Twitter Announces Elon Musk Appointed to Board of Directors

Good news on the rebellion front creates tremors amid the dark overlords of globalism.

After Elon Musk purchased the largest single stake in Twitter, social media CEO Parag Agrawal announces SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk will be appointed to the company’s board of directors.

“I’m excited to share that we’re appointing @elonmusk to our board!” Agrawal tweeted. “Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board.”  Musk is “both a passionate believer and intense critic of the service,” Agrawal added, “which is exactly what we need on Twitter, and in the boardroom, to make us stronger in the long-term.”

“Looking forward to working with Parag & Twitter board to make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months!” Musk tweeted.  The news of Musk’s appointment comes after he took a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter on Monday, making him the company’s biggest shareholder.  Sky News has a good recap of recent events. WATCH: 

Rand Paul discusses the events.

Biden Presidency Mimics ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’

Voters are coming to realize they’ve been had.

by Daniel Oliver for American Greatness

Something’s happening. “The game’s afoot,” as Sherlock Holmes would say. Why are all the lefty media outlets now suddenly covering the Hunter Biden laptop story as if it were just another news item—as if they hadn’t spent 20 months telling us it was “Russian disinformation”? A story they got woke ex-intelligence gurus (with the greatest of ease) to pronounce a Russian plot to get Donald Trump reelected? 

Now it’s ho-hum: cloudy, with patches of rain and gusty winds, followed by sun, and the laptop shows that Hunter Biden is a pervert and a crook, and his father probably is, too; but expect warmer weather tomorrow.

Roger Kimball, writing in American Greatness, suggested the shift in coverage was the opening gambit to purge Biden and Harris, by the Praetorian Guard in the deep state. In contrast, however, I argued that scenario was far-fetched: too complicated and too time-consuming. If it were done, then ’twere well it were done quickly, i.e., it would have to be done before the Republicans likely take back the House of Representatives. Otherwise, they would prevent the Democrats from approving even a left-leaning substitute for president and vice president. 

Readers disagreed, and my email was rife with plots and subplots showing how the Democrats will dispose of Biden and Harris—as so much unrecyclable trash. 

Harris has to go first because if they push Biden under the bus, she becomes president. There are two suggested methods: the buyout and the kick-out. In option one, “they” find a cushy job for her—president of a think tank or some other charity, at $700,000 a year, guaranteed for five years (so long as she behaves?—ha!), and an absurd $1 million book deal. 

Would she take it? She knows—everyone knows—she’s reached the end of her political career. She’s a loser’s loser. To resign would be humiliating, of course—and far worse than Nixon’s resignation: he had his supporters (and still does); he was incredibly intelligent (as anyone who knew him knows), and his “guilt” was only cooked up by a partisan mob, which never forgave him for nailing their darling, Alger Hiss. Harris, de l’autre côté, is widely thought to be too stupid not only to serve as vice president but even to know the meaning of de l’autre côté—or how to look it up. Resigning is better than the alternative.

And that alternative is, “they” release some dirt on Harris (a lateral pass to the New York Times). She’s been in Democratic politics for a long time, and it is fair to take “judicial notice” that there’s probably dirt aplenty just lying around to be used when necessary; in fact, a whole bag full: law school irregularities, grotesque incompetence as a prosecutor, etc. And if there isn’t enough, they’ll simply make it up. Harris is toast—even if it’s whole grain, made from flour grown organically on an nonmechanized sustainable farm, and warmed in a solar-powered toaster.

But what about Old Joe? Again, there are two ways out: the door and the window. Dr. Jill Biden must know he’s . . . gone. (Of course, she might not know: she’s not a medical doctor, remember.) Still, even though she’s woke, she may not be (actually, could not be!) as stupid as her husband. Biden can resign, with dignity—whatever smidgeon of dignity he has left. And perhaps get a deal for light treatment for his crooked son Hunter.

Or “they” can invoke the 25th Amendment and force him out. How humiliating!—but only to someone who can recognize that it’s humiliating.

