Joe Biden is reportedly considering sending some three to five thousand troops to Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia as part of an effort to protect NATO states near Russia, to ward off Russia, given their aggressive actions toward Ukraine. Other NATO countries might also be kicking in troops under this plan, according to Fox News.
This Biden military move might not only include troops; they’re also considering naval vessels and aircraft.
This follows a report from the U.K. that Russia was plotting to try to install a pro-Kremlin government in Ukraine and boot out the pro-West Volodymyr Zelensky. Russia is denying this report and blaming the U.K. for spreading it.
This was also kicked off after Joe Biden appeared to give Russia a green light for a “minor incursion” on Wednesday, Jan. 19. Since then, the tension seems to have kicked up a lot. Russia has more than 100,000 troops perched on the border with Ukraine, and aircraft in Belarus poised near Ukraine.
K.T. McFarland, deputy national security adviser to former President Donald Trump, told Fox News Digital that President Biden has brought the current circumstances upon himself, seemingly giving President Putin a “green light” during a press conference this week.
“Whatever happened in Afghanistan had a ripple effect with Ukraine. Whatever is going to happen with Ukraine is going to have a ripple effect with China, but it will have a ripple effect with Iran. It’s going to have a ripple effect with North Korea because all of these countries will think they’ll seize the moment. They’ll think this is my time. America’s weak, it’s disorganized,” McFarland said.
This is incredibly concerning and would be totally unnecessary with a leader who projects strength. Joe Biden may just have brought us to the brink of war because of his careless language, and now he may ratchet it up still more with further careless action.
The uproar last week over Chamath Paliphapitiya statement that caring about genocide of the Uyghurs in China is below his lines of care brought me back to a couple of articles/podcast on the subject of China. One was a blog post I did on Nancy Pelosi titled "There's No Doubt Left, She Will Kill You" where during an interview on China she said:
With their military aggression in the South China Sea, with their continuation of genocide with the Uyghurs in Xinjiang province, with their violation of the cultural, religious priority of Tibet, with their suppression of democracy in Hong Kong and other parts of China as well, they’re just getting worse in terms of suppression and freedom of speech, I think said of all of that we have to work together on climate, climate is an overriding issue.
What Chamath said doesn't fall far from the tree in comparison to what Nancy said. Genocide doesn't rank at the top of the list. Ironically Chamath, after much backlash over his statement, comes out with an apology that aligned similar to a podcast I had listened to titled "Leadership Analysis: Understanding The Intensions and Actions of Global Leaders" on the Bush China Foundation website. Chamath's explanation for his remarks ran a similar analogy to the new globalist stance on evil world leaders. We can no longer look at them in the context of their ruthlessness we must gain an understanding of what brought them to this place in life. Judging them along the lines of evilness is actually now considered bias and we must learn to view them through a culture filter and to have a certain sense of empathy in how a leader sees the world. In other words we need to humanize them.
Dr. Kenneth Dekleva, psychiatrist and former State Department official and fellow at the Bush China Foundation said it is critically important to add a personal human touch to adversarial leaders. He likened it to his early years working in the prison system talking with inmates who had done horrendous things in their lives. Humanizing them, gaining insight to what brought them there leads, well, in my opinion of what he said, to the option to overlook or excuse the behavior by circumstances befallen upon the individual.
Leadership analysis is a niche kind of portion to a larger discipline of intelligence analysis where you are trying to understand political motivation, a leaders negotiating style, how a leader may react in a crisis and in a sense what makes the leader unique and what makes them tick. And part of understanding that is important, even in analyzing leaders who are autocratic, ruthless, dictatorial and leaders who've often done horrible things in terms of supporting acts of violence, is trying to understand the leader through a culture filter and to have a certain sense of empathy in thinking about how would the leader, would see the world, how they'd see it through their eyes and the eyes of the people who work with them and interact with them.
