when it comes to the Constitution and political warfare.

I don’t foresee any whistleblowers revealing the behind-the-scenes truth about Biden’s condition, but that’s okay. It won’t be long before the cat’s out of the bag and Joe is out of the White House.  We’ll just have to wait-and-see what happens next.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/joes_long_decline.html

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Article by Andrea Widburg in The American Thinker

 

The Democrats’ cancel culture is escalating fast

When someone first does something he knows is wrong, he does it carefully, under the radar, because he fears getting caught. If there are no consequences, he repeats the act, without guilt – and if he’s actually feted for his wrongdoing, he will soon act with complete impunity. That’s what we’re seeing when it comes to Democrats erasing everything they dislike – and what they most dislike is America and any opposition to their beliefs. This week, Democrats brazenly canceled Dr. Seuss, Trump’s CPAC speech, and the Mallard Fillmore cartoon strip. In their own minds, they are unstoppable.

This week opened with the left’s war on Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. Overnight, the children’s author who dedicated decades of his career to fighting racism is being denounced as an arch-racist. It’s true that, in the 1940s, Geisel reflected the prejudices of that era’s Democrats. However, by 1961, Geisel was writing The Sneetches, which pushed the classic liberal doctrine that racism is bad because we are all equal, regardless of superficial physical differences.

Tucker Carlson argues compellingly that today’s Democrats aren’t canceling Seuss because some of his early works traded in racist stereotypes. Instead, he says, they’re canceling him because he insisted that race does not determine who we are. Carlson’s probably right. That colorblind view of the world is anathema to today’s leftists. If you don’t believe that, just look at this little piece of racial propaganda from the Cartoon Network.

 

 

The Black cartoon character cannot be seen, first, as an individual. Instead, she must first be seen as a racial emblem. Likewise, the White character is defined first by the wrongs she’s impliedly done to Blacks.

Dr. Seuss, who would have been appalled by this racial obsession, must go. Sure, they’re starting with just six books now, but he’s got the infamous “asterisk” by his name, which will continue to devalue his standing. Seuss is in the way, not of progress, but of the Democrats’ regression to their racist roots.

The latest leftist corporation to jump on this bandwagon is eBay, which announced that it is “currently sweeping our marketplace” to remove the now-verboten six Dr. Seuss books. When Big Tech turns against you, you cannot exist either in digital format or old-fashioned paper.

That’s only six books. So what?

Well, what about an entire speech by the former President of the United States? That should be a big deal.

On Sunday, Trump delivered a rousing speech at CPAC. During the course of that speech, he lambasted Biden’s administration, castigated quislings in the Republican party, defined core conservative values, and challenged the election. It was probably that last thing that drove YouTube to delete every single upload of  his speech:

YouTube took down videos from mainstream outlets including the U.K. Independent which had over one million views as well as Fox, Fox Business, ABC News and the U.K. Sun. A search of YouTube that earlier this week showed several channels with archived live streams of the speech now shows all archived live streams have been taken down.

This is censorship pure and simple. If YouTube were one little outlet, it wouldn’t matter but it’s not. In 2018, YouTube hosted 90% of the videos online. It’s the first place most people go when looking for a video. Sadly, even conservative outlets such as Fox continue to post videos there, rather than on Rumble (which has a very nice interface).

It’s not just the online sites that are erasing anything challenging the Democrat-leftist worldview. On Thursday, Gannett, a newspaper holding company that owns USA Today, as well as 25 other newspapers across America, abruptly canceled Mallard Fillmore, a popular comic strip that – contrary to all other comic strips in America – has a right-of-center viewpoint. Bruce Tinsley, the strip’s creator, apparently offended Gannett’s corporate sensibilities when he used his strip to criticize Biden and transgenderism:

The first cartoon depicts Biden musing, “For too long segregation sullied women’s sports…They were restricted to women! Thank goodness those dark days are over.”

The second has Biden saying, “I hear what you, the American people, want me to do…kill fossil fuel jobs…devalue Americans’ labor…and help more transgender athletes beat the *@!# out of biological females.”