Some details: When “they” force Harris out, they make a deal with the Democrats in Congress to install a moderate Democrat who might be successful at wooing back some Democratic voters who are scurrying away from the party like cockroaches in the kitchen when the lights go on. He (yes, it will be a man, and a white one, too—they can’t take any chances) will say he has no interest in running for president in 2024. Then he becomes president when Dr. Biden takes her husband on that last Amtrak ride to Wilmington. Then the Democrats pick another conventional low-key man or woman to be vice president. Cue the national anthem (in English).

Perhaps. And a scandal? Huge. 

But the real scandal (whether or not they dump Biden) is how the Democrats and the media got us into this mess. They knew, everyone knew, Biden was incompetent and stupid (this has been well-documented for decades), corrupt, and senile. That’s why they kept him largely out of the public eye during the campaign. They knew! There really is no arguing about what the Democrats who engineered the Biden candidacy knew. 

The Democrats’ perfidy must be trumpeted about: they played with the management of the United States of America as if they were playing Monopoly. That’s bad enough in peacetime. Now we’re in a war, perhaps a nascent World War III. These people have no shame. They care only about their own power. They saw “Weekend at Bernie’s,” and said, “We can do that!” And they did. They make us pine for simple corruption, simple backroom, cigar-smoking corruption: “I’ll pay you a million from my slush fund; you pay my wife a million from yours.” 

Yes, something’s happening. There’s another game afoot. The public seems to be waking up to the Democrats’ perfidy. Voters are coming to realize they’ve been had. The year-long dark night may be ending. Deo volente.

X22, Stew Peters Show, and more-April 5th

 

Busy day. Here's tonight's news:

For the Great Reset to Succeed, the Elite Need World War III

Another catastrophic world war might be just the thing to usher in a one-world socialist utopia.

by Brandon J. Weichert for American Greatness

When Joe Biden ran for president, Americans were promised a return to “normalcy” and a restoration of a much touted technical managerialism to the besieged halls of power. Yet, in the last year the country—indeed, the world—instead has experienced economic decline, societal upheaval, and the most serious risk of great power conflict in generations. 

All of it was avoidable. In fact, before the novel coronavirus was loosed upon the world from Wuhan, China in early 2020 (or possibly earlier), the United States was doing better than it had done since 1969!

In the wake of the #WuFlu lockdowns, a complete and total reversal of fortunes occurred in almost every segment of American society (save for the vaunted democratic globalist elite who purport to rule us). Since those dark times, especially in the wake of Donald Trump’s controversial loss in the 2020 presidential election, the neoliberal elite have stepped forward to offer their “solutions” to our woes. And, in typical elite fashion, their “solutions” are little more than a naked attempt to grab more power for themselves. 

Rahm Emanuel’s oft-repeated maxim to “never let a serious crisis go to waste” perfectly encapsulates what the Left is attempting to do. The pandemic was a once-in-a-lifetime event. The responses to that pandemic, while haphazard, were supposed to be temporary. Sadly, like so many “once-in-a-generation” emergencies celebrated by the Left, what was once a temporary response to an emergency is being fashioned into a “new normal” meant to socially re-engineer our lives along the preferred ideological lines of our ruling class.

Over the last year, we’ve heard calls for the abominable “global minimum tax” meant to stymie the competitive advantages that nations with lower corporate tax rates create for themselves by maintaining those lower tax rates. (Ireland in the 1990s became fabulously wealthy by offering Western firms greater tax incentives than other Western countries.) An even nuttier concept being bandied about is the “climate change lockdown.” Modeled on the wildly “successful” COVID-19 lockdowns, these climate change lockdowns would have the government forcing society into a lockdown at certain times in the year in order to protect the environment from humanity’s harmful emissions. 

Of course, little mention is made of the damage that will be done to middle-class Americans, especially small business owners, who can ill-afford such lockdowns. It’s because the elite don’t care—and will likely benefit from the big business takeover that will undoubtedly follow the collapse of small-and-medium-sized businesses during these proposed “climate lockdowns.”

According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), where much of the Great Reset originates, “There is an urgent need for global stakeholders to cooperate in simultaneously managing the direct consequences of the COVID-19 crisis.” This, in the messianic words of the WEF, will “improve the state of the world.” 

While we can all agree that there are times when we need greater coordination between academia, government, and business leaders, when it becomes essential for foreign governments to work more closely on common problem sets, or for businesses to cooperate rather than compete on specific issues, the notion that the world’s governments would effectively synchronize key aspects of their environmental, economic, and social policies is downright creepy. In the case of business, it’s fair to say the Great Reset essentially encourages collusion, which is rightly illegal in many nations. 