He goes on to give an example of Chinese president XI Jinping. When Jinping was fourteen years old his father was thrown out of the cultural revolution, little Jinping barely managed not to be shot and was banished off to a distant place in his country where he labored until he could manage to rise above it all. Once you could humanize Jinping in that manner you could clearly see now that the assessment of Jinping was all wrong:
Quite truly an impressive leader, the most powerful man in the world today. He has remarkable strength in the power he has accumulated. His combination of resilience, inter-strength, combined with his vision of the Chinese dream of reinvigoration along with a personal narrative has made him, he's truly a remarkable leader, we got him wrong.
He goes on to praise Trump for his humanizing efforts with Kim Jong Un, though it opened up limited dialogue in the long run humanizing ruthless leaders can lead to changes in their behavior he said and he gives an example that Kim stopped flinging missiles off into the sea. Ruthless, evil, vile acts has now been cast off into a backroom labeled as a mere opposing of cultural views in the quest of global cooperation in the new world globalist order.
Defunding the police, sensitizing criminal behavior and humanizing the behavior of tyrants should send chills down your spine. The harsh reality is that for many it won't. The vast majority of them won't allow their conscience to accept it was below their lines of cares, if they did they'd been on twitter repenting not condemning a truth. That, in a nutshell, is how we got to this discussion but by next week it will be below the lines of cares. NBA tickets anybody?
******
You can find the links inside this story by going to my blog
We were dining at El Hefe’s with a few attractive couples—boozing and musing about the sorry state of man, and the dwindling pool of women hoping for anything better.
Mrs. Shepherd shared a casual observation that I had never heard before—one that had the ring of self-evidence to it.
“Guys, what you are missing is the effect the Pill has on female partner choice.” “Let me explain it to you in guy-speak.” (I love it when the missus is pedantic.) “The Pill affects a woman’s natural factory settings on choosing a man. The Pill pharmacologically induces women to favor the Mangina as a date and as a mate.” I should add, Mrs. Shepherd is a doctor. Not an MD—which on this subject would have been more authoritative—but she does have a Ph.D. in developmental psychology. It is worth noting that Mrs. Shepherd is a “Dr. Ruth” of sorts, having taught human sexuality at the university level. She continued, “A woman naturally looks for two things from a mate when not onthe Pill. First, does he have good genes? Will he make good, healthy babies? Attractiveness, strength, symmetry, and odor are nature’s scouts for fitness. Simply put, good genes look good in jeans. Second, is the guy dependable? Can you trust him to fulfill a parental function? Will he provide for his family—and then some? A good mating choice looks for a partner that checks all the boxes. Fit, fatherly—and flush. “But that’s not what happens to women on the Pill. Instead, here is what’s been happening: The Pill takes a concern for good genes out of the mating equation. The body of a woman on the Pill thinks it’s already pregnant. Her biology is flooding the zone with safe-nesting signals. As a result, women on the pill favor a Mangina in dating and mating and they have been doing so for 60 years.” “Before the Pill women had to fight their natural inclination for an Alpha. Ovulation favors choosing short-term fitness over long-term interests—Mr. Wrong over Mr. Right. But once she’s on the Pill, the reverse is true. A woman’s mate preferences are feminized. No longer is she attracted to good genes. Her ideal man’s features get softer and she loses her nose for fitness.”
It turns out that women are naturally endowed with a nose for the genetic dissimilarity she needs to mate well. Nature favors a Gerard Butler—a Spartan King.
In direct contrast, the Pill inclines women to favor men who are genetically similar. The Pill favors Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral.
My road-to-Damascus response to this was to realize that what we have been doing for the past 60 years is a Darwinian no-no—pharmacology was used to change the evolutionary direction of man.
The other ladies at the table were as surprised as the men were.
The next day, I asked the star of the previous evening’s conversation for some literature to back up her mic-drop of an insight. She provided the marked up copies that she used for teaching and it was all there.
Reading the scientific literature was like going to the optometrist and getting new specs—the ones that bring perfect pellucidity.
It’s not often that I agree with Joe Biden, but he said something in his nasty, brutish, and long press conference last week with which, if properly understood, I agree.
Don’t get me wrong. The press conference as a whole was a “total disaster.” Notwithstanding the sycophantic performance of the court eunuchs in the regime media, everybody understands this. (But speaking of “court eunuchs,” what’s the female equivalent? It was Jennifer Rubin, who actually gave Biden an “A-” for the presser, that prompts this vital question and I hope some enterprising savant will contribute the answer.)
