The Year of Pushing Back

Use your constitutional free-speech rights while you still have them. When the next holiday season rolls around, check to see if things got any better.

by Lloyd Billingsley for American Greatness

“I think it’s gonna get better by the holidays.” 

That was Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in September, addressing the raft of airline flight cancellations. When the holidays came, it didn’t get better. In fact, as the executioner Boris said in Blazing Saddles, “It’s been utter chaos down here.” 

Flights canceled, people left stranded, the whole nine yards, but not for Pete Buttigieg. As it emerged, the transportation secretary had taken at least 18 trips on private jets, funded by taxpayers, including a trip to Montreal, Canada, to receive an award. 

Those still camping out in airports might recall that during a crippling supply-chain crisis, Buttigieg was off on a two-month “maternity leave,” which he claimed was “not a vacation.” The secretary also proclaimed that “supply, demand, and the pandemic” were the main forces behind the supply chain bottlenecks. They weren’t. 

According to the secretary, “Americans have more money in their pockets compared to a year ago. Where they used to maybe spend it on going to shows or travel, they’ve been more likely to spend it on things, which is why actually we have a record number of goods coming through our ports.” We didn’t. 

As embattled Americans might recall, Transportation Secretary Buttigieg has a sanctimonious side. On the other hand, in a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing last year, Buttigieg proclaimed, “the more pain we are all experiencing from the high price of gas, ​the more benefit there is for those who can access electric vehicles.” 

By this standard, all those people stranded in airports is a good thing—for people who can access private jets, funded by those same taxpayers. So the secretary has a sadistic side, and that Anthony Perkins look should have given it away. Pete Buttigieg failed to become president, so the Biden Junta deploys him to jack up the misery index and taunt the people. In that task, the secretary faces strong competition. 

Consider Sam Brinton, the former deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy at the Department of Energy. Like Michael Palin’s lumberjack in the famous Monty Python sketch, Brinton likes to put on women’s clothing and pose for the cameras. 

It’s a good bet that a sizable fraction of Brinton’s wardrobe is from the suitcases he ripped off at airports. That caused him to lose his job, but the big question is how this poseur ever got the job in the first place. 

According to the Department of Energy, access to “special nuclear material” requires evaluation of “information about an individual’s background to determine their judgment, reliability, and honesty.” The Office of Personnel Management and the FBI conduct background investigations such as “a fingerprint check, credit search, records check, and interviews with individuals to verify the applicant’s character, loyalty, current and past residences, employment, and education.” 

This clown most likely got the post because he’s one of those Dave Chappelle calls the “alphabet people,” now a privileged, protected class. That is doubtless the case with four-star “Admiral” Rachel Levine, assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. It has emerged that Levine has been urging Big Tech companies to censor “misinformation” about “gender-affirming care,” which Levine believes is of “positive value” and “not in medical or scientific dispute.” 

Actually, irreversible mutilation of the human body is not a good thing, especially for children and adolescents. They seem to be the admiral’s target-rich environment. Like Dr. Anthony Fauci, Admiral Levine is a physician who first does harm and has no use for informed consent. If you don’t address Admiral Levine as a woman, the Assistant HHS boss wants you to lose your job. 

Admiral Levine recalls Dr. Robert Elliot (Michael Caine) in “Dressed to Kill,” the shrink who dresses in women’s clothes and carves up Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson) with a straight razor. Put dark glasses on Levine and the resemblance would be more startling—except for the uniform. 

Levine recalls Jay Leno’s rant against the circus, with all those “diseased animals and hermaphrodite clowns throwing anthrax spores at the children.” For Rod Dreher, Levine smacks of fascism, and the American Conservative editor is on to something. The Biden Junta does represent fascism of a special brand. 

The underlying ethos is the Dictatorship of the Subjunctive Mood (DSM), a permanent crusade against reality. Chromosomes, hormones, bone structure, and so forth confirm that, in terms of science, the admiral and the luggage thief are both men. Levine claims to be a woman because he thinks he is, and everybody must fall in line—or else. If a parent challenges the admiral, say, at a school board meeting, she becomes a domestic terrorist on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. 