From overbearing “green” policies (goodbye affordable energy and hello expensive, heavily taxpayer-subsidized and intermittent wind and solar power) to “smarter growth” and “fairer growth” (meaning, greater government regulation of the private sector, which will ultimately place a needless drag on an already-flagging economy), our once-free market is being remade into something decisively less free without a single vote by the public. 

As more Americans awaken to the dangerous developments surrounding them, our elites will seek to divide and distract as many people as possible from the truth of the matter. Thus, the Russian-Ukraine War is erupting precisely at a time when the democratic globalist elite require a distraction—and a distraction, such as the war in Ukraine, that complicates normal food production, puts people on a warlike footing where ceding more freedoms to the powers that be seems plausible, and allows elites to impose harsher measures upon our people and economy under the imprimatur of “wartime measures.” This is precisely what the Great Reset’s proponents ordered. Our elite get to shroud these “wartime measures” behind the veil of protecting the “human rights” of besieged Ukrainians (who have been wronged by Russia, no doubt).

Want to wean the world from cheap fossil fuel in favor of more expensive, “cleaner” fuels? Government now has a mandate to do that in order to “save” the Ukrainians from Russian domination and roll back Russian power. Do the elites dream of managing the economy far more than ever before, to effectively pick winners and losers? Don’t worry, they can do that now: to beat the Russians! 

Are you ready for a social credit system? Well, it’s coming under the Great Reset. Oh, and want to get rid of those very pesky “deplorables” who may yet elect another populist who’d once again threaten the elite’s hold on power? Enter the elite’s preferred leader, Joe Biden, who is happily risking a nuclear world war with Russia over Ukraine—which should cull the herd down to a more manageable size. After all, a population so devastated by world war, and gripped by the paralyzing fear that would ensue in the wake of that, will be desperate enough to turn to these Great Reset elites without any further pushback!

World War III just might be what Biden and the other elites need to finally get their one-world socialist utopia. It will be built upon a foundation of lies and blood, but it’s the only way our elites can truly be sure that their great agenda for humanity will be fulfilled—while minimizing the resistance of ordinary people like us. 

Will Democrats Accept the Midterm Results?

Will the Democrats Accept the Midterm Results?

Nancy Pelosi says democracy is in danger if the GOP wins majorities in Congress.

David Catron - The American Spectator 

In just over 7 months, the Democrats will face their constituents in the midterm elections — and the voters are in a surly mood. Most polls suggest this dissatisfaction is about the state of the economy combined with a sense that, under President Biden and the Democrats, the country is careening from crisis to crisis. The latest Quinnipiac survey, for example, shows that only 36 percent of  voters approve of the way Biden has handled the economy, and that inflation is their most urgent concern. According to the latest Morning Consult poll, 70 percent of voters believe the country is on the wrong track.

These numbers portend a major midterm loss for the Democrats when combined with the generic congressional ballot which, according to the RealClearPolitics average, favors the GOP. Historically, this wouldn’t be unusual. The President’s party almost always suffers losses in the first midterm of his tenure. The only exceptions occurred in 1934 and 2002. Consequently, the Democrats shouldn’t be surprised to find themselves on the verge of losing their tiny congressional majorities. Yet House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a disturbing claim during a recent interview with Time magazine’s Molly Ball, who posed the following question:

We’ve got a midterm election this year. Most people are saying it doesn’t look very good for your party. How do you see the midterms going, and what do you see as the potential consequences if Democrats lose Congress?

Pelosi’s answer won’t reassure voters who think she will stop at nothing to stay in power:

I don’t have any intention of the Democrats losing.… It is absolutely essential for our democracy that we win. I fear for our democracy if the Republicans were ever to get the gavel. We can’t let that happen. Democracy is on the ballot in November.

There’s more here than the usual bombast we get from politicians who think their party is about to lose an election. She didn’t say the GOP will enact bad policies if they win. She suggests that democracy itself will die if the Republicans “were ever to get the gavel.” Pelosi no longer thinks of an election between Democrats and Republicans as a competition between two parties with differing views on the best way to govern the country. She has adopted the far left position that elections are properly viewed as Manichean struggles between good and evil. It goes without saying, of course, that the Republicans represent the forces of darkness.