It’s true that none of the above examples involve government censorship. However, all of them involve a network of vast communication companies that control the access that most Americans have to information. Once they drop a person, product, or idea, that which they’ve dropped no longer exists. Conservative actions and ideas, as well as traditional (and good) American values, are systematically being erased.

Jay Valentine explains that these tech entities are working on what’s now-antiquated technology and gain their power from their scale. We are, he says, on the verge of explosive new technologies. All I can say is that those technologies had better start soon before the Democrat lockdown on ideas is so complete that they can’t start at all.

 https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/03/the_democrats_cancel_culture_is_escalating_fast.html#ixzz6oFMpj0Ul

 

 

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House Passes "Permanent Democrat Rule Act" in an Effort to Create a Politburo One-Party Government

Shipwreckedcrew reporting for RedState

On Thursday night the House Democrats passed by a vote of 220-210 legislation designed to revamp voting procedures on a national level.

It is telling that the legislation titled “HR1” introduced by the Nancy Pelosi-led Democrats in the House is a power grab dressed up as “election reform,” the provisions of which are all intended to create more Democrat candidate votes in upcoming elections in order to secure a permanent Democrat Party control of Congress and the White House.  Passage of this legislation was their first priority — it is numbered ahead of all other proposals because securing power unto themselves in the form of hegemony over the institutions of government is how Marxists and socialists transform the countries they seek to control.

HR1 is a collection of election law “reforms” meant to dictate to states the manner by which all states shall conduct their elections in the future, mandating certain voting practices be followed while making other voting practices illegal.

You can fit the classifications into two categories:  1) changes in voting processes and procedures that are designed to increase the gross total of votes cast in each election; and 2) changes in voting practices and procedures designed to eliminate any effort to improve or protect ballot integrity.  Here is a general summary of the key provisions with regard to voting procedures mandated and prohibited:

Mandated:

“No excuse” mail-in voting for all voters in all states.

15 days of early voting for any election including federal offices.

Automatic voter registration — unless the individual opts out — upon the submission of personal information (name, address) to any state agency for any purpose.

Online voter registration up to and including on election day.

Automatic restoration of voting rights to felons.

Allowing “ballot harvesting” by third parties.

Counting of illegal aliens among state populations fo purpose of determining number of congressional districts in each state.

Public financing by creating “$6 to $1” match of federal funds against small-donor campaign contributions of $200 or less.

Prohibited:

No voter ID requirements.

No purging of voter rolls.

No signature matching for mail-in ballots.

No redistricting by legislative bodies in the States — only by non-partisan commissions.

No disqualification of ballots for “out of precinct” voting.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in cases from Arizona where the DNC challenged two Arizona election laws — one that criminalized “ballot harvesting,” and one that disqualified any ballot cast by a voter in the wrong voting precinct.  Similar election laws are used in many other states.  I wrote about the cases here, prior to the oral argument taking place.  The decision is expected before June, but the sentiment of legal observers is that the Justices will uphold both statutes as not violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

HR1 would make both statutes illegal.

Every Democrat voted in favor of passage and every Republican voted against passage.  The legislation now goes to the Senate.

Because this legislation must get through the Senate under its normal rules, it will need 60 votes to end debate and proceed to a vote.  Similar legislation was passed by the House in 2019 after the Democrats took control of the House, but it was never considered in the GOP-controlled Senate.

Even though the Democrats now control the Senate, there is no chance that 10 GOP Senators will agree to allow this legislation to come up for a vote.  The only path to passage will be to end the “filibuster” rule.

The “filibuster” rule is a procedural rule in the Senate; it is not a statute or part of the Constitution.  Several years ago, Harry Reid, as Senate Majority Leader, established the precedent that Senate Rules could be amended during a legislative session by majority vote.  In order to get HR1 brought to a vote in the Senate, Majority Leader Schumer will need to amend the legislative “filibuster” rule to eliminate the 60 vote requirement to end debate — that change would take only 51 votes.  VP Harris could break a 50-50 tie and cast the 51st vote to amend the rules and eliminate the filibuster, and that would potentially allow passage of HR1 on a party-line vote — in both Houses of Congress.

Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have expressed opposition to eliminating the filibuster, with Manchin being the most adamant in his position.  Earlier this week, he was again asked by members of the media about his prior position that he would “never” change his mind about ending the filibuster.

“Never! Jesus Christ! What don’t you understand about never?” Manchin said.

Manchin has insisted that his position is based on the principle that for legislation to pass in the Senate — even on a party-line vote — there must be meaningful bi-partisan involvement by members of both parties.  While it is not necessary to have minority party support in voting for the legislation, Manchin’s view is that the minority party must be willing to let the legislation come up for a vote rather than have all the processes of the Senate take place on a raw partisan majority basis.

What is also true, however, is that Manchin understands that he is the Senate Majority Leader right now.  With the filibuster in place, no legislation has any chance of advancing to a vote without his support.  The moment “50” votes become all that is needed, his vote is no more meaningful than one of the Senate RINOs who might be persuaded to support Democrat-backed legislation that Manchin opposes.  The White House and Majority Leader Schumer can play “Let’s Make a Deal” with Sen. Murkowski, Sen. Collins, or Sen. Romney in an effort to “buy” their support for any piece of legislation by offering “goodies” for their states.

Critical to Manchin is that the main provisions of the Green New Deal not be allowed to come up for a vote, as the coal and natural gas industries are the backbones of West Virginia’s economy.

So long as Manchin — and maybe Sinema — remains unwilling to change the rules to eliminate the filibuster, HR1 should remain stalled in the Senate.

But HR1 reflects the dreams of the Democrats — federally mandated elections at the state level which create avenues by which massive vote fraud efforts can be orchestrated by Democrat Party interest groups even in states with significant GOP electoral majorities.

Biden To Avoid Public Appearances Until They’re Done Canceling All The Sexual Harassers & Racists

Babylon Bee🐝

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Inside sources say that President Joe Biden is going to avoid all public appearances for a while. This is due to the current climate of increased scrutiny on sexual harassment -- such as with Governor Andrew Cuomo -- and past racism -- as is happening with Dr. Suess books. 

“With everyone trying to find people to cancel who have been inappropriate with women or have been racist,” said a White House staffer who wished to remain anonymous so people wouldn’t know he is associated with a sexual harasser and a racist, “it seems like a good time for Biden to lie low and let people forget about him, just like when he was vice president.”

This new policy was reflected at the latest White House press conference, where White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced at the beginning that she would not take any questions about the president. “Let’s talk about something else today,” she said. “Anyone seen any good TV shows?”

Biden is reportedly just hanging out quietly in the White House, eating ice cream and napping and hoping President Trump makes some noise so maybe people will talk about him. He will start making public appearances again as soon as it’s once more okay to harass women and make casually racist remarks -- or at least okay for a Democrat.

 

Article by Eileen F. Toplansky in The American Thinker

 

The Evolution of Elitism

In 1979, John H. Bunzel penned a piece in Newsweek titled "The Badge of  'Elitism.'"  Bunzel was president of a state university in California from 1970 to 1978.  Here's what he had to say 

Thus I am an elitist if what is meant and understood is that I recognize there are differences in individual talent and capacity. Further, it is silly to pretend that anyone who acknowledges these differences is somehow an 'anti-democrat.' And it is just as foolish to claim that anyone who recognizes there are different physical and behavioral traits among various groups is a racist. 

He further asserted that "one can oppose racism without believing that people are equal in abilities.  Put another way, there is a world of difference between  'discriminatory practices' and 'discriminating standards.'"

Today Mr. Bunzel would be hounded for his perfectly logical ideas.

Now under the domination of Marxists,  progressives and Communists,  people must "assume that the existence of any differences constitutes prima facie evidence of inequality — and since in a democracy 'all men are created equal' these differences are presumed to be a self-evident indictment of democracy." 

