Too Many Republicans Want Endless War In Ukraine

Trump’s calls for peace are at odds with most of the GOP. 

But a forever war in Ukraine benefits no one.

by Paul Bradford for American Greatness

Former President Donald Trump issued a plea for peace last week. “It doesn’t make sense that Russia and Ukraine aren’t sitting down and working out some kind of an agreement,” Trump said in a statement on the war in Ukraine.

“If they don’t do it soon, there will be nothing left but death, destruction, and carnage,” he added. “This is a war that never should have happened, but it did. The solution can never be as good as it would have been before the shooting started, but there is a solution, and it should be figured out now—not later—when everyone will be DEAD!”

It’s not unusual for prominent American figures to call for peace in an ongoing war. But few politicians dare to do so when it comes to the Ukraine war. Most politicians want the war to continue, even expand. Many demand a no-fly zone that could provoke World War III. Others want to send as much hardware as possible to Ukraine. And the consensus among the political elite is that the Ukrainian government should make no deal with the Russians. They need to fight until “victory” is achieved.

Trump’s comments are out of sync with what most Republicans say about the conflict. They are especially out of sync with what the mainstream media says about the conflict. New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait mocked Trump’s plea for peace as seeing “very fine people on both sides of the Ukraine War.” 

“The banal truth remains that Trump has a persistent sympathy for Putin and Russia that places him well outside the mainstream of either party,” Chait concludes. The liberal journalist also nitpicked the language of more hawkish Republicans for not being anti-Russian enough. The only acceptable response to the war is hysteric warmongering and deranged Russophobia.

But that’s what most Republicans have embraced. With the exception of Trump, Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), and a few others, the GOP is in war hawk mode. Several Republicans demand the United States impose a no-fly zone in Ukraine. “President Biden needs to make a decision TODAY: either give Ukraine access to the planes and anti-aircraft defense systems it needs to defend itself, or enforce a no-fly zone to close Ukrainian skies to Russian attacks,” Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said in a March statement. “If President Biden does not do this NOW, President Biden will show himself to be absolutely heartless and ignorant of the deaths of innocent Ukrainian children and families.

“Clearly, in the absence of a U.N. resolution, which Russia would veto, a strong coalition of like-minded nations should step in and seriously consider [a no-fly zone],” declared Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) last month. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and other powerful GOP lawmakers have also sympathized with the idea. Two competitive Senate candidates in Ohio—Mike Gibbons and Josh Mandel—fully endorsed a no-fly zone on the campaign trail.

A no-fly zone would require America and its allies to shoot Russian planes out of the sky. That could lead to World War III. Most humans would agree that this would be a terrible thing. But many Republicans prefer to ignore the consequences and push ahead, endorsing this reckless venture.

Not every Republican wants a no-fly zone, of course. But the majority want the conflict to carry on for as long as possible. They want to deliver an unending supply of weapons and supplies to Ukraine, and they refuse to consider the idea that maybe it would be best if Ukraine tried to make a peace deal. It’s unlikely the Eastern European state will completely push out the invader or regain all of its lost territories. 

The GOP consensus on Ukraine comes from Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.): “Vladimir Putin must pay for this unprovoked, naked war of aggression. Joe Biden won’t make him pay, the Republican Party must.” Translation: “Republicans must push for war just to stick it to Biden in the upcoming midterms.” The hawkery is all done for crass political gain.

If ever cooler heads needed to prevail, it’s right now. A forever war in Ukraine benefits no one. Tens of thousands will die, and Ukraine will be a ruined husk of a nation. Not every war ends with the “bad guy” agreeing to an unconditional surrender. But to many politicians, that’s the only acceptable end to every war. That’s not going to happen. We should push for Ukraine to make a deal that will lead to lasting peace and avert the chance of World War III. 

Trump gets this. When will the rest of the GOP follow?

X22, And we Know, and more-April 28

 

Yo. Here's tonight's news:

Tearing Down the Silicon Valley Wall ~ VDH

The country is ready for a revolution. And Musk believes he can lead it with his Silicon-Valley sledgehammer.

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

Elon Musk has finally managed to buy Twitter. And the moment he did, the enraged Left flipped out. 

Abruptly leftists began trashing their favorite electronic communications platform as the domain of the nation’s elite, professional classes. Had they just discovered that they had been racists and privileged users all this time? 