The adoption of this Manichean approach to politics by the Speaker of the House — third in the presidential line of succession — is no laughing matter. It endows Pelosi with a sense of moral superiority that justifies virtually anything it takes to win—including the othering of half the electorate and the criminalization of political opponents. The textbook example of othering voters was, of course, provided by Hillary Clinton’s infamous “deplorables” speech, and it continues apace among Democrats and in the corporate media. Writing in Salon just four months ago, Chauncey DeVega declared, “Hillary was right about the ‘deplorables’.”

Clinton’s description was in fact about much more than the disreputable people who flocked to Trump’s banner. It was also a warning about the regressive politics and antisocial values that Trump’s followers represented (and still do), including cruelty, racism and white supremacy, sexism and misogyny, collective narcissism, anti-intellectualism, an infatuation with violence, proud ignorance and support for fascism and authoritarianism … her diagnosis of Trump and his movement’ was overwhelmingly correct.

As to criminalizing political opponents, the New York Times reports that members of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 “insurrection” are growing increasingly frustrated with what they see as the Justice Department’s dilatory response to their criminal referrals: “The panel is working with a sense of urgency to build its case ahead of this year’s midterm elections.” Attorney General Merrick Garland is facing a lot of pressure from House Democrats and the Biden administration to act. Garland’s reticence, however, may be about his concern that the committee is a partisan cudgel rather than a legitimate investigative body.

Predictably, the inquiry has steadily metastasized into a McCarthyite inquisition based on the proposition that former President Trump and a long list of “far right” figures were involved in a criminal conspiracy to undermine the results of the 2020 election. According to the Times, the suspected conspirators include Republican members of Congress, former White House officials, the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice, conservative media personalities, informal Trump advisors, outside lawyers, and various “extremist” groups. It’s probably fair to say that this  committee is far more sinister than anything that occurred on Jan. 6.

If all of this seems to exude a familiar stench, it isn’t an olfactory hallucination. It’s just more malodorous smog from the distraction factory that produced the Russia collusion hoax. The Democrats are about to lose their congressional majorities, and they are polluting our politics with a good vs. evil narrative in the hope of obscuring their myriad failures from the voters. When Nancy Pelosi says she fears for our democracy if the GOP retakes Congress, what she’s really worried about is losing power. Pelosi will do and say anything to avoid that, even if it means actively undermining the legitimacy of the November midterm elections.

Garland Feels the Heat

If Hunter Biden is in handcuffs before Donald Trump, the attorney general, who will turn 70 later this year, will wish he had opted for retirement.

by Julie Kelly for American Greatness

Attorney General Merrick Garland’s swan song, we can presume, isn’t exactly turning out how he had hoped.

Appointed attorney general in 2021 as some sort of retaliation against Republicans for refusing to seat him on the Supreme Court in 2016, Garland, though largely a figurehead, is getting heat from members of both political parties—including the man who nominated him to serve as the nation’s top lawyer.

According to the New York Times, Joe Biden is displeased that Garland hasn’t yet charged the former president for crimes related to the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021. “[While] the president has never communicated his frustrations directly to Mr. Garland, he has said privately that he wanted Mr. Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6.,” the Times reported over the weekend. 

Although the Times attempted to portray Biden as hands-off when it comes to the business of his Justice Department, that is simply untrue. By repeatedly describing January 6 as an act of terror and comparing the protest, which resulted only in the deaths of Trump supporters, to 9/11 and other atrocities, Biden has signaled how he expects the Justice Department to proceed. His desire to see everyone from Indiana grandmothers to Donald Trump and his family behind bars hasn’t exactly been a secret.

As the chaos was still unfolding on the afternoon of January 6, Biden addressed the nation, blaming Trump for inciting “an insurrection” that “borders on sedition” while promising his administration would restore “the rule of law.”

On his first day in office, Biden ordered an assessment of the threat posed by “domestic violent extremists” allegedly responsible for the four-hour disturbance at the Capitol on January 6; the Justice Department helped author the report, which Garland presented during a June 2021 speech in Washington, D.C. The attorney general boasted at the time that hundreds of Americans had already been arrested for their participation in the “heinous attack” on the Capitol.