Pete Buttigieg thinks airline travel and the supply chain are great, because he says they are. That’s the DSM in action, a totalitarian tutorial. The suffering of the people advances the agenda of the Junta, now in full triumphalist mode. Should that be doubted, review Joe Biden’s September 1 hate speech, like something staged by Leni Riefenstahl. 

Let 2023 be the “Year to Push Back” with all the riches of the English language at every opportunity. Use your constitutional free-speech rights while you still have them. When the holidays roll around, check to see if things got any better.

X22, Christian Patriot News, and more- Jan 4

 

Sometimes, drama is just pretty amusing to watch unfold. Here's tonight's news:

Courage Time in the House of Representatives

After the new Congress convenes, the Republicans should announce that they will not vote to raise the debt ceiling until the president and the vice president resign.

by Daniel Oliver for American Greatness

What do we do when (it really is no longer a question of “if”) it is proven satisfactorily to most people that the 2020 election was manipulated—perhaps outright stolen—by government forces (and their allies in the media) with the result that the “wrong” person won? 

Elon Musk’s Twitter has released information showing that government personnel, at the FBI and perhaps other agencies, leaned on that social media platform to suppress information about the Hunter Biden laptop, which indicated scandalous behavior—and very possibly criminal—on the part of the Biden family.

And according to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the FBI leaned on him as well to suppress information about the laptop. It will now surprise no one if we discover that the FBI leaned on many other media outlets as well.

It is fair to conclude, therefore, that the wrong person was elected president in 2020. What does “wrong” person mean? 

A poll was taken after the election asking people whom they would have voted for if they had known about the Hunter Biden laptop. Enough Democrats and independents said they would have voted for Trump to have changed the outcome of the election. That means public knowledge and sentiment were “manipulated” by government personnel, so one candidate (preferred by them) would win over the other.

But what can be done now? Donald Trump seems to want a new election. That is not going to happen. But neither should nothing be done. Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. Do we have any mechanism for dealing with this problem?

Actually, we have. The Constitution provides some relief. One method, of course, is impeachment. But that wouldn’t work in this case: the House of Representatives, under Republican control, might vote for impeachment. But because a majority of the U.S. Senate belongs to the Democrats, the president wouldn’t be convicted. What to do?

There is another possible solution. It would require bravery—almost always in short supply. But maybe not this time. This is a time for reckoning. This is a time for choosing. Another time for choosing.

Here’s how the problem could be solved.

Because the U.S. government doesn’t live within its means (it spends far more than it collects in taxes), it has to borrow money. Congress has to authorize how much money the government can borrow. The maximum amount the government can borrow, legislated by Congress, is called the “debt ceiling.”

At some point this year, the government will reach that maximum amount. Failure to raise that amount would lead (at least in theory) to the government defaulting on its obligations.

What would happen then? No one knows. It could create chaos in the United States and the global economy. Nevertheless, that situation presents an opportunity to the Republicans to rectify the theft of the presidential election in 2020.

After the new Congress convenes this week, the Republicans should announce that they will not vote to raise the debt ceiling until the president and the vice president resign. If that were to happen, under the Constitution, the speaker of the House of Representatives would become president. He will be a Republican, as would have been the person (Trump) who would have been elected in 2020 absent the cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop story by a willing media encouraged by the FBI.

Would it be possible to persuade Republicans to refuse to raise the debt ceiling? Who knows? Wouldn’t it be worth finding out?

There will always be squishy Republicans, of course, like Adam Kinzinger (R–Ill.) and Liz Cheney (R–Wyo.), neither of whom—mercifully!—will be serving in the new Congress.

But there might be enough Republicans in the House of Representatives (the “People’s House”) who care enough about the scam perpetrated on the American people to do something about it.

Alternatively, for the more squeamish, the decision not to raise the debt ceiling unless the president and vice president resign could be justified by their failure to enforce the immigration laws—and not just to refuse to enforce them, but, via the freakish White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, to blame Republicans for creating the problem by talking about it! And if that dereliction of duty isn’t sufficient justification, the quantity of fentanyl that that dereliction has allowed to come across the southern border—enough to kill every American who voted for Joe Biden twice over, and a lot more besides—should be.