And what happened to the Left’s former worship of Musk as the man who revolutionized the clean, green automobile industry with his Tesla electric car company?

Or Musk the space revolutionary and hip star trekker, who with his own money helped ensure the United States remains preeminent in space exploration?

Or Musk, the patriot who is providing free next-generation internet service to the underdog Ukrainians fighting Russians for their lives? 

No matter. The Left reviles Musk because he has announced that Twitter will be the one social-media platform whose business is not to censor or massage free speech in an otherwise monopolist, intolerant, and hard-Left Silicon Valley. 

Who knows, Musk might even allow former president Donald Trump to communicate on Twitter—in the fashion that the terrorist Taliban, Iranian theocrats, and violent Antifa protesters all take for granted in their daily access to Twitter. 

But how did the once free-speech, anti-trust, let-it-all-hang out Left become a Victorian busybody, a censorious Soviet, and an old-fashioned robber-baron monopoly? 

When it discovered that few Americans wanted left-wing, socialist politics it turned elsewhere. It found power instead through control of American institutions, from academia and Wall Street to traditional and social media. 

When Musk merely talked about buying Twitter, the Left shrieked that an outlier multibillionaire owning a media—and especially a social media—venue was unfair. The buyout was supposedly “dangerous” and “a threat to democracy.” 

But the more the Left screamed, the less people listened. 

After all, left-wing Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook has roughly 15 times more market capitalization than Twitter. It has an audience of 2 billion users—over seven times larger than Twitter’s 271 million. 

Zuckerberg’s monopoly on global social media and his enormous wealth were stealthily put in service to the Democratic Party in the 2020 election. He reportedly infused nearly $420 million of his media money into warping the vote in key precincts, by augmenting and absorbing the work of state registrars to empower likely left-wing voters. 

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the second wealthiest man in the world, owns the influential Washington Post. It has moved markedly to the activist Left under his patronage. 

Multibillionaire Lisa Jobs, widow of the late Apple founder Steve Jobs, owns TheAtlantic. It has become an increasingly hard-Left political magazine. 

So in Orwellian fashion, apparently most media-owning, left-wing billionaires are good? But one social media-owning, non-left-wing billionaire is bad? 

How exactly might a Musk-owned Twitter alter an election? 

By emulating the former directors of Twitter and the rest of Silicon Valley social media who canceled not just conservatives, but any new communication they felt harmful to the 2020 Biden campaign? 

From the outset, it was clear that Hunter Biden’s lost laptop incriminated his dad, Democratic nominee Joe Biden. 

Joe Biden was referenced by his own quid pro quo, grifting son variously as “the Big Guy” and “Mr. Ten Percent”—a full partner in peddling Beltway influence to rich foreign actors. 

Yet in lockstep, social media banned most coverage of the pre-election laptop story. 

It instead spread its standby false narrative of “Russian disinformation.” We now know the laptop was always authentic. The crude efforts to suppress mention of it were classic politicized news suppression. 

Still, the Left may well have some reason to be terrified of Elon Musk. Should he liberate Twitter from left-wing scolds and groupthinkers, would other renegade new companies and old standbys follow his lead? 

Is Musk’s $46-billion acquisition the internet equivalent of Germans in November 1989 with sledgehammers smashing down the Berlin Wall? 

Does Musk sense that the looming November midterm elections may result in one of the rare landslide verdicts in American history? 

Does he assume the public prefers a muckraker who demands free speech rather than corporate insider cronies censoring expression they don’t find useful? 

Polls show that the American people have had their fill of 14 months of self-inflicted, ideology-driven disasters. And why not, given the nonexistent border, spiking crime, inflation, unaffordable gasoline, and neo-Confederate racial fixations? 

Are the recent Netflix implosion, the CNN+ disaster, the Disney debacle, the Virginia statewide and San Francisco school board elections, the polls showing massive defections of Latinos from the Left, and the grass-roots pushback against government-imposed mask wearing, and explicit transgender education in the k-3 grades—also symptoms of a reckoning on the horizon? 

The country is ready for a revolution. And Musk believes he can lead it with his Silicon-Valley sledgehammer. 

So, as the Left says, “Bring it on.”