Biden never misses an opportunity to condemn, in the most inflammatory and dishonest terms, Trump’s alleged role in January 6. In a diabolical rant on the first anniversary of the Capitol protest, Biden fixated on his predecessor, “Rioters menaced these halls, threatening the life of the Speaker of the House, literally erecting gallows to hang the Vice President of the United States of America,” Biden claimed. “But what did we not see? We didn’t see a former president, who had just rallied the mob to attack—sitting in the private dining room off the Oval Office in the White House, watching it all on television and doing nothing for hours as police were assaulted, lives at risk, and the nation’s capital under siege.”

Message, undoubtedly, received by Merrick Garland.

For the first time in American history, an incumbent president denied executive privilege protections to his predecessor—and Biden did this not once but multiple times, compelling the early production of tens of thousands of presidential records to the January 6 committee, material that is promptly leaked to complicit journalists to carry the “insurrection” narrative.

But with time running out before Republicans likely retake control of Congress, the committee is abandoning previous threats to issue criminal referrals against Trump, fearing backlash for taking such an unprecedented step. Instead, committee members point to the words of a California federal judge who last week suggested Trump broke the law on at least one occasion. In a court order that sounded more like a Jennifer Rubin column, U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter ordered John Eastman, one of Trump’s attorneys, to turn over 101 documents to the select committee. (Among the many doozies in his order, Carter falsely claimed “several law enforcement officers” died on January 6, a lie continually promoted by both Biden and Garland, too.)

“Based on the evidence, the Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021,” Carter wrote in a 44-page ruling on March 28. Further, Carter alleged, “these actions more likely than not constitute attempts to obstruct an official proceeding.”

Carter’s judgment, however, has no legal bearing—he was only determining the validity of Eastman’s executive privilege claims, not handling a criminal case where Trump was on trial and able to defend himself. 

Nonetheless, Carter’s assumptions were spun as if a judge had tried and convicted the former president, serving as the perfect out for the January 6 committee. “[The] Justice Department is aware of the volume of evidence pointing to violations of the law by Trump,” Politico reported on Monday. “That evidence got underscored emphatically last week, when a federal judge ruled the former president ‘more likely than not’ committed felonies to try to overturn the 2020 election.”

On the same day that Carter’s ruling went public, the January 6 committee held a hearing to find Trump advisors Daniel Scavino, Jr. and Peter Navarro in contempt of Congress, sending the referrals to the House for a full vote. Democratic members then applied the full-court press to Garland, whose office is sitting on similar referrals for former chief of staff Mark Meadows and Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official under Trump.

Representative Elaine Luria (D-Va.) implored Garland to “do your job” while others urged the Justice Department to act more swiftly.

Garland himself is running up against the clock; from all appearances, it looks like Hunter Biden is in big legal trouble and could face a grand jury indictment soon. Special Counsel John Durham continues his painstaking work on the Russiagate investigation with more charges possible.

If Hunter Biden is in handcuffs before Donald Trump, Garland, who will turn 70 later this year, will wish he had opted for retirement.

‘Antilynching’ Law Could Let Feds Jail You For Crimes You Never Commit

'Antilynching' Law Could Let Feds Jail You For Crimes You Never Commit

The Emmett Till Antilynching Act may become a key piece in the arsenal for U.S. intelligence agencies’ war on free speech.

Touted as an overdue (if duplicative) law that no one could disagree with, the Emmett Till Antilynching Act signed by President Biden last week includes a subtle provision that could boost the Biden administration’s war on wrongthink.

The bill sailed through the U.S. Senate and the House with ease. The tactful naming made the bill radioactive to oppose, which is why 422 congressmen voted in favor while only three opposed. 

Rep. Thomas Massie, one of the three who voted against the bill, expressed a handful of concerns, including that there are a limited number of constitutionally specified federal crimes, that lynching is already criminalized, and that “Adding enhanced penalties for ‘hate’ [on top of existing criminal punishments] tends to endanger other liberties such as freedom of speech.”