At one point, a reporter, noting a few of the multifarious failures of Biden’s first year in office—runaway inflation; his failure to “shut down the virus”; the smoldering ruin of his legislative agenda; the sharp, persistent partisan divisions that he came to office promising to heal—given all that, the scribe suggested, perhaps Biden had “overpromised.”
No, no, Biden replied, “I didn’t overpromise, but I have probably outperformed what anybody thought would happen.”
Delicious, isn’t it? Peel off and discard the first bit. Biden clearly overpromised. Just utter the word “normalcy” anywhere near the name “Biden” and watch the reaction. But many people jumped all over the second bit. Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), for example, quoted the word “outperformed” and tweeted: “I’m not sure what planet he’s inhabiting but on planet earth his record is a record of failure.”
That is true. It’s a dismal record of failure, and we’ve only made it through one year. Biden’s even outdone his master, Barack Obama, who before Biden held the world record for worst president in the history of the United States. Biden is far worse, in part, granted, because he continues to follow the blueprint set forth by his clean, elegantly clad predecessor.
But I have to cavil with the idea that Biden has not “outperformed” expectations. He certainly outperformed mine. I didn’t think he would make it through his first year in the White House. But here it is, January 20-something, and the old guy is still in office. Amazing.
True, there is something of Dr. Johnson’s dog about the whole thing. Presented with the spectacle of female preachers, Samuel Johnson marveled: “Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”
My feelings about Biden are somewhat similar. I have accordingly revised my prediction. I was wrong that Joe Biden wouldn’t make it through his first year. I continue to cling to the conviction he will not remain the occupant of the White House through to the morning of January 20, 2025. The prospect of a second Biden term is, I am convinced, not worth speaking about. In tragedy, Aristotle said, we should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities, but a second Biden term is so improbable as to be well-nigh impossible, and I am not forgetting about what a tragedy such an eventuality would entail for the country and the world. Even CNN seems to be coming around to this realization.
If I am even remotely correct about this, Biden’s situation presents the unnamed committee who actually runs the presidency with a huge and delicate problem. Biden’s behavior long ago passed from embarrassing to dangerous. We can see that all around us.
By October of 79 A.D., Romans living in the vicinity of Mt. Vesuvius had become accustomed to tremors and eructations. A largish earthquake in 62 A.D. had caused widespread damage. Plumes of poisonous gas killed some 600 sheep. But the populace got used to the interruptions. Until around mid-October of 79, that is, when the volcano erupted and buried the surrounding area in yards and yards of molten lava and volcanic ash.
I’d say we have had plenty of admonitory tremors. And who knows how many sheep have been gassed along the way? We’re still waiting for the big one, however, and as of this writing, it’s not clear how it will unfold. Will Biden do something stupid—(stop tittering with your suggestion that I should insert a full stop after the word “stupid”). What I was going to say was, will he do something stupid in Ukraine, precipitating a crisis with Vladimir Putin? Will he continue to coddle President Xi Jinping or the mullahs in Iran? Do not, Barack Obama once warned, “underestimate Joe’s ability to f— things up.” What if we get double-digit inflation, plus rising interest rates, plus a recession? We’re well down that road, and though I try to arrange things so that there is no math, I do note that the interest payments on our $30 trillion federal debt are much bigger at 5 percent than they are at roughly 1 percent.
Some people talk about invoking the 25th Amendment and removing Biden for incapacity. But waiting in the wings to take the reins of power is Kamala Harris (and after her is Nancy Pelosi: Think about that!). So I don’t think that expedient will be resorted to.
Somehow, the cabal that put Biden in power will scheme to winkle him out of power. It is unlikely to be as straightforward as it was with Richard Nixon. Biden is not hated so much as he is held in contempt. And with Nixon, the Democrats were fortunate that his vice-president, Spiro Agnew, was corrupt in a good, old-fashioned, straightforward political way. It turns out that he liked simple brown bags, especially ones filled with cash. Agnew would have been as unacceptable as Kamala Harris, but the blatant corruption made it easy to get rid of him before proceeding to tackle the big fish of Richard Nixon.