Thé Inflation Draining Your Wallet Is A Whole Lot Steeper Than 8 Percent

The Inflation Draining Your Wallet Is A Whole Lot Steeper Than 8 Percent

Elle Reynolds - The Federalist 

The Labor Department’s March inflation numbers released this month skyrocketed past February’s, hitting a 12-month increase of 8.5 percentand the steepest annual increase since 1981. That’s no small figure, but most Americans know the inflation they encounter at the grocery store checkout, the gas pump, the car lot, and the leasing office is far higher than that.

Just look at basic items like groceries and gas, and you’ll see how much higher those necessities are climbing than the generic inflation figures slapped across headlines. 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in the average U.S. city, ground beef is up 14.9 percent since last March, boneless stew beef is up 24.3 percent, bacon is up 23.1 percent, boneless chicken breasts are up 17.6 percent, eggs are up 25.9 percent, milk is up 17 percent, frozen orange juice concentrate is up 18 percent, and ground coffee is up 15.8 percent. Meanwhile, fuel oil has jumped a whopping 71.5 percent, and utility gas is up 23.3 percent.

Many of these urban numbers don’t even capture how steeply prices have risen for middle America, however. In the Midwest, ground beef has risen 24.5 percent, almost 10 percentage points more than the urban average. 

While BLS breaks down beef products into ground beef, steaks, stew beef, etc., its “all other uncooked beef” category shows a drastic 38.2 percent jump in the Midwest, compared to a still-high rise of 25.4 percent in cities. The inflation of the price of bacon in the Midwest is 3 percentage points higher than in cities, while for boneless ham it’s more than 15 percentage points higher. The price of boneless chicken breasts in the Midwest jumped by 31.2 percent, compared to 17.6 in U.S. cities.

In all likelihood, these prices aren’t done climbing. Investment firm Evercore ISI projected the price of chicken breasts to jump at a year-over-year rate of up to 70 percent in the first half of 2022, with beef and pork prices rising 20 percent.

So when you hear “8 percent inflation” bandied about but feel certain your costs are rising at a far higher rate, you’re not crazy — you’re just feeling the very real consequences of inflationary policies that Washington types are happy to brush off.

Don’t listen to CNN journo-splaining to you “Why inflation can actually be good for everyday Americans and bad for rich people.” As Axios reported from Labor Department statistics, “Shoppers with incomes of less than $40,000 aren’t buying as much fresh meat and seafood. … They’re turning to frozen meat or canned stuff instead — and buying more store brands. It’s these lower-income shoppers who are most at-risk as food prices rise.”

It’s also not just gas and groceries that are rising higher and faster than the nationally reported inflation numbers. According to a Redfin analysis, February saw a 15 percent year-over-year increase in asking rent, and a 31 percent jump in the national homebuyers’ median monthly mortgage rate. Americans in the market to buy used vehicles have also seen a far higher price spike than the overall inflation rate in the past year, at a whopping 41.2 percent as reported in March.

At the same time, wages can’t keep pace with rising expenses, meaning “Bidenflation” is skimming off the top of Americans’ paychecks — to the tune of around $4,200 in annual depreciation of the average salary’s worth.

These are unsustainable numbers for most Americans, especially those who aren’t making as much as the politicians pushing bloated, multi-trillion-dollar spending plans to flood the economy with cash that’s bleeding value. Legacy media outlets might try to downplay rising inflation as something that could be solved by eating lentils and letting the family pet die, but Americans know every time they buy groceries, fill the gas tank, or pay the utility bill how hard high-spending inflationary policies are making their lives.

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In Another Orwellian Move, Biden DHS to Create a ‘Disinformation Governance Board’

Bob Hoge reporting for RedState 

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testified Wednesday before a House committee that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is creating a “Disinformation Governance Board” to combat disinformation and ‘misinformation’ ahead of the 2022 midterms. “Disinformation Governance Board” sounds like a division of the Ministry of Magic of “Harry Potter” series fame. A possible scary saying from the future: “Just wait ’til the DGB comes after you!”

‘Misinformation’ over the last few years has seemingly been any opinion or fact that is in conflict with the CDC or the Biden Administration.

The announcement comes after days of liberal meltdown over Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter.  Leftists are terrified that the social media platform will now host other viewpoints, and that can’t be tolerated. Perhaps this new board is Biden’s counterpunch?