But, the skeptics will say, if Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling, won’t the country collapse?

First, the country has already collapsed if the secret police (i.e., the FBI) are allowed to get away with fixing an election.

Second, how do we know the country will “collapse”? And what does “collapse” even mean? If the United States has never defaulted on its debts before, how can we be sure what the consequences will be? Most creditors of the U.S. would probably understand what’s going on, and they are likely to be . . .  patient, especially given the alternative to being patient.

The Republican House should explain to the people how serious it is that the election was “stolen” by the secret police—that the formerly republican United States is now in a state of collapse—and urge them to call their local newspapers and radio stations from morning till night and chastise them for hiding the truth from the American people.

The United States needs to do something to redeem itself. It shouldn’t just putter on as if nothing happened. The perpetrators may not confess, but punishment and restitution are still called for.

A Republican House of Representatives (ah, but who do they represent?) has the opportunity to set things right. But do they have the courage?

We’ll find out.

Is There an Economic Bomb Cyclone Ahead?

posted by Christopher Chantrill at American Thinker

First of all, nobody knows what will happen next with the economy. On the one hand our Democratic friends seem to think that their supercalifragilisticexpialidocious omnibus spending bill and glorious Inflation Reduction Act are already steering us to the green and pleasant land of woke Jerusalem.

But then you have Jeffrey A. Tucker saying that the end of negative interest rates ain't gonna be a walk in the park. Sez he:

Most people under the age of 40 have no financial experience in a world of positive interest rates for most dates of maturity… When Ben Bernanke pushed his new policy [back in 2008], he was flipping all economic and financial logic on its head.

See, ever since the Crash of 2008, interest rates have been less than the rate of inflation, to help revive the economy, courtesy of Little Ben Bernanke. Until this year.

Back in the 2000s, real-estate mortgage rates stayed pretty constant between 5.5 and 6.5 percent. But short-term Treasuries went from 0.95 percent in 2004 to 4.9 percent three years later in 2007. Then we had the real-estate meltdown of 2008 and the Great Recession.

That was nothing compared to 2022.

In 2022, 30-year mortgage rates have gone from 3 percent to 6.5 percent in one year.

And in 2022, short-term rates like three-month Treasuries have gone from effectively zero percent to the current 3.72 percent. In one year.

I think that if you double mortgage interest rates in one year, and punch short-term interest rates from zero to four percent in one year, I'd say you got Trouble with a capital T right here in River City.

My understanding of money comes from Walter Bagehot in Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market. He wrote the book after the Crash of 1873.

His notion is simple. For the credit system to work, you need two things. First, you must have loans properly collateralized, so that loans can be liquidated without loss to the creditor. Second, you need borrowers to be able to service their loans. If either requirement is not met, as in a recession, you got trouble in River City.

In the 2008 Crash a ton of mortgages were not properly collateralized, and a ton of borrowers couldn't make their payments. That's why we had a Crash.

When things go south, Bagehot proposed the notion of "lender of last resort." The central bank would stop future crashes by lending money to banks to prevent them from going broke.

Guess what: in the 1929 Crash the Fed let over 1,000 banks fail per year, from 1929 to 1932. In 1933 4,000 banks failed.

Guess what: in the 2008 Crash Little Ben Bernanke whiffed at being the lender of last resort for Lehman Brothers. Even though he had previously written a scholarly article about "how failing banks played a decisive role in the global depression of the 1930s" that in 2022 has won him a Nobel Prize.

Do you see why I call him Little Ben? Little Ben whined that he didn't have the authority to bail out Lehman Brothers in September 2008, because, I imagine, it wasn't a regular bank, but an "investment bank." 

Oh Ben. Can't you see the articles in the New York Times if you had sucked it in? "Although, arguably, according to far-right Republicans, the Chairman did not have specific legal authority to provide direct assistance to Lehman Brothers, experts agree that Bernanke's timely action was critical in avoiding a serious economic downturn."