As I say, I doubt removing Joe Biden will be so easy. It will be interesting to see what the deep-state committee comes up with. They put him in power, instructing Bernie Sanders and the other Democrats to drop out in 2020, and they will figure out a way to remove him from the 2024 presidential equation.
Perhaps it will be something like those corrupt quiz shows in the 1950s—shows like “Twenty-One.” Radio quiz shows had been wildly popular, so early television producers had high hopes. When “Twenty-One” debuted, however, it was a dismal failure. The contestants could answer hardly any questions. It is a nice detail that the initial sponsor was Geritol, a detail that might well play a role in American politics today.
Well, the television producers weren’t going to gamble on a repeat of the initial performance, so they began coaching one or more of the contestants. They let one player rack up considerable winnings and then, when the public’s interest began to wane, instructed him to throw the contest to another player. Unfortunately, one of the players, Herb Stemple, did not take his dethronement lying down. He told his story and exposed Charles Van Doren, son of the poet Mark Van Doren, who had taken Stemple’s place. It took a while for the story to achieve general credibility, but it eventually did and caused a huge scandal. Maybe we have something similar to look forward to with Joe Biden and whoever the committee selects as his successor.
The media will tell you that it’s a right-wing conspiracy that whites are discriminated against in COVID treatment and, at the same time, tell you that it’s a good thing it’s happening.
Former President Donald Trump was in classic form at his Arizona rally last Saturday. It’s no surprise journalists and late-night comedians were incensed by one of the rally highlights.
The former president criticized the disturbing trend of anti-white discrimination in COVID treatment.
“The Left is now rationing life-saving therapeutics based on race, discriminating against and denigrating . . . white people to determine who lives and who dies,” Trump said. “If you’re white you don’t get the vaccine or if you’re white you don’t get therapeutics. . . . In New York state, if you’re white, you have to go to the back of the line to get medical health.”
This is a shocking, but true statement.At least three states—New York, Utah, and Minnesota—have prioritized nonwhites over whites for COVID therapeutics. All three of these states were only following the Food and Drug Administration’s recommendations to enact this policy. Some places even prioritized non-whites for vaccination. This trend has been well documented by the Washington Free Beacon and other outlets.
But the mainstream media claimed this was “misinformation.”The New York Times declared: “There is no evidence that white Americans are being denied access to vaccines or treatments.” The Times then offered the evidence that nonwhites are prioritized for COVID treatment, but defended it as necessary because of their “higher risk.” TheAssociated Press “fact check” also declared it false while showing proof that whites are discriminated against in these states.
The media claims this evidence just shows nonwhites need these particular treatments more than whites because of “systemic racism.” That apparently proves preferential treatment isn’t anti-white discrimination.
To really show how much Trump’s statement irritated liberal elites, Jimmy Kimmel—a bargain bin political pundit masquerading as a late-night comedian—mocked the former president’s claim to his dwindling audience. Kimmel called it a “COVID conspiracy theory that is outlandish even by Donald Trump standards.” “White people are being sent to the back of the line?! I guess Martin Luther King’s dream has been realized at last,” he joked.
The crowd yukked it up, of course. You’re supposed to laugh at claims of anti-white discrimination. Silly white people need to learn that they can only be racist and racism can never happen to them. This is what all the good and very smart people like Jimmy Kimmel believe. They think people who believe whites can be discriminated against are only worthy of mockery. You don’t want to be laughed at by Kimmel and his double-masked audience, do you?
But anti-white discrimination is very real in our society. What is affirmative action but a way to deny qualified whites admission into a university or access to a job? The same mindset that justifies not hiring a white person because it offends diversity also justifies denying life-saving care to a white person.
Prominent medical researchers have made this argument. Harold Schmidt, a University of Pennsylvania medical professor,told the New York Times it was right to discriminate against whites when it came to COVID treatment. “Older populations are whiter. Society is structured in a way that enables them to live longer. Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit,” he said.
Two physiciansargued in the Boston Review in May that America needs an “An Antiracist Agenda for Medicine.” How to do this? The doctors argue that physicians should preferentially [admit] patients historically denied access to certain forms of medical care.” Both doctors say they already do this in their own practice.