Colleges boast of programs dealing with diversity, inclusion and equity.  Here is a sampling.

• "Reimagining Higher Education in Times of Change."  The twin pandemics of our time--Covid-19 on the one hand and, on the other, structural racism that is giving rise to ascendant acknowledgment — are compelling a rethinking of higher education's pedagogy and mission."
• "Join the Social Justice Committee for a conversation with Gwen Carr, mother of the late Eric Garner, who was killed by a New York Police Department officer.  Carr is a member of the Mothers of the Movement and a voice in the Black Lives Matter movement."
• "Save on the book AngryNomics by Eric Lonergan and Mark Blyth who 'rightly call for a reset of our current model of capitalism' and 'channeling the righteous anger of the moment into lasting economic change.'"
• "Join these leaders as they 'encourage diversity and inclusion on your campus.'"

and, finally, the utterly vague drivel below

We are pleased to invite you to a workshop where teachers 'will differentiate between authentic assessments and traditional assessments, [and] observe how assessments can be modified to increase authenticity and real world application.'

Each has the goal of destroying free market capitalism, pushing a decidedly anti-American curriculum and pitting racial groups against each other.  It cannot be emphasized enough that equity is not equality. In actuality, equity is one of the fundamental tenets of the critical race theory training that is rampant in schools and businesses --- even in COVID treatment.  In reality "equity is the pretext for racial discrimination."  It goes completely counter to the ideas of equality as expressed in our foundational documents. Yet, Stanford University is one of many leading the pack. Even the "United States Navy's official curriculum will include books on 'anti-racism' and 'gender politics' that will further push the message of social justice in the military."

John Bunzel emphasized that "[i]f the university were to follow the democratic principle of treating students and faculty alike ... the students would have a greater voice in determining who should be hired and what should be studied."

How far American education has fallen.  In fact, administrators have all but defaulted on maintaining high academic standards and students do have much greater control regarding who should be permitted to teach.

How prescient Mr. Bunzel was when he wrote "I have heard it said that if students majoring in English voted to remove Shakespeare from the curriculum because he is no longer relevant, . . . the faculty should concur."

Indeed, almost five decades later "[f]or the new breed of teachers, Shakespeare is seen less as an icon of literature and more as a tool of imperial oppression, an author who should be dissected in class or banished from the curriculum entirely."

'This is about white supremacy and colonization,' declared the teachers who founded #DisruptTexts, a group that wants staples of Western literature removed or subjected to withering criticism.

The anti-Shakespeare teachers . . . say readers of Shakespeare should be required to address the 'whiteness' of their thinking.

If Shakespeare must be taught, these educators say, then it should be presented with watered-down versions of the original or supplemental texts focused on equality issues.

Elizabeth Nelson, who teaches English at Twin Cities Academy in St. Paul, Minnesota, told School Library Journal that she gives her students Marxist theory when reading Shakespeare's tragedy 'Coriolanus' about the Roman leader.

Sarah Mulhern Gross told the journal that she delivered 'toxic masculinity analysis' to her students reading 'Romeo and Juliet' at High Technology High School in Lincroft, New Jersey.

But the radical left-wing ideas begin even earlier.  Hence, "your first grader will be learning about 'injustice at the institutional or systemic level' and 'your middle-schooler will be drilled in how his identity is a function of his skin color.'" 

They will be well prepped by the time they reach college.

Schools should be places of learning, not propaganda.  Yet, in the fall of 2016, California's then "Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a mandate to develop an ethnic studies program for high schools in California.  This, despite that California's public schools have the most ethnically diverse student body in the nation, with three-quarters of students belonging to minorities and speaking over 90 languages. Luis Alejo,  Assembly member . . . , hailed the law, the first in the nation, as an opportunity to 'give all students the opportunity to prepare for a diverse global economy, diverse university campuses and diverse workplaces [.]'"  In fact, "Elina Kaplan, a former high-tech manager who had just stepped down as senior VP of one of California's largest affordable housing nonprofits, believed that this 'offered students the chance to learn about the accomplishments of ethnic minorities, as well as to address issues of inequality and bigotry.'"