The new board will be headed by Nina Jankowicz, an author, journalist and “disinformation expert“ who previously served as a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center.

She “let the cat out of the bag” to Twitter followers:

She writes:

Now that I’ve got it: a HUGE focus of our work, and indeed, one of the key reasons the Board was established, is to maintain the Dept’s commitment to protecting free speech, privacy, civil rights, & civil liberties.

That sounds like exactly the opposite of what a board like this is designed for. The purpose of the board will be to stamp out information that the administration doesn’t like, censor any thoughts that run counter to the mainstream media narrative, and “fact-check” points of view deemed “inappropriate.”

Podcaster Jack Probosiec points out that Jankowicz was in a band called, appropriately enough, the Moaning Myrtles (referencing a character in “Harry Potter”), and has peddled her own “disinformation”—read lies—in the past.

Virtually every outlet now admits that the Biden laptop story was not Russian disinformation, but there she was, back in 2020, peddling the notion.

Details of how this new board will operate are not clear as of yet, but we can get an idea of their thought-process by taking a look at a DHS report issued in March titled, ‘Internal Review of Domestic Violent Extremism.’  The report states:

A March 2021 unclassified threat assessment prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Department of Justice, and DHS, noted that domestic violent extremists “who are motivated by a range of ideologies and galvanized by recent political and societal events in the United States pose an elevated threat to the Homeland in 2021.”

The assessment pointed to newer “sociopolitical developments such as narratives of fraud in the recent general election, the emboldening impact of the violent breach of the U.S. Capitol, conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and conspiracy theories promoting violence” that “will almost certainly spur some [domestic violent extremists] [sic] to try to engage in violence this year.”

Aha. There it is, what this is all about. If you question an election outcome, which is the right of every American, or are displeased with COVID policies, you might be a “violent extremist,” and this board is certainly going to come after you. This is a scary development for those who believe in free speech, and another ominous overreach of government.

Fox News Exposes Soros-Funded Shadow Org Working Behind Biden Administration

Fox News Exposes Soros-Funded Shadow Org Working Behind Biden Administration

Jeffrey Clark - NewsBusters

Fox News peeled back the curtain of President Joe Biden's administration and revealed how a shadowy organization heavily funded by liberal billionaire George Soros is working behind the scenes to advance a progressive agenda.

Fox News Digital reporter (and former MRCTV writer) Joe Schoffstallexposed the secretive group Governing for Impact (GFI) embedded deep in Biden’s White House. The April 26 bombshell story found “internal memos” detailing “more than 20 of its regulatory agenda items as it works to reverse Trump-era deregulations by zeroing in on education, environmental, health care, housing and labor issues.” 

An MRC Free Speech search through Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF) grant database dredged up more dirt on GFI. Soros sent at least $12,980,000 to GFI and its affiliated action fund — Governing for Impact Action Fund — between 2019 and 2020. GFI’s website was difficult to find on the internet.

A Google search did not reveal the site, but Schoffstall found the web address for GFI: “governingforimpact.org.” 

“Governing for Impact is the archetype of a ‘dark money’ political operation: discrete, tight-knit, and well-funded,” Capital Research Center investigative researcher Parker Thayer told MRC Business. GFI’s websitedescribed the group’s mission as “build progressive power at the state and federal level.” 

The group also explained that “Many of the proposals on this site focus on how the new administration could unwind the previous administration’s harmful regulatory legacy.” One proposal was headlined “Repealing the Anti-Trans Single-Sex Shelter Rule” and criticized former President Donald Trump for a proposed rule to honor “‘biological sex’ rather than gender identity.” GFI claimed that Trump’s rule “exposes [transgender individuals] to abuse and potential violence, and requires many to closet or misgender themselves.”  

GFI Executive Director Rachael Klarman defended her Soros-funded dark money operation, reportedly telling Fox News: "’Governing for Impact conducts and shares research designed to help ensure that the federal government works more effectively for everyday working Americans, not just for members of industry groups that have long devoted vast resources to pursuing their own policy agendas.’"

Thayer called out the left’s blatant hypocrisy. “‘The Left and the mainstream media love to complain when conservatives use ‘dark money’ but remain silent about the much larger dark money habit that their own side has developed over the years,” he told MRC Business.”