This sentiment is only going to become more prevalent as critical race theory entrenches itself in medicine.The American Medical Association demands doctors and medical schools commit themselves to “anti-racism” and work to end “systemic racism.”The Biden Administration incentivizes medical practices to implement “anti-racist” plans in their workplace. What’s the result of all this? White people will increasingly be put at the back of the line for medical care.
It could already be happening in hospitals around the country.A West Coast doctor told journalist Katie Herzog: “I’ve heard examples of COVID-19 cases in the emergency department where providers go, ‘I’m not going to go treat that white guy, I’m going to treat the person of color instead because whatever happened to the white guy, he probably deserves it.’”
And liberals will still chuckle at this reality. Because the late-night comic told them only rubes would believe such a thing.
Hollywood loves giving us entertainment we never asked for, like reboots of reboots of Ghostbusters, a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air drama, and 12 million seasons of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Now, in the grand tradition of continuing to make everything but what American consumers want to see, Hollywood will be giving us a movie about the events at the Capitol on January 6th.
Because of course they are.
Given the names attached, one can already imagine the absurdity of what this movie might entail. Billy Ray will direct. You’ll know him from his most recent directorial project that you most certainly did not watch, along with most of America outside Hollywood and a few New York City boroughs, The Comey Rule. Ray told Deadline he wants take a “ground-level” look at the events.
“The goal was to do a ground-level view of a momentous day,” said Ray. “It’s about protesters who became rioters and cops who became defenders of democracy. Someone else can tell the story of the chaos at the White House on that day. I wanted to stay in the trenches.”
Ray will be joined by producer Adam McKay, who’s most recent project Don’t Look Up, a metaphorical movie about the perils of climate change deniers, has achieved about the same level of success as Ray’s last project – hailed by the critics, panned by the audiences.
Ray, who initially developed a J6 project at Showtime as a five-episode limited series, went back to the drawing board. He turned 300 pages of scripted material into a 120-page feature script and created something entirely new.
“Billy has written a screenplay that is not only harrowing and terrifying but is sure to become the definitive cinematic document on that gut-wrenching day,” McKay said.
We’ll all be waiting on pins and needles to not watch this “definitive cinematic document”, but if you’d like to watch an actual cinematic document from someone who was actually there that day, check out actor/director Nick Searcy’s documentary on the riots and the ensuing arrests, Capitol Punishment. Our own reporter, Jennifer Oliver O’Connell had the privilege of interviewing Searcy about the film.
In 1999, Vladimir Putin rode to fame and glory on the bombings of a Moscow apartment complex by supposed dastardly Chechen rebels. As a wave of fear swept over Russia, he achieved almost overnight popularity and was elected president easily. Twenty-three years later he is, effectively, dictator for life. Really quite the accomplishment, when you think about it.
Especially considering the fact he and his own deep state buddies most likely blew the buildings up themselves—killing 300 and maiming over 1,000 innocent citizens—in a very successful attempt to parlay this terrible “terrorist attack” and “tragedy” into power for themselves.
For anyone who cares to look, the January 6 “insurrection” is our own apartment bombing. The strategic decisions that led to the results of that day seem designed to ensure a predetermined outcome. State-supported agitators appear to have planned and directed the show as unknowing dupes did exactly as hoped.
Then followed the obviously planned and coordinated messaging about an attempted coup. An insurrection! The Big Lie! This was—and remains—an all-out marketing campaign to ensure only the correct thoughts are advanced. January 6 was a set-up from beginning to end.
Which leads to the ultimate goal: forever power; just like our old pal Vlad.
The slogans are eerily similar: You must be fearful! Democracy itself is at risk unless you give us more power! Permanently transferring power to us is the only way to save you from those stinking Chechen terrorists . . . er, from Trump and his legions of darkness. The only way to save our country—and your lives—is to give us more power. January 6 shows you the levels to which these “terrorists” will sink. We are your only buttress—your only savior—against these forces of darkness.
Putin directed and rode his self-created wave of fear to the position of dictator for life. In this country far too many dupes—some willing, some not—seem to be willing to do the same for the Democratic Party and their true boss, the deep state.