Back before 2008, you had borrowers taking out real-estate loans with 100% mortgages. So if real-estate prices went down, they couldn't pay back their loans. And, with a recession, they couldn't make the payments. Double Trouble in River City.

So what do you think is going to happen in 2023 as real-estate prices fall because mortgage rates have doubled?

And what do you think is going to happen in 2023 to corporations that have been paying almost nothing for short-term money, and all of a sudden they have to pay 4-5 percent?

All I can say is: I don't like it.

I don't like that Jerome Powell at the Fed increased the M2 money supply 40 percent from $15.3 trillion in 2020 to $21.7 trillion at the end of 2021.

I don't like that Powell is presently shrinking the money supply; it was down to $21.4 trillion in early December 2022.

I don't like that Powell obviously panicked this year, realizing that he had got behind the curve on the inflation front.

And I don't like wondering what Jerome Powell will do when the next Lehman Brothers goes broke. Do you think that he will act as "lender of last resort," or will he whiff like the Fed Chairmen of olden times?

The New House Majority Must Impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas

Impeaching Mayorkas is the only option for those who understand that playing by the conventional rules of Washington simply isn’t good enough.

Jonathan S. Tobin reporting for The Federalist

As the new House Republican majority eventually gets sworn in this week, they have no choice but to use the only mechanism at their disposal to highlight the emergency unfolding at the border: impeaching Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. His acts of nonfeasance include acting on the president’s orders and presiding over a situation in which the border is, for all intents and purposes, being erased.

GOP moderates — many of whom are members in good standing of the Washington uniparty — think they are obligated to pursue “governance.” This sets up a conflict in which anything the new majority does that is aimed more at exposing the administration’s catastrophic policies will be skewered as mere obstructionism and proof that Republicans are incapable of governing.

But they can — and must — ignore those criticisms given the almost complete breakdown of efforts to prevent illegal immigration in the last two years.

GOP moderates may be inclined to ignore the security dilemma and simply move to grant a path to citizenship to people who were brought into the country illegally as children — the so-called “Dreamers.” But the vast majority of conservatives as well as independents and many border state Democrats understand that anything, however well-meaning, that is done to encourage further illegal immigration, as almost certainly would be the case for action on the Dreamers, is unacceptable. The Democrats’ effort to secure a new, broader amnesty is at the heart of the current crisis.

Mayorkas will not be thrown out of office since the Democratic Senate will never convict him even if the GOP’s narrow House majority impeaches him, and it will be labeled as grandstanding and a colossal waste of time. But stunts like that and the hearings in which they can finally bring the various elements of this catastrophe before the public in a way that has not been done before. It is the only option available to those who understand that the consequences of what is happening at the border are so serious that business as usual or playing by the conventional rules of Washington politics simply isn’t good enough.

The latest figures for illegal immigration for November 2022 illustrate the extent of the problem. In that month alone, a record 233,740 illegals were apprehended at the border. That constituted a 1 percent increase over the total for October, which was itself a record for that month. On top of that, the estimate for the number of migrants who evaded capture at the border was more than 73,000, also a record. The fiscal year for Customs and Border Protection data, which ended in September, was 2.76 million, breaking the previous annual record by more than a million.

That means that since Biden came into office, there have been more than 4 million illegals crossing the border. Every estimate for the coming year says those numbers will be topped.

The record numbers come at a time when the general perception is that the Biden administration has not only largely ended the enforcement efforts of immigration laws and created a situation in which the border is more or less open for those who wish to enter illegally or for the vast number of economic migrants who are increasingly making largely bogus claims for asylum on the grounds of suffering persecution at home.

The flood of migrants is largely being managed by drug cartels who exact fees from those who wish to cross into the country and whom they use to help bring in massive amounts of illegal drugs like fentanyl, which is helping to exacerbate an ongoing American addiction crisis. This has resulted in one of the largest human trafficking schemes in modern history, destabilizing both northern Mexico and the United States.