But three years later, when the first draft of the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) was released, Kaplan couldn't believe what she was reading. In one sample lesson, she saw that a list of historic U.S. social movements—ones like Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Criminal Justice Reform—also included the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement for Palestine (BDS) [.] She was shocked that in a curriculum that would be taught to millions of students, BDS's primary goal — the elimination of Israel — was not mentioned. Kaplan also saw . . . Arabic verses included in the sample lessons [that] were insulting and provocative to Jews.

Hypocrisy abounds. So while claiming concern for all groups, anti-Semitic left-wing ideology is now foisted onto American students under the guise of  "addressing bigotry."

Bunzel understood that the Left despises Jefferson's belief that education should encourage and cultivate leaders of "virtue and talent." In fact, "in today's terms, Jefferson believed in equality of opportunity based on personal effort, but not in an equality of results."  Jefferson would have "dissented vigorously from any suggestion that individual merit should be sacrificed for a quota system or its functional equivalent."

Moreover, Bunzel's concern about the "rise of vulgarity disguised as freedom" and the "contempt for grammar" highlights what has happened to schools.  Far too many students are functionally illiterate and remediation programs exist in most institutions of higher learning. In fact, the chair of the English Department at Rutgers University believes that the failure to master English grammar should not be held against students  "so as not to put students from multilingual, non-standard 'academic' English backgrounds at a disadvantage."

Nothing is more important than resisting the continuing dumbing down and radicalization of American students if we are to have an honorable future in these United States.

 https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/the_evolution_of_elitism.html#ixzz6oFGR8rTs

 

 

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Google Censorship Continues – RSBN Suspended for Carrying President Trump CPAC Speech

Control is a reaction to fear; it has always been thus.  In this example Google, the parent company of YouTube, is removing all copies of President Trump’s CPAC speech claiming the content violates their terms of service.   RSBN broadcast the speech then hosted it on their YouTube channel.  As a result RSBN has been suspended from their YouTube account:

Do not simply skim over this issue because we are becoming numb to the targeting and ideological censorship.  Think about this from the perspective that a corporation is targeting their political opposition.  It’s not that George Orwell was correct; the issue is that ideological leftists like the process that Orwell predicted.

They want you to know there are two standards.  They want you to feel inferior to their standard.

 

Article by Pat Buchanan in Townhall

 

Who Really Imperils the Republic?

"That attack, that siege" of the Capitol, FBI Director Chris Wray told Congress, "was criminal behavior, plain and simple, and it was behavior we at the FBI view as domestic terrorism."

"Domestic terrorism," said Wray, echoing his boss.

For what had been President-elect Joe Biden's reaction to the Capitol riot?

"Don't dare call them protesters. They were a riotous mob. Insurrectionists. Domestic terrorists. It's that basic. It's that simple," said Biden.

Yet, the phrase domestic terrorism conjures up events from our past far graver than a four-hours occupation of the Capitol. Nat Turner's rebellion. John Brown's 1859 raid on Harper's Ferry. Timothy McVeigh and Oklahoma City.

The near assassination of Harry Truman at Blair House by Puerto Rican nationalists, Nov.1, 1950. The shooting and wounding of five congressmen from the House gallery on March 1, 1954.

The 1974 bombing of New York's Fraunces Tavern -- where Gen. George Washington said farewell to his officers -- also the work of Puerto Ricans demanding independence. Four died there and 50 were injured.

Yet, in the "domestic terrorism" at the Capitol, no protester set off a bomb, toppled a statue, or fired a weapon. Of the four who died that day, all were protesters. Ashli Babbitt, 35, a 14-year Air Force veteran, was shot to death by a Capitol cop as she tried to force her way into the Senate chamber.

A rioter and law-breaker, yes, but a terrorist who deserved to die?