He also highlighted another potential pitfall of the legislation: “The bill creates another federal crime of ‘conspiracy,’ which I’m concerned could be enforced overbroadly on people who are not perpetrators of a crime.” Here’s the section Massie is referring to:

Whoever conspires to commit any offense under paragraph (1), (2), or (3) shall, if death or serious bodily injury (as defined in section 2246 of this title) results from the offense, or if the offense includes kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, be imprisoned for not more than 30 years, fined in accordance with this title, or both.

The bill amends the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, passed in 2009, which defines and criminalizes hate crimes. The minimum qualification is an attempt “to cause bodily injury” due to the victim’s race, sexual orientation, nationality, gender, religion, or disability. 

Bodily injury can be defined as “physical pain” or “any other injury to the body, no matter how temporary.” Sensibly, the 2009 law requires an attempt at violence to be made, which is a crime itself regardless of prejudiced motives. The new “antilynching” law takes this a step further by criminalizing “conspiracy” to commit certain hate crimes.

I’m sure someone will retort: conspiracy to commit a federal crime is already a federal crime. This is not a universally accepted interpretation of conspiracy law, nor does the law’s language or historical precedent justify such a broad interpretation — hence the ostensible necessity for the new antilynching law. Criminalized conspiracies are those plotting “against the United States” – like the Volkswagen executives who attempted to defraud the Environmental Protection Agency by faking emission results and, more recently, the leader of the Oath Keepers who plead guilty to seditious conspiracy for his part in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot. 

So as of last Tuesday, it is illegal to simply “agree” to participate in an act if it falls under the categories highlighted above. One can imagine dark political humor venturing into these categories (a comment such as “I hate so-and-so so much I could kill him,” for example) being interpreted as “conspiring to lynch.” 

The key issue here is that intent should not be the sole subject of a court case. The purpose of courts is for a neutral arbiter to determine whether someone’s rights were violated during an encounter between two parties. Conspiracy, if no action is taken in pursuit of it, involves only one party: the conspirators. Therefore, it alone constitutes no crime as it couldn’t have possibly violated someone else’s rights. 

With this new law, the U.S. government has further expanded into the realm of policing thought crimes. Ominously, this law comes on the heels of the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to broaden the “domestic terrorism” category and expand methods for identifying “threats.” 

For those unaware, killings attributed to domestic extremists in 2020 and 2021 were each far lower than in the previous five years. Overall there were only 29 such killings in 2021. Despite this, we continue to hear fearmongering from those in power.

FBI Director Christopher Wray went before Congress last year to declare“The problem of domestic terrorism has been metastasizing across the country for a number of years.” Attorney General Merrick Garland adopted a similar tone, warning “Domestic violent extremists pose an elevated threat in 2021, and in the FBI’s view, the top domestic violent extremist threat we face comes from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race.”

“Domestic violent extremism poses the most lethal and persistent terrorism-related threat to our country today,” claimed Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas last spring. A White House press release added: “The two most lethal elements of today’s domestic terrorism threat are (1) racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists who advocate for the superiority of the white race and (2) anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists, such as militia violent extremists.”

It’s a mountain-out-of-a-molehill on par with the “Don’t Say Gay” hysteria. But this one may have far greater consequences down the road as texts, emails, social media posts, and everyday speech are monitored and analyzed by various three-letter agencies to establish the intent of our discourse. The Emmett Till Act may become a key piece in the arsenal for U.S. intelligence agencies’ war on free speech.

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Biden’s Big Lie Budget

Biden’s Big Lie Budget

He is actually claiming it ensures our safety and security around the world.

Jed Babbin - The American Spectator

By now we’re used to President Biden’s favorite tactic of The Big Lie. He’s told us that his Afghanistan debacle was a success. He says that inflation is temporary and that it will end soon because the government is spending more trillions of dollars that we can’t afford. In his first State of the Union speech, Biden said he’d secure the southern border.

Biden’s announced FY 2023 budget proposal is founded on some real whoppers.

Announcing his $5.8 trillion budget last Monday, Biden said: “Budgets are statements of values, and the budget I am releasing today sends a clear message that we value fiscal responsibility, safety and security at home and around the world, and the investments needed to continue our equitable growth and build a better America.”

Biden’s budget will also shrink the Army to an end strength of 473,000 personnel, most of whom will not be combat-ready troops.