The toll taken on Southwest border cities and states is likely to get much worse if, unless the federal courts continue to prevent it, the Center for Disease Control’s so-called “Title 42” order issued during the coronavirus pandemic that gave federal authorities the right to exclude migrants from the United States and turn them back to Mexico is ended at the behest of the Biden administration.

For the last decade, the standard number for the total of illegal immigrants now in the United States is usually reported by the press as 11 million. But as far back as September 2018, a Yale University study found that the real number was likely at least twice that if not far higher. After the last two years of surging illegal immigration, it is likely that the total of illegals in the country now exceeds 30 million.

It can be argued that impeaching an official for following the president’s orders and policy choices is unfair even if it does amount to an act of nonfeasance and doesn’t constitute a “high crime” or “misdemeanor” that the Constitution says is grounds for impeachment. But, as the Democrats showed in the last two Congresses with their attempts to force Trump from office, impeachment is a political measure, not a court of law. Mayorkas’s actions that have essentially resulted in an open border in all but name may not technically be a violation of the law, but it is an act of criminal negligence that is doing great harm to the nation with enormous potential consequences.

Whether this gambit or any other succeeds in galvanizing the attention of the public at a time when liberal legacy media is still uninterested in the surge of millions of illegals or the plight of border communities, Republicans and Democrats who understand the consequences of further indifference must do something. The longer Washington waits to cope with this problem, the worse it will get. Anything short of an all-out effort to impeach Mayorkas on the part of House Republicans must be construed as a betrayal of their voters and their responsibility to the nation.

MIT Goes Against the Grain, Releases a Stunning Statement Endorsing Free Speech

Alex Parker reporting for RedState 

Surprise — the Massachusetts Institute of Technology endorses students’ liberty to engage in offensive speech…officially.

In contrast to castigations of “hate speech” and the increasingly common notion that “hate speech isn’t free speech,” MIT is siding with the Constitution.

On December 21st, the Cambridge private land-grant research university released a Free Expression Statement.

From the document:

Free expression is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition of a diverse and inclusive community. We cannot have a truly free community of expression if some perspectives can be heard and others cannot. Learning from a diversity of viewpoints, and from the deliberation, debate, and dissent that accompany them, are essential ingredients of academic excellence.

Free expression promotes creativity by affirming the ability to exchange ideas without constraints. It not only facilitates individual autonomy and self-fulfillment, it provides for participation in collective decision-making and is essential to the search for truth and justice. … Academic freedom promotes scholarly rigor and the testing of ideas by protecting research, publication, and teaching from interference.

That principle means on-campus guests can’t be relegated to a single perspective:

A commitment to free expression includes hearing and hosting speakers, including those whose views or opinions may not be shared by many members of the MIT community and may be harmful to some. This commitment includes the freedom to criticize and peacefully protest speakers to whom one may object, but it does not extend to suppressing or restricting such speakers from expressing their views. Debate and deliberation of controversial ideas are hallmarks of the Institute’s educational and research missions and are essential to the pursuit of truth, knowledge, equity, and justice.

The school makes clear things such as “direct threats, harassment, plagiarism, or other speech that falls outside the boundaries of the First Amendment” won’t be protected. Furthermore, it expects “a collegial and respectful learning and working environment.”

We cannot prohibit speech that some experience as offensive or injurious. At the same time, MIT deeply values civility, mutual respect, and uninhibited, wide-open debate. In fostering such debate, we have a responsibility to express ourselves in ways that consider the prospect of offense and injury and the risk of discouraging others from expressing their own views. This responsibility complements, and does not conflict with, the right to free expression.

But:

Even robust disagreements shall not be liable to official censure or disciplinary action.

Such ideas were once — and for a very long time — the norm at universities. Some might say they were integral to the point of secondary education. But in the past few years, things have significantly changed:

University Schools Students on the Importance of Free Speech — and Reporting People Who Use It

Ivy League Professor Says Climate Change Causes ‘Hate Speech’

Free Speech, 2022: University Paper Will Reject Op-Eds by Those With ‘Institutional Power’

University of Montana Bans Mean Speech

Princeton Course Claims the ‘Far Right’ Abuses Liberty to ‘Justify Hate Speech’

Academics Fear the ‘Hate’ of Free Speech as a Liberated Twitter Looms

Back to MIT, the news isn’t wholly encouraging in the arena of constitutional allowance. Per Campus Reform, the statement was approved by the faculty senate by a vote of 98 to 52.