Even The New York Times has recently acknowledged that the Left uses far more ‘dark money’ than Conservatives, but activists, journalists, and politicians on the Left continue to cast stones from the balcony of a glass mansion.”

GFI’s website prominently displayed over 30 legal strategy memos aimed at advancing a variety of leftist causes, including education, environment, health care, housing, and labor. Some memos listed partnerships with separate organizations such as the Economic Policy Institute, another Soros-funded group.

Adam Schiff Gets His Clock Cleaned After Expressing ‘Concerns’ to Elon Musk About ‘Disinformation'

Sister Toldjah reporting for RedState 

Not surprisingly, a whole lot of people have had a heckuva lot to say about Twitter announcing in a press release Monday that “it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by an entity wholly owned by Elon Musk, for $54.20 per share in cash in a transaction valued at approximately $44 billion.”

In general, conservatives by far have been the most excited and receptive to the news, while the meltdowns from Twitter woketivists, mainstream media “journalists,” and Twitter employees alike have been pretty predictable and, quite frankly, hilarious, especially when you consider their previous advice to conservatives about how they should just “start their own platform” if they didn’t like the way Twitter treated them.

Also weighing in on the Musk/Twitter news have been Republican and Democrat politicians alike. I must say that the “concerns” expressed by Congressional Democrats about the deal are pretty telling, especially considering how Twitter unabashedly carried Joe Biden’s water in 2020 to the point they even censored stories critical of him, like the one from the New York Post on the Hunter Biden laptop emails that broke just a few weeks before Election Day. Some post-election reports indicated that their suppression of the story helped Biden.

But in perhaps the least self-aware tweet of all time – and if not, certainly a top-five contender, House Intel Committee Chair Adam Schiff expressed his worry to Elon Musk that Musk’s “personal views will stop the fight against disinformation on social media”:

That the undisputed king of disinformation and the suppression of facts that are inconvenient to Democrat narratives expressed such a “concern” was not lost on Twitter users, including The Federalist’s Sean Davis, who cleaned Schiff’s clock in response:

As of this writing, there are over 1,500 quote RTs, and just about every one I read included responses that made similar points.

Every time Schiff opens his mouth, I think back to this devasting clip of Devin Nunes torpedoing him while sitting next to him during the televised November 2019 impeachment inquiry hearings, detailing all the different ways SchiffCo. lied to the American people – and fabricated “evidence” – about Trump/Russia collusion. For those who missed it or who enjoy watching it as much as I do, click below:

Schiff doesn’t give a damn about disinformation. What he’s really “concerned” about here, of course, is that the muzzle on conservatives and conservative-leaning news outlets will be lifted courtesy of Musk, allowing for sunlight, balance, and truth to come out. In fact, that already appears to be happening. That this terrifies Democrats and “reporters” more than anything else tells us everything we need to know about them, with none of it being good.

Democrats Attacking Twitter Don’t Want ‘Transparency’, They Want Power

Democrats Attacking Twitter Don't Want 'Transparency,' They Want Power

Kylee Zempel for The Federalist 

Immediately following Elon Musk’s official buyout of Twitter, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was back at her podium not only casually mentioning that the Biden administration still works with Big Tech to censor information they don’t like, but also stressing their commitment to “reforming” Section 230 and pushing new antitrust laws.

Democrats’ calls for Section 230 reform are nothing new. President Joe Biden has gone on record saying it should be eliminated, and past reforms have passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support. The partisanship arises in the very different reasons Republicans and Democrats have for wanting 230 fixed.

The left doesn’t think Silicon Valley oligarchs do enough to censor speech that Democrats claim to be misinformation. In their view, Section 230 gives Facebook and Twitter too much protection when those companies don’t immediately strip content questioning the efficacy of Covid vaccines, for instance.

It’s for the exact opposite reason that conservatives have long lobbied for reforms to Section 230, which has been weaponized against the right by malign Big Tech websites. Those giants have hidden behind 230’s immunity with the defense that they’re neutral platforms. But then they’ve turned around and proved themselves to be just the opposite: Twitter, Facebook, and the rest are partisan publishers that decide who can speak and what gets published, the same way newspaper editorial boards do.

For example, you’ll remember the Hunter Biden laptop story that came out just 20 days before the 2020 presidential election and contained information damning to then-candidate Joe Biden, specifically that he lied about lacking knowledge of his son’s Ukrainian business dealings. 