I will leave it to others to dissect the lies about fiscal responsibility, “equitable growth,” and his never-ending plan to “build a better America.” Let’s concentrate on his claim of ensuring safety and security around the world.

The foreign policy and national security context in which Biden’s budget must be examined is devoid of good news.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is now in its sixth week. Vladimir Putin’s military is trying to crush the people of Ukraine by committing war crimes as a matter of strategy. Putin has, by this invasion, made clear that the peace that has existed in Europe since 1945 is over.

Putin’s Ukraine invasion has revealed NATO’s bankruptcy. Alfons Mais, commander of the German army, said, immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that his army is “bare” and can offer no real options to help defend NATO. As I’ve written previously, most other NATO armies are in the same condition.

Putin has impliedly threatened nuclear war if NATO intervened in Ukraine and is reportedly planning to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus, a nation on Ukraine’s northern border.

China, of course, still is eyeing the conquest of Taiwan. Chinese cyberattacks against the U.S. have reportedly increased 116 percent since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began.

And Biden is still — by alternately appeasing and insulting Putin — trying to get Russia’s help to achieve his obsession with renewing Obama’s 2015 disastrous nuclear weapons deal with Iran.

Another of the threats Biden is ignoring is also ignored by the media. Saudi Arabian leaders reportedly won’t even take Biden’s calls because they are livid about his pursuit of another Iran deal. The Saudis are in negotiations with China to sell it Saudi oil based on the Chinese yuan rather than the dollar. This would reduce confidence in the dollar. Putin is also reportedly demanding that gas sales to Europe be paid for in rubles.

If China and Saudi Arabia define oil purchases in yuan, the dollar will probably shrink in value and some nations may shift to using the yuan as a reserve currency. (A reserve currency is one which nation’s central banks use for international transactions and accumulate against fluctuation in other currencies’ values. The U.S. dollar has, since the 1944 Bretton Woods accord, been most nations’ reserve currencies.) No nation is going to be foolish enough to make the Russian ruble its reserve currency but Putin’s demand, if Germany and others concede to it, will also weaken the dollar.

What Biden’s budget would do to our military in that context is directly contrary to our national security. Biden’s budget claims it increases the Pentagon’s budget to $773 billion, or about two percent. How that money is to be spent proves my point.

The Navy says it needs to have a 500-ship fleet to defeat China’s threat. Under Biden’s budget, it will retire 24 ships and buy only nine new ones. Under that plan, the fleet will shrink to 280 ships by 2027.

Biden’s budget will also shrink the Army to an end strength of 473,000 personnel, most of whom will not be combat-ready troops.

Combat readiness, already a thing of the past, will be further reduced. The Air Force is, according to the Air Force Association, the smallest, oldest (in terms of aircraft age), and least ready to fight as it has been in its 75-year history. The budget cuts planned purchases of the F-35 fighter from 48 to 35 and retires most of the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft without having a replacement for it.

AWACS is essential to battle management and air supremacy, which we have taken for granted for too long. The problem-ridden F-35 is not an air supremacy fighter.

Biden’s budget also reflects cancellation of the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile which, as both Adm. Charles Richard, commander of Strategic Command, and Gen. Tod Wolters told the House Armed Services Committee last week, is essential to deterrence.

According to Rep. Doug Lamborn, the ranking Republican on the HASC, the budget also retires the B83 nuclear gravity bomb that can only be carried on the B-2, without replacing it. That action also reduces our deterrent force.

So much for the too-long-delayed modernization of our nuclear arsenal.

Meanwhile, Putin’s implied threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine has been effective. Not only has it precluded NATO intervention — which shouldn’t occur — but it has also blocked the transfer to Ukraine of the weapons it most needs such as Poland’s (or Romania’s) combat aircraft.

The Republicans want to increase the Pentagon budget by five percent instead of the two percent the Biden budget claims to accomplish. But the answer is not simply to pour money on the Pentagon.

As faithful readers may recall, during the Reagan era we had a process called “Defense Guidance.”

To develop Defense Guidance, the Pentagon and the intelligence community would first define the threat in terms of our adversaries’ capabilities and intents, going into the nitty-gritty details. Then they would compare what our military capabilities were — and must be — to deter or defeat the threats. The result was a “Program Operational Memorandum,” a real budget that should result in meeting the threats for four or five years in the future.