Our freedom is at risk, but never forget from whom.
So yes, let us never forget January 6, and let us work tirelessly so every generation knows it, too.
January 6, by all appearances, was the United States’ version of the Moscow apartment bombings. Let us work hard to ensure it is not successful and is never forgotten.
Article by Clarice Feldman in The American Thinker
The 1/6 Select Committee Witch Hunt
For quite some time,
Congress has ceded its constitutional power to legislate to the
unelected administrative state -- at least when Democrats are both the
congressional majority and hold the White House. Now, having ignored its
true function, it seeks to expand its mandate to judicial powers. The
Select Committee set up by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to investigate the
January 6 riot has obviously determined that its mandate does not
require a legislative purpose: It will act as a judicial branch, albeit
one with no constitutional limits whatsoever.
You won’t see much about this in the corporate media. You have to go to the self-publishing authors like Glenn Greenwald, whose recent substack sets out in shocking detail the overreaching of the January 6 committee.
Citing
two McCarthy-era Supreme Court cases, he argues that the power it is
claiming belongs to the Judiciary branch, not Congress, and that the
committee’s conduct presents a very serious and dangerous civil
liberties violation. I am in total agreement with him.
What Congress is barred from doing, as two McCarthy-eraSupreme Court cases ruled, is exactly what the 1/6 committee is now doing: conducting a separate, parallel criminal investigation in order to uncover political crimes committed
by private citizens. Such powers are dangerous precisely because
Congress’s investigative powers are not subject to the same safeguards
as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. And just as was true of
the 1950s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that prompted
those Supreme Court rulings, the 1/6 committee is not confining its
invasive investigative activities to executive branch officials or even
citizens who engaged in violence or other illegality on January 6, but
instead is investigating anyone and everyone who exercised their
Constitutional rights to express views about and organize protests over
their belief that the 2020 presidential election contained fraud.
Indeed, the committee's initial targets appear to be taken from the list
of those who applied for protest permits in Washington: a perfectly
legal, indeed constitutionally protected, act.
This abuse of power is not merely
abstract. The Congressional 1/6 Committee has been secretly obtaining
private information about American citizens en masse: telephone
records, email logs, internet and browsing history, and banking
transactions. And it has done so without any limitations or safeguards:
no judicial oversight, no need for warrants, no legal limitations of any
kind.
Indeed, the committee has been purposely attempting to
prevent citizens who are the targets of their investigative orders to
have any opportunity to contest the legality of this behavior in court.
How chilling this is! The committee’s targets initially
are those who lawfully applied for and obtained protest permits, and
since then it has been in secret getting “en masse” citizens’ email
logs, internet and browsing histories, and banking transactions by
sending hundreds of subpoenas to telecom companies and demanding -- with
no legal basis -- these records. To preclude court challenge to these
subpoenas they asked these companies not to disclose the existence of
the subpoenas to their customers. Now, they’ve upped the outrage by
subpoenaing bank records of private citizens. Since the banks are
directed not to notify customers of the subpoenas, they are unable to
seek judicial review. This is unlike the FBI’s limits -- that agency
rarely can impose a gag order on a financial institution unless it has
first persuaded a court that such a safeguard is necessary. With such a
safeguard in place, in almost all cases citizens can seek judicial
relief enjoining the seizure of their records. Without it, the committee
is free to snoop into the personal records of anyone it chooses to
under cover of secrecy.
The Right to Financial Privacy Act (RFPA)
prohibits financial institutions from providing to the government
customer’s financial records until
the government authority seeking the records “Certifies in writing to
the financial institution” that the customer has received notice of the
attempt and an opportunity to challenge it in court. Specific
provisions about service of such a subpoena and time to respond are in
the U.S. Code -- and none were followed by the committee.