Benjamin Phillips, 50, died of a stroke; Kevin Greeson, 55, of a heart attack. Rosanne Boyland, 34, was apparently crushed in the melee.

Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick died of a stroke the next day. Media reports that he had been hit with a fire extinguisher proved false. In the two months since Jan. 6, no one has been charged in his death.

Was Wray's FBI alerted in advance of this impending act of domestic terrorism? Apparently, it was.

Writes The Washington Post: "A... report, prepared by the FBI's Norfolk field office a day before the riot, ... warned of specific appeals for violence, including a call for 'war' at the Capitol."

The report quoted a source urging Donald Trump supporters to go to D.C. "ready to fight."

"Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa slave soldiers being spilled. Get violent, stop calling this a march or rally or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal."

What did Wray do with this hair-raising warning? Did he call the D.C. police or Speaker Nancy Pelosi to alert her to what might be coming her way?

No. Wray never saw the Norfolk report. It was not passed up the chain of command to his office until after the riot. It was sent by email to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, which includes the D.C. and Capitol Police, posted on a website and mentioned in a command center briefing in D.C.

Nonchalance seems to have been the FBI's order of the day.

As acting D.C. police chief Robert J. Contee III told Congress, "I would certainly think that something as violent as an insurrection would warrant a phone call."

One would think so. Explanations are needed.

How can Wray call a breach of the Capitol by a Trump crowd, an "act of domestic terrorism," when his own subordinates did not regard it as sufficiently serious enough to give him a heads-up?

And is it not hyperbole to use terms like "domestic terrorism," "armed insurrection," "coup d'etat," and "treason" to describe protesters pushing through police lines into the Capitol to disrupt a proceeding?

What is going on here?

The left will not let this go. It is exaggerating and exploiting what happened at the Capitol to paint the right as an ominous threat to American democracy -- and itself as the savior of the republic. It seeks to demonize the populist right, cancel its voice, expel it from the public square and redefine it as a conspiracy against America, calling forth new government authority and power to monitor, expose and destroy it.

If assaulting cops and besieging public buildings amounts to domestic terrorism, the rioting, looting, arson and assaults on cops we saw all last summer in Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, Kenosha and Louisville from antifa and Black Lives Matter protestors would more than qualify.

Today, Capitol Hill is encircled with high fencing topped by razor wire and patrolled by National Guard troops. It looks like the Green Zone in Baghdad. Apparently, the physical barriers and troops are there to protect against attacks by QAnon and white supremacists.

Minneapolis is taking similar precautions to protect the courthouse where ex-cop Derek Chauvin is to be tried for second-degree murder in the death of George Floyd.

My guess, Minneapolis, not Capitol Hill, is where the action will be this spring, and it will not be Proud Boys keeping the cops busy, but folks who, if they did vote in 2020, voted Democratic.

https://townhall.com/columnists/patbuchanan/2021/03/05/who-really-imperils-the-republic-n2585725 

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Article by Yuichiro Kakutani and Jack Beyrer in The Washington Free Beacon

 

U.S. Adversaries Weaponize Woke Politics

China says U.S. leads 'axis of white supremacy' while Russia smears dissidents

The propaganda efforts of American adversaries show they're seizing on the rhetoric of the far left, particularly its criticism of the United States.

China responded to international criticism about the Uighur genocide on Monday by pledging to submit a "report on human-rights violations in the United States" that will discuss the Black Lives Matter movement. Russia, meanwhile, convinced Amnesty International in late February to revoke the "prisoner of conscience" label from Russian dissident Alexei Navalny by disseminating his decade-old anti-immigrant comments.

American rivals—from China to Russia to Iran—are using terms out of the woke dictionary, such as "white supremacy" and "systemic racism," to peddle propaganda in the United States. Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said the progressive rhetoric allows propagandists to deflect criticism about their authoritarian politics and sow discord in America.