As put by George Washington University Shapiro Chair of Public Interest Law Jonathan Turley, “What is unnerving is that a third of the faculty disagreed with the resolution.”

Still:

Overall, the resolution is a powerful defense of free speech. MIT has joined a growing minority of schools resisting the anti-free speech movement…

“Minority” doesn’t sound so substantial, but the fact that it’s growing could change the educational landscape. Will it? Time will tell.

The Activist Media Ignores Critical Detail About Assault on New York City Police Officers

posted by Jeff Charles at RedStateVIP

There is something the activist media doesn’t want you to know about the individual who allegedly assaulted three New York City police officers in Times Square on Sunday. As Democrats and their close friends and allies in the press continue to insist that right-wing domestic terrorism is the most dire threat to national security, it appears Islamic extremism could be making a comeback.

Law enforcement has charged Trevor Bickford, 19, with attempted murder and assault after the alleged attack. He is believed to have traveled from Maine to the Big Apple to carry out the attack.

RedState’s Nick Arama reported:

Bickford went up to three police officers who were on New Year’s Eve duty. He attacked and slashed two of the officers with a machete. One of those officers was on his first day on the job. The suspect was then shot in the shoulder and stopped by the third officer, who was also injured. All three officers are expected to recover.

“Bickford is being investigated for Islamic extremism, although he’s not facing terrorism charges yet,” Arama added, noting that the suspect was being watched by the FBI’s counterterrorism task force.

CBS2 noted that Bickford had been placed on the terror watchlist after his aunt reported that he had been radicalized online and “expressed a desire to travel overseas and fight with Islamic extremists.”

Police reported that the alleged assailant tried to strike an officer in the head using a machete and also attacked two other officers, fracturing one’s skull. The incident occurred around 10 p.m.

All three of the officers have been released from the hospital.

So far, the New York Times and Reuters are the only mainstream left-leaning news outlets that have mentioned the connection to radical Islamic extremism in their reports on the incident. Bickford wrote a letter to his family in a diary that was found in his possession after the alleged assault, according to The Times. He wrote a note to his mother which read: “I fear greatly you will not repent to Allah and therefore I hold hope in my heart that a piece of you believes so that you may be taken out of the hellfire.”

Bickford also mentioned his brother, a member of the U.S. Armed Services, saying that he was wearing the uniform of the enemy. Investigators discovered that the suspect appeared to “spiral downward” after his father died from a drug overdose. “Sometime in the last year and a half, he converted to Islam, often praying at mosques in the vicinity and devouring readings and videos about the religion,” the author wrote. “He was angered by the persecution of Muslims overseas, including of the Rohingya in Myanmar and the Uyghurs in China, and decided to go abroad and fight for them.”

Since the Islamic State (ISIS) and other radical Islamic terrorist groups were decimated under the Trump administration, they have not received much attention from the media. The left chose to focus more on the supposed threat of right-wing domestic terrorism after the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI cited it as a major danger to the U.S.

But others have sounded the alarm on a resurgence in Islamic extremism. Concerns have intensified after the migrant crisis worsened and authorities caught individuals with ties to terrorist groups trying to cross the southern border. It is also worth noting that many of the lone-wolf terrorist attacks that have occurred on American soil were carried out by individuals who had been radicalized online, not by terrorists who traveled to the U.S.

Unfortunately, most activist media outlets seem almost completely uninterested in this detail when reporting on this case. Indeed, they seem to think ignoring it is the best course of action in this regard, perhaps because they believe it will ruin their narrative about crazed MAGA hat-wearing psychos seeking to inflict physical harm on black and brown folks.