Neutral platforms, the kind of public forums and common carriers protected by 230, would have let the story remain on their websites and borne no responsibility for it. Facebook and Twitter, however, couldn’t let a piece of hard-hitting journalism unfavorable to their candidate get amplified unhindered, and opted for editorializing. They suppressed and nuked the story, which corporate media have since admitted was legitimate, in true left-wing publisher fashion.

Republican outcry was obviously warranted. Section 230 was never supposed to empower partisan oligarchs to violate the principles of the First Amendment with censorship of their opponents, which Democrat-style reforms would empower them to do with greater ease. GOP lawmakers such as Sen. Josh Hawley got to work on fixing loopholes like the “Good Samaritan” clause, which has empowered Big Tech to censor speech they deem “harassing,” “violent,” or “otherwise objectionable” if they do so in “good faith.”

But when that censorship favors the left, as it did when the Hunter Biden story got suppressed, many of them plus a number of short-sighted libertarians fired back with the predictable “private companies!” retort. Twitter and Facebook are private companies and can thus do whatever they want without violating the First Amendment, they said. “Build your own,” they added. Section 230 is fine, they argued.

That’s why it’s just remarkable how these folks have changed their tune. Yesterday, Section 230 was fine and private companies could do whatever they wanted. But today, democracy hangs in the balance and we need to update Section 230 and our antitrust laws? What changed?

We all know what’s changed. It’s not just that Musk has taken over Twitter — that much is clear — but it’s what the Musk buyout represents: a threat to Democrats’ power. And all their whimpering about it has exposed glaring hypocrisy. Here they are, hoping regulators nuke Musk-owned Twitter, immediately after all their uproar at Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis for “bullying” a private company when he sought to remove special privileges for woke, anti-parent Disney.

The hypocrisy is evident in the White House’s “antitrust” absurdity too. Right after Twitter accepted the buyout offer from Musk, who also controls SpaceX and Tesla, Psaki said the administration would “support … enacting antitrust reforms.”

Tesla and SpaceX have nothing to do with Twitter and aren’t monopolies, however, and thus antitrust reforms don’t apply. Meanwhile, the left has no problem with the Amazon mega-billionaire Jeff Bezos — whose company dominates online commerce and also controls major sectors of brick-and-mortar stores, delivery transit, entertainment, production of goods, and artificial intelligence — also buying and controlling legacy media through The Washington Post. 

And what about the market domination of YouTube and its owner Google, which have worked together to silence conservative voices and suppress so-called misinformation that later turned out to be true, such as election claims and Covid treatment information? It exposes Democrats’ “antitrust” concerns as pure hogwash.

The whole Musk-Twitter ordeal has reinforced the conservative arguments for fixing Section 230. Namely, Twitter and other tech giants should be treated under the law as common carriers or utilities, just like Verizon or Comcast. As common carriers, they would have no ability to censor Americans based on their political or religious beliefs but they would also share no responsibility for the things those people say. They would serve everyone equally. In that world, it wouldn’t matter one iota who owned them.

The left, however, will never allow this. They must control everything, and they must have the ability to change how they control it and what they do with that control on a whim. 

How else would they spread their misinformation about global viruses and their miserable responses to them? How else would they win elections or groom children into a perverted sexual worldview? How else would they favor their own voices on issues like abortion, inflation, health care, voting, vaccines, sex, the border, the military, churches, riots, presidents, or foreign policy without algorithmic manipulation?

Democrats such as the Biden administration don’t really care that much about Section 230 or antitrust, and they certainly don’t care about free speech. They care about power, and they’re afraid Elon Musk isn’t going to let them keep all of it.

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Heartbreak on Capitol Hill as Democrats Come to a Realization About Jan. 6 Committee

Sister Toldjah reporting for RedState 

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen various claims made by the rabidly partisan Jan. 6th Committee being carefully leaked to the press and book writers/reporters from the New York Times, who in turn are going into overdrive in giving the stories their best spins in hopes of distracting people from the self-destruction currently taking place within the Democratic party.

We saw it in early April with the “Trump phone call gap that wasn’t,” and just last week with yet another infamous “bombshell” report, this time in their insinuations about how House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was allegedly so ashamed of what happened on January 6th, 2021 that he told Rep. Liz Cheney on a House Republican leadership call four days later that then-President Donald Trump should resign in disgrace.