Since the Reagan era, Defense Guidance was replaced with the Quadrennial Defense Review which became highly politicized and thus valueless. The QDR was replaced by the National Defense Strategy in 2018. A classified version of the NDS was given to Congress on March 28.

Biden’s budget will be supported by the forthcoming National Defense Strategy. Though the public hasn’t seen it yet, it certainly will be more politicized than the preceding QDRs. It will ignore the all-too-real threats we face from China, Russia, and Iran.

There is a lot we can and should do to improve our military capabilities including combat readiness and suitability to task. The only certainty is that none of those things will be done while Joe Biden is president.

Revealing Exchange With Jen Psaki Shows How Badly Biden Wants Parental Rights Issue to Go Away

Sister Toldjah reporting for RedState 

It’s been one week since Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education” bill into law, and though it doesn’t take effect until July, we are still getting a steady stream of woke (and incorrect) commentary from The Usual Suspects on how the law will ban teachers from saying “gay” in public school classrooms, despite the fact that nowhere in the bill is the word “gay” even mentioned.

What the law’s critics have consistently avoided commenting on is the actual substance of its most “controversial” aspects, namely the part where it prohibits age-inappropriate instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in grades K-3. Once again, from the text of the law:

“Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

As you might have guessed, the reason the law’s staunchest opponents – including Disney – won’t address those particular points about the law is because they, as DeSantis has pointed out in so many words, are uncomfortable with being put in the position of having to explain why they support instruction on sensitive sexual matters to children who can barely tie their shoelaces and pick out their daily outfits, much less understand anything about sexual orientation and transgenderism.

In the past, when the Biden White House was asked about the bill, their responses were predictable and lame. But when pressed by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy on Monday about what age they think it’s okay for students to be taught about the issues outlined in the law, press secretary Jen Psaki weaved all over the place, first spouting off talking points about how the law was “hateful” and how the White House supported alleged parental concerns about children not being “treated equally.”

She then went off the rails in a complete dodge by pressing Doocy for examples of children being taught about these issues:

These were completely unacceptable answers, but they tell us pretty much everything about how the Biden White House desperately wants the substantive part of this issue to go away.

To Psaki’s question to Doocy, yes there are numerous examples of these situations happening in Florida classrooms and she would know that if she had paid attention to the press conference DeSantis had after the bill signing where parents talked about their experiences with “woke” educators who were undermining their parental rights.

But let’s not kid ourselves here. Even had Doocy supplied her with examples, Psaki would have said she needed “context” before being able to comment, and then when she got it she’d still have come out and spouted the same meaningless points that avoided the actual substance of the law.

Further, the White House tapdancing all around this topic by suggesting they stand shoulder to shoulder with parents who are supposedly worried about their kids receiving unequal treatment is a clear signal they are trying to reframe this whole subject into one where the parental rights of those who have LGBTQ children are the ones whose rights are being violated.

Because Democrats have taken such a beating at the ballot box over the last year or so on the issue of parental say in educational matters, they really want to flip that narrative around prior to the midterms and make themselves out to be the defender of parents instead of it being the other way around.

It won’t work, though, especially when you consider the rash of polling that shows Republicans with an edge on generic Congressional balloting, and which also shows education as a top concern of voters.

When Democrat radicals started trying to force the implementation of CRT in public schools and when they forced mask mandates in schools, they awakened a sleeping giant in parents. And now that they are awake, they’re paying attention to other attempts by these same Democrats to take parents out of the equation when it comes to what children are told about gender ideology and sexual orientation.

That’s not going to fly at all with most people who have young children, even on the Democrat side if one recent poll done by a Democrat pollster is a reliable indicator.

The Biden White House wants the Florida parental rights law issue to go away and the sooner the better because the longer this drags out the more people will be reminded of just how embarrassingly far to the left Democrats have gone on the public education front in recent years. And the more voters are informed of it, the more likely we’ll see similar stories play out in November across the country similar to what we saw in Virginia in November 2021, with control of the House and Senate potentially going back to Republicans.

Final word from my RedState colleague Bonchie:

‘Nuff said.