Is it possible that America could see ISIS and other groups make a comeback? Yes, it is possible. These folks still seek to kill Americans abroad and at home. Of course, it is also possible that Bickford could be a one-off. But with the border becoming even more porous and federal authorities focusing more on a seemingly nonexistent right-wing terror threat and censoring American accounts on Twitter, it is not difficult to imagine how radical Islamic extremists could take advantage.

Are People Getting Stupider?

posted by Kurt Schlicter at TownhallVIP

I am very worried that people are becoming dumber. I know what you will say. You will say, “Kurt, people are already complete idiots. It’s not possible for them to become dumber. They have reached Absolute Stupidity.” But no, I disagree. People really seem to be getting dumber. People are exceeding our expectations for once, and after a careful analysis, I am convinced people are becoming measurably dumber.

Look around you. Do you see anything not taking place in Florida that is smarter than what was taking place a few years ago? In Florida, Ron DeSantis led a response to a hurricane and within a couple days the entire regime media was gone and it was like the hurricane never happened. Why? Because he was not stupid. Because there was not idiocy to indict him with. He got the power on and the bridges rebuilt and did not stumble about like a slack-jawed moron. It was a shock because we have grown used to idiocy.

Let’s compare what happened in Florida to what is happening in my home state of California. California has many problems, all caused by Californians electing idiots to run their state. We have hobos leaving their needles and crap – literal and figurative – on our sidewalks. Scumbags are raiding stores and hauling off bags of loot. Over 350,000 people will leave the state with the best weather on the continent for places that freeze and have iguanas fall from the trees. So, what does California do? Does it address these pressing issues?

Come on.

I wonder what new California laws went into effect on New Year’s Day? Townhall has got you covered there. California ignored its actual problems and is imposing new mandates to make everything much, much worse. The new laws for 2023 include deeming California a sanctuary state for Munchausen mommies who want to castrate their sons in order to make themselves more interesting. Yes, California is stepping in to ensure that no child need worry about the state not allowing his vicious, narcissist mother and eunuch father to carve off his genitals because of a delusion that he is a she. Phew! That was a close one. Think of all the children who might not be mutilated if California did not step in to protect the ability of psychotic adults to chop their kids into a cruel simulacrum of the opposite sex. That’s smart.

Also smart is the new law that bars doctors from dissenting from the Official Licensed Narrative™ regarding COVID even though the entire Official Licensed Narrative™ has been proven to be complete and utter bullSchiff. Not only will you be told stupid lies, but it will be illegal to tell you the truth. You know, the thing about these totalitarians is that they are stupid, meaning they must enforce the telling of lies because their lies are obviously false. 

Oh, and this is the best new law because it combines the idiocy of equity with the idiocy of plain old idiocy. California just legalized jaywalking because citing people who randomly cross the street is racist. Yes, presented with the competing arguments of 1) normal people saying “You should not step into oncoming traffic” and 2) clownish activists saying “It is racist to keep POCs from stepping into oncoming traffic,” they literally went with the side that was trying to make it easier for black people to get hit by cars. For equity’s sake, of course. Take that, racists!

Now, there are other examples of stupidity abounding in society lately, and there’s no point in listing them all – just look around you. But some deserve a special shout-out. There is the climate change hoax cult, which wants to replace the entire electrical grid with Chi-Com solar panels and eagle choppers. To do that would require something like twice the size of California being devoted to this inefficient pipe-less dream, at who can calculate the environmental cost. Genius!

There is Hollywood, which literally refuses to make more than a handful of films a year people might want to see. Yeah, we have all heard of “Avatar: Dances With Blue Cartoons,” but what else is out that you have heard of? I looked into it. There is a movie with Brendan Frasier called “The Whale” where he stars as a fat LGBTQA+& üƆŧ÷≠Λ atheist professor (of course) who talks about his feelings, and another flick called “Women Talking” about women talking (Spoiler: If you have a penis, you are a rapist even if you didn’t rape anyone). So, movies about a lot of feelings, and most of them are feelings of anger and bitterness toward you, the moviegoing audience. Now, would you rather 1) see one of these films, or 2) drive Eric Swalwell home from a chili cook-off with the windows closed?