In
support of his argument, Greenwald tells the sad tale of how Taylor
Budowich, a former Trump spokesman, found his records had been seized
from JP Morgan with the connivance and approval of its attorney, former
Obama Attorney General Loretta (I meet husbands of subjects on the
tarmac) Lynch. The bank did everything to preclude him from seeking a
judicial ruling, including refusing a Christmas Eve extension and a
refusal to even provide him with a copy of the subpoena. After making
sure he couldn’t fight the subpoena in a timely manner and leaving him
only one option -- to file to enjoin the committee from using his
banking records -- the committee and JP Morgan then said the entire
question was “moot” as the documents had already been provided the
committee. Obama-appointed Judge James Boasberg rejected Budowich’s
request for injunctive relief on whether the subpoena was legal. The
matter now goes to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia.
Having clearly and admittedly not followed the law
respecting notice and time to challenge subpoenas, the committee argues
the law simply does not apply to them -- they are above it. Its response
to Budowich was:
“The Act restricts only agencies and departments of the United States, and the Select Committee is neither.”
Further, it argued, “Congressional committees are not
required to identity a specific piece of legislation in advance of
conducting an investigation of the pertinent facts. It is sufficient
that a committee’s investigation concerns a subject on which legislation
‘could be had.’”
If that isn’t scary enough, the committee also
argues that it is exempt from the safeguards of notice and opportunity
to challenge even when “they are clearly engaged in investigating
private citizens for potential crimes.” Think about that. If there is a
majority in Congress and you represent in any way a threat to that
majority, they can grab all your records -- phone, email, internet,
financials, without your knowledge or permitting you an attempt to
challenge those actions. With a back of the hand to constitutional
protections, the committee will act as if it were both law enforcement and judge.
But
it gets even worse than that. The Select Committee claims “absolute
immunity” for members and committees and argues that this immunity
prohibits any litigation for redress “against Congress to which is has
not consented and no such consent has been.”
The Project on Government Oversight raised
alarms about the Select Committee’s subpoena powers. Apart from them,
has the ACLU or any other group which fought against the overreaching
HCUA deigned to challenge the unconstitutional usurpation of our civil
liberties? I’m not hearing any. Will we even hear a congressman or
senator ask the committee if it has no shame in this witch hunt?
On
the other hand, if the predictions of a Democratic party bloodbath in
the midterms come to pass, you can bet even if a Republican majority
Congressional Committee complies with all the relevant laws respecting
subpoenas of citizen records, including notice and opportunity for court
challenge, we will hear their cries of alarm with every issuance of a
congressional subpoena.
The professional political leftists are starting to rebrand themselves as having fallen victim to the “bureaucracy of COVID”, and according to those high-minded people who think very highly of themselves, we are supposed to embrace this new enlightenment from the same people who were demanding our acquiescence to their dictates.
This example of “THE AWAKENING” from an uber-progressive, Ms. Bari Weiss, on a television show, is supposed to be something I am told to appreciate. WATCH:
/div>
I/We are expected to appreciate the same people who demanded our acquiescence to every policy that was created by their ridiculous fear, simply because they now admit ‘oops, my bad‘? Sorry, not happening.
For two years they shoved their intolerant fingers in our faces, destroyed lives and livelihoods, made ridiculous demands in order to sustain their own fear, threatened our children, destroyed the economy, used COVID as an excuse to destroy families and steal an election, attempted to force us to kneel at the altar of their mask wearing and never-ending vaccine crap… and we’re just supposed to what, forgive them?
Fat chance. That sound you heard was millions of us locking the door, turning around to face them, and now the reckoning is about to begin.
America was founded on
freedom—freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of beliefs,
and most importantly, the freedom of self-determination.
Self-determination, in terms of
American independence, meant freedom from control and manipulation by an
elite in England that did not have the best interests of the American
people in mind.
When the internet was first
developed, people believed it would deliver them greater freedom than
ever by providing equal access to information, along with the means to
share information—to communicate. At first, it did. During the 1990s and
early 2000s, regimes that had built their power by controlling access
to information and using propaganda to control and manipulate their
people collapsed one after the other.
Tragically, these tools of freedom
were soon turned inside out by mobile operators and technology companies
eager to profit by monitoring people as they used the internet and
wireless technologies. By 2010, the internet was no longer about
empowering individuals to communicate freely and share information. It
had become all about collecting information on everyone using the internet—what they were looking at, who they were talking to, and what they were saying.