Both McCarthy and Trump responded accordingly by strongly pushing back and refuting the more supposedly explosive claims and in the process nuked the “rift” narrative the media was trying to spin.

But as we draw closer to the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats are coming to some sobering (for them) conclusions about the January 6th Committee and, fittingly enough, on how the leaks that are coming out of it are impacting voter perceptions, especially at a time when voters are “distracted by inflation, Ukraine and the lingering coronavirus pandemic”:

Here’s more from the Axios report:

-They undercut what Axios has learned was a committee goal: building drama, mystery — and widespread public interest — ahead of hearings slated for June and the release of its report later this summer.

[…]

-A related concern: regaining public interest now that former President Trump and his red-hot rhetoric are no longer daily fixtures in their lives.

Democrats on the Hill are getting flashbacks to the Mueller investigation, they say.

-People anticipated a political bombshell but ended up with what was deemed, “The Blockbuster That Wasn’t.”

-Enough was leaked and released piecemeal over the two-year investigation the public had already processed most of its significant findings during dozens of separate news cycles.

I mean it’s a total shocker that Democrats have been trying to slow-roll the “investigation” in order to drag it out over a period of several months in a crucial election year, right? Even more shockingly, who knew that kitchen table issues that impact a person’s ability to make a living and provide for themselves and their families were more important to the average American than an alleged “phone call gap” from the former President that in reality did not exist?

The answer is that everyone but Democrats knew, and now – with just a few months to go between now and Election Day, that they’re having to try to recalibrate their strategy of “building drama, mystery” surrounding the Capitol riot after coming to the realization that it’s just not an important issue to the majority of folks in this country is just 50 shades of delicious.

For conservatives, this is a “been there, got the t-shirt” moment after four years of constant “investigations” into Trump, which were designed to undermine his presidency and impact his ability to get re-elected. But judging by all available polling on the mood of the American electorate, this time around Democrat efforts at distracting people with trumped-up “investigations” and dramatic “hearings” have a strong chance of backfiring big time.

Foreshadowing Bureau Injustice

Foreshadowing Bureau Injustice

The FBI’s past political subterfuge previews what lies ahead of midterms and 2024.

Lloyd Billingsly - Front Page Magazine Wed Apr 27, 2022

In her investigative reports on “the FBI-concocted Whitmer operation,” January 6, and the fake plot against Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, the intrepid Julie Kelly has been exposing FBI stagecraft, entrapment and outright election interference. These operations flow from the FBI’s long experience as a political strike force. Consider, for example, their “Shrimpscam” operation in California back in 1988.

“California Capitol shaken by FBI sting,” headlined a September 4, 1988 UPI report. “More than 30 federal agents carrying search warrants conducted an unprecedented raid on the Capitol offices of four leading lawmakers, seeking evidence of wrongdoing until the wee hours of the morning.” As it emerged in the report, the FBI had manufactured the evidence.

Gulf Shrimp Fisheries, which sought to build a food processing plant in West Sacramento to supply California restaurants, was actually a “dummy company set up by the FBI.” The FBI also established Peachstate Capital West Ltd., with an office one block from the California Capitol.

The FBI companies paid nearly $60,000 in campaign contributions, including $11,500 to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, $10,000 to Assembly Republican leader Pat Nolan, and $10,500 to assemblywoman Gwen Moore, a Los Angeles Democrat.

As the UPI report noted, Moore was the author of “two FBI-spawned bills” designed to benefit the FBI’s dummy companies. The bills “sailed smoothly through both houses with few dissenting votes,” but Republican Gov. George Deukmejian vetoed the fake measures. 

On the night of the raid, the FBI searched the offices of Moore, Sen. Joseph Montoya,  Republican Assemblyman Frank Hill, and Pat Nolan, a rising Republican star and likely the primary target. According to Capitol Weekly, the outcry from Jackie Speier staffer Richard Steffen was, “The FBI’s here. They’re raiding Pat Nolan’s office.”

Nolan had been critical of Brown, whose  office, as UPI clarified, was “not among those searched by the FBI.” The bureau did have one of its undercover agents shove $1,000 in cash under Brown’s office door, about as subtle as Max Bialystock’s (Zero Mostel) bribe of the theatre critic in The Producers.