"This is a two-fer for them: It can sow dissent and unrest here, and then it can let them say to their own people, ‘Look how unruly and violent democracy can be,'" Gonzalez told the Washington Free Beacon. "It makes the conduct of our foreign policy much harder, in places like Hong Kong or Xinjiang for example."

The Chinese government has repeatedly used progressive language to distract from its own human-rights abuses. China's foreign ministry spokeswoman responded to U.S. criticism about its crackdown in Hong Kong by tweeting, "I can't breathe" in May 2020, days after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Chinese propagandists also accused the United States of hypocrisy for supporting Chinese dissidents while cracking down on riots at home.

The Chinese propaganda effort has doubled down on its woke approach as pressure mounts on the authoritarian regime's treatment of Muslim Uighurs. In February, a Chinese mouthpiece accused a U.S.-led "axis of white supremacy" of spreading slander about Xinjiang to isolate China on the international stage.

"A U.S.-centered, racist, and mafia-styled community [is] willfully and arrogantly provoking China and trying to consolidate their hegemony as all gangsters do," reads a Feb. 23 editorial by the Global Times, a state-sponsored mouthpiece. "They are becoming a racist axis aimed at stifling the development rights of 1.4 billion Chinese."

Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) said the proliferation of progressive ideology in American society has allowed the Chinese government to exploit U.S. social divisions.

"It’s no surprise to see the Chinese Communist Party trafficking in propaganda that mirrors the shoddy arguments coming out of American newsrooms and universities," Hawley said. "And frankly, woke liberals and our increasingly deranged cancel culture give them every reason to think those arguments will work."

In one case, the progressive rhetoric allowed Chinese propagandists to shape American media coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. Chinese state outlets accused Western outlets of racism for using the term "Wuhan flu" to refer to the virus in February 2020—even though those same outlets used that term for months. The racism charge convinced most U.S. outlets to drop the term, allowing the Chinese government to obfuscate the origins of the virus as the pandemic spread across the globe. 

"As they say, ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend," Republican congressman Jim Banks (Ind.) said. "It’s terrifying to see … internal and external enemies of American greatness collude out in the open."

Gonzalez said American adversaries have a "long history" of exploiting U.S. progressive politics in their propaganda efforts. As far back as the 1960s, KGB agents tried unsuccessfully to recruit Martin Luther King Jr. to exacerbate racial tensions. 

Russia has inherited its Soviet predecessors' finesse for exploiting Western progressive discourse for its own gains. As Russia contended with growing domestic unrest over its detention of Navalny, the Kremlin organized a coordinated effort to disseminate comments made by Navalny more than a decade ago in which he called immigrants "cockroaches." In response, Amnesty International dropped the "prisoner of conscience" label for Navalny for his past "advocacy of hatred" on Feb. 24, securing a public relations victory for Russian president Vladimir Putin.

"One of the most visible international human-rights organizations has, in fact, labeled Navalny a bigot, a hater, an advocate of violence—in sum, a reprehensible person not deserving the title of ‘prisoner of conscience,'" University of Houston professor Paul Roderick Gregory wrote. "Consider the irony of the unwoke Kremlin holding the feet of Western institutions to the woke fire."

China and Russia are not the only U.S. rivals using progressive rhetoric to smear the United States. Iran's foreign minister wrote tweets in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in May, while North Korea labeled the United States a country of "extreme racists" after the death of Floyd.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) said the progressive narrative meshes well with foreign propaganda because they share a common assessment of America as a "hopelessly evil country."

"Our enemies in places like China, Russia, and Cuba love nothing more than to point to these profoundly wrong ideologies to justify their own ongoing human-rights atrocities and to sow division here," Cruz said.

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/u-s-adversaries-weaponize-woke-politics/ 

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Article by Arizona State Representative Jake Hoffman in Townhall

 

A Message to Patriots in a Democrat-controlled America

These are dark days for our nation. They are exhausting, terrifying, maddening, and confusing. We’ve watched Democrats and radical Marxists demean and disenfranchise tens of millions of voters. We’ve listened to their words about what is to come—openly opining of their plans to usher in an era of one-party control that will last for generations, if they are allowed to succeed.  We’ve watched their tsunami of executive orders and legislation in the early weeks of the Democrats’ newfound power that will result in less freedom, less prosperity and greater government control over nearly every aspect of our lives.