Over the next decade, a collection of
technology companies, mobile operators, and government agencies—a group
we now think of as “Big Tech”—perfected a new business model:
Surveillance Capitalism— providing “free” or cheap services to consumers
in order to collect unlimited data on them, analyze that data, and then
use that data to control and manipulate them in ways that would be
difficult for them to even notice.
At first, this manipulation was
relatively benign—showing a user an advertisement related to a product
he had searched for. Over time, though, with the development of
AI-driven analytics and psychology-based algorithms, Big Tech began
classifying people into groups by their physical characteristics (age,
gender, race, etc.) and
by their beliefs. And based on these classifications, Big Tech began
sharing certain information with some of these people and withholding
that information from others. By manipulating access to information, Big
Tech managed to fragment society and pit those fragments against each
other. Conservatives vs. liberals. Gun-rights advocates vs. gun-control
advocates. Young vs. old. Defund the Police vs. Law and Order. Why
would they do this?
Are you really being manipulated,
used, then monetized by Big Tech? You betcha. You may have joked with
someone that you “probably shouldn’t have said that on the phone,” after
commenting in a particularly spirited way about a politician or an edgy
idea or a deeply held conviction, but it’s no joke. Your calls are
indeed being monitored, like everything else you do with your mobile
phone. And because of this, we have all begun to self-censor.
This self-censorship is one of the
most dangerous aspects of Big Tech’s eavesdropping and tracking. If we
are frightened to say what we think, we will soon stop thinking it. If
we are worried about reaching out too many times to the “wrong people,”
we will eventually stop freely associating with others. If we
automatically second-guess whether to write something in an email or a
text, we will write inoffensive, careful, watered-down words that no
longer convey the depth of our beliefs and passions.
This isn’t some dystopian, outlandish tale. Even the novel 1984 and the movie The Matrix
don’t seem so much like fiction anymore. Life is imitating art in
terrifying ways. Those who don’t feel it, don’t see it, and don’t fear
it are in denial about what’s actually happening.
What I am sharing with you now won’t
sit well with many in the ruling classes. Just like the despots of old,
they want to control and manipulate you into becoming no more than an
unthinking, disempowered, revenue-generating automaton, focused on
shopping for the latest form of material satisfaction, while tearing
each other down based on whatever the elites have determined should be
the latest propaganda—racism, the environment, social justice, etc.
So what to do? Act. I founded Volta
Wireless to bring freedom back to the internet, to empower everyone to
communicate and share information freely without having to worry about
Big Tech tracking their every move. Others, who feel as I do, are
fighting back via their areas of specialty. Because, maybe, if we don’t
allow Big Tech to track us, then they won’t be able to control and
manipulate us. And then maybe we will be able to begin to find some
common ground and start making the world a better place—together.
David Sinclair is a former telecommunications and tech industry executive and is now the Founder and CEO of Volta Wireless.
WASHINGTON, D.C.—In a surprise move, President Biden gave Russia the green light to launch an invasion into Ukraine, with the small caveat that they don't blow up the oil company paying for Hunter's art lessons.
"I looked Vladimir straight in the eye," said President Biden in a haunting whisper. "I told him, I said - 'Vlady boy, I know you're going to invade Ukraine. I know, because every major news network in the world says so. So let's get one thing straight. I'm okay with it. I don't like Ukrainians with all their borscht, it upsets my tummy. But that oil company pays Hunter $50K a month, and do you know how expensive art lessons are these days, Vlad? You lay one finger on Burisma's boardroom, and so help me I will nuke Stalingrad.'"
Ukrainian officials were reportedly caught off guard, and a little perturbed, by President Biden's approval of them being invaded. "I thought we were friends. I gave him all that borscht," said President Zelensky. "What even is a 'minor invasion'? Is this some American term I don't know? I thought I heard him say that before about a woman named Tara Reade. Get me my translator!"
Elsewhere, Chinese officials announced they were happy to hear that President Biden would be in support of their performing a "minor invasion" into Taiwan. Afghanis thanked President Biden for allowing the Taliban to only perform a minor takeover, and January 6th rioters asked to have their breaking into the Capitol re-classified as a "minor incursion".