To the surprise of no one, a Brown aide returned the money. Brown emerged unscathed and Nolan pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge and spent 29 months in federal custody. Here the FBI was deploying a tactic outlined by comic Yakov Smirnoff.

In the 1981 film Fort Apache, the Bronx, police throw a criminal off a roof. In Russia, Smirnoff countered, the KGB throws a guy off roof “to hit the guy they really want.” Nolan was the guy the FBI wanted to hit, while leaving Willie Brown safe to carry on.

As UPI recalled, one month before the August 1988 raid, Willie Brown spurred the Democrats to choose Michael Dukakis by acclamation. He lost to George H.W. Bush, but unlike Dukakis, Willie Brown wasn’t done.

Willie had his eye on UC law grad Kamala Harris, thirty years his junior, and in a daring act of poontrage, Brown set up Harris in lucrative sinecures. Brown also backed Harris for district attorney of San Francisco and state attorney general.

Had the FBI’s 1988 “Shrimpscam” taken down Willie Brown, it’s highly unlikely that Kamala Harris would now be vice president. Beyond informers, fake legislation and such, the FBI was becoming more like the KGB in other ways.

In 1992, the FBI ran an entrapment scheme on rural Idaho resident Randy Weaver, branded a “white separatist.” A gunfight claimed the life of a U.S. marshal and Weaver’s son Sammy, only 14 years old. The FBI then deployed massive military force, helicopters, armored vehicles and such, against a single family.

Army-trained FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi shot Randy’s wife Vicki through the head as she held her infant child. The FBI claims “Weaver’s wife was accidentally shot and killed by an FBI sniper,” but a Fox News documentary dug up another side to the story.

The FBI thought Vicki Weaver was the family leader. Snipers are carefully trained to “acquire” their targets. The chances that the killing of Vicki Weaver was an accident range between slim and none.

Attorney General William Barr rallied former AGs to the defense of Horiuchi. FBI boss Louis Freeh recommended Larry Potts, the agent in charge of the Ruby Ridge operation, for deputy director of the FBI, describing Potts as “the very best the FBI has.”

In 2016, the upper reaches of the FBI deployed the Midyear Exam and Crossfire Hurricane operations against candidate and President Donald Trump. James Comey, Peter Strzok et al suffered no criminal prosecution. While the FBI operates as a political strike force, it fails at its job of protecting America.

“Prevention of terrorist attacks is the FBI’s number-one priority,” proclaimed FBI director Robert Mueller in 2003. Yet the FBI failed to stop Nidal Hasan’s Fort Hood massacre in 2009 (14 dead) and the Tsarnaevs’ terrorist attack on Boston Marathon in 2013 (three dead, more than 250 injured).

In 2015, the FBI failed to prevent terrorists Syeed Farook and Tashfeen Malik from murdering 14 innocents in San Bernardino. The FBI played no role in the takedown of the terrorists, and no bystanders were shot by “accident.”

In 2016, the FBI failed to prevent Omar Mateen from murdering 49 and wounding many others in Orlando, Florida. Before that, the FBI failed to stop al Qaeda terrorists from hijacking airliners and claiming some 3,000 lives in attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

It’s not clear which FBI bosses were demoted or lost their jobs over these deadly failures. A ballpark figure is probably zero. Under Christopher Wray, who denied that the FBI spied on Trump,  the FBI regards anyone less than worshipful of the Biden Junta as a domestic terrorist. As it turns, the FBI and DOJ were in the tank for Biden in 2020.

“The FBI and Department of Justice,” Rep. Darrell Issa reveals, “were actually feeding Twitter false information saying there was going to be misinformation about Hunter Biden and a laptop coming out, when in fact, switching gears, for two years they had had the real McCoy and knew they had it.”

With no apology to Robert Mueller, the FBI’s number-one priority is partisan subterfuge.

Look for more of the same as crucial midterms approach.

Millions of Americans will be exercising their rights of free speech, protest, and assembly. Biden’s white coat supremacist Anthony Fauci will attempt to ramp up COVID restrictions. The FBI will doubtless deploy more Whitmer-style operations, hardly the limit of FBI power.

Read Julie Kelly, and mark your calendar. August 21 will mark 30 years since the Ruby Ridge siege. In 2022 and beyond, it’s all about memory against forgetting.