These are dark days indeed. 

Yet, as I watch many of my fellow countrymen grapple with the feelings of frustration and despair sowed by the Democrats’ fringe agenda, I am reminded of scripture.

Psalms 23 tells us, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me…”

So often, as believers, we see this passage—a passage we’ve all known since Sunday School—and we focus on the “for You are with me" part of the scripture. Of course, this part of the verse is powerful, yet we should likewise find encouragement and peace in how the valley is referred to—the valley of the “shadow” of death.

Shadows, while terrifying, can’t hurt us. In this world, we can find immense peace in knowing that the trials and darkness we face are mere shadows. Like Paul and Silas in Acts 16, no matter how dark this world becomes we can sing praise to the Lord Almighty because through the grace of Christ’s sacrifice nothing in this domain can stand against us so long as we place our faith in Him.

In addition to the Scriptures, I find myself being drawn more and more to the words of our Founders. As I write, I am particularly drawn to the words of the Declaration of Independence.

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another... 

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

While the world has changed since those words were first penned, the evil hearts of despots, both at home and abroad, have not. Similarly, our duty to dissolve and throw off the political bands that threaten our liberties has not.

So, despite the darkness of these days, we keep fighting. Not with weapons or lawlessness, but with faith, scripture, ideas, words, and the time-tested principles of freedom, liberty and individual responsibility that have, for more than two centuries, resulted in the greatest opportunity for happiness and prosperity the world has ever known.  

Never in our nation's storied history has there been a more important moment for citizens of every persuasion to step up and engage in this battle—a battle for the very soul of our nation. 

Never has there been a more important time for a new crop of courageous leaders to step forward in resolute conviction to return this nation to its rightful place as the shining city upon a hill—a beacon for free people everywhere.

You see, America doesn’t suffer from a lack of principled leaders, it merely suffers from a lack of principled leaders willing to step up to the calling of elected, servant leadership.  

Our nation suffers from the illusion that the great men and women in history were in some way better, more qualified, and stronger than the men and women of the present.  We suffer from the myth of self-doubt perpetuated by the monstrosity of a government so big that it leaves everyday citizens feeling small and inconsequential. 

Yet, as the world darkens, as society and our politics becomes more unstable, the solution is not to recoil in exhaustion, fear and disgust.  The solution is greater engagement.  

America needs modern day Washingtons, Jeffersons, Reveres, and Franklins to step forward and lead. Our nation needs a rekindling of the quiet heroes of the Greatest Generation—the men and women who selflessly sacrificed to overcome fascism and communism in the 20th century.  No matter how insurmountable the challenges we face may feel, the answer lies with everyday Americans simply having the courage to faithfully step into the lion’s den as unwavering voices for truth.

If we allow the absence of everyday leaders to persist, it will serve only to amplify and heighten the confusion, isolation and desperation felt by too many of our fellow patriots, leaving our nation vulnerable to the whims of emotion and mobs.

The road ahead—to hold the line against the impending radical agenda of Washington, D.C., despots—surely won’t be easy; however, it is a road that we must travel with steadfast resolve and conviction in the pursuit of truth, justice, and constitutional self-governance.

We must have the courage to step into the colosseum of elected politics for the sole purpose of protecting the exceptionalism of our nation, and the very foundation of freedom itself.

Now is the time to lead. The battle we’ve been fighting like hell to stave off is now upon us. We must engage, have hope, and persist in this fight, for the price of failure is far too high.

May God give each of us the strength, courage, and fearlessness to overcome the darkness of the present and save this last bastion of freedom for all of mankind.

 

https://townhall.com/columnists/staterepjakehoffman/2021/03/04/a-message-to-patriots-in-a-democratcontrolled-america-n2585723 

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