I’d go with the Fang Fang option.

And then there is the fact that Ronna McDaniel, with her 0-5 track record of failure, is still running for RNC chair again (Contact your state GOP reps at www.hireHarmeet.com to politely express your dismay). And the fact that 18 GOP senators voted for the omnibus atrocity. And the fact that Joe Biden is allegedly president. We are hitting peak stupid, people.

Yeah, things are getting stupider – but is this a natural or manmade phenomenon? After all, this kind of comprehensive, all-encompassing dumbness would seem to defy the laws of statistics. Is it really possible to just happen to be this idiotic? Or is it something else? Is it a plan? Is it a conspiracy, where the stupidity is not merely moronic but malicious?

No, I don’t think so. These people are too damn stupid to pull off a conspiracy.

10 Scandals To Keep Your Eye On In 2023

From deep-state election meddling to silent journalists, 

here are 10 scandals to track in the upcoming year.

Margot Cleveland reporting for The Federalist

The new year is upon us and with it a fresh start for more corruption. But 2023 also offers the opportunity to bring closure to some long-running scandals. Here are 10 to track in the upcoming year.

1. Government’s Puppeteering of Big Tech and Media

The ongoing release of the “Twitter Files” closed 2022 with a new scandal, as the internal communications of the tech giant exposed extensive coordination between the government and Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other big players controlling the flow of information. While conservatives have known — and complained — for years of Big Tech’s censorship and shadowbanning, by purchasing Twitter and giving independent journalists access to corporate emails, Elon Musk provided indisputable confirmation that Twitter both censored and blacklisted conservatives.

The censoring of the Hunter Biden laptop story and the silencing of scientific criticism of the government’s heavy-handed Covid regime, both at the prompting of federal agents, proved the most appalling. 

As Musk continues to provide access to internal communications, a watchful eye is warranted in 2023.

2. Intelligence Agencies’ 2020 Election Interference

A related scandal to track in 2023 concerns intelligence agencies’ interference in the 2020 election. Even before Musk took over at Twitter, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg revealed the FBI’s role in prompting the censorship of the Hunter Biden story.

As I previously reported, during an August 2020 interview with Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg revealed that before the Hunter Biden laptop story dropped, the FBI had warned the Facebook team to “be on high alert.” According to Zuckerberg, the FBI told Facebook, “[W]e thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election” and that “we have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump similar to that so just be vigilant.” Based on the FBI’s warning, when the New York Post broke the Hunter Biden story, Facebook treated it as potential misinformation and limited the visibility of the scandal.

While Zuckerberg hedged on whether the FBI identified the Hunter Biden story as the one that prompted the warning, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, signed a declaration attesting that during their “regular meetings with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and industry peers regarding election security,” “federal law enforcement agencies communicated that they expected ‘hack-and-leak operations’ by state actors might occur in the period shortly before the 2020 presidential election, likely in October.” Roth noted that during those meetings he learned “that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden,” and that Twitter censored the story based on the warning.

Of course, the Hunter Biden laptop was real and not Russian misinformation as the intelligence community had presented it to both Facebook and Twitter, prompting the tech giants to censor the politically devasting story mere weeks before the 2020 election. The FBI’s interference in the 2020 presidential election is a huge scandal, yet just began to percolate in the press in late 2022. 

This scandal will continue in 2023, but even more damning details are likely to drop this year given that the “Twitter Files” revealed FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan sent a “Heads Up” to Roth on the late evening of Oct. 13, 2020 — hours before the Post story hit. Chan’s email alerted the Twitter executive to a “Teleporter link” that would allow Roth to download 10 documents. “It is not spam!” Chan stressed, asking Roth to confirm receipt of the link. Two minutes later, at 6:24 p.m., California time, Roth acknowledged he had received the message and downloaded the files. 

Chan sent a similar email to high-level Twitter executives two days after the Post story first ran, with the Oct. 16, 2020 message from Chan telling Roth and a high-level Twitter attorney, “I just got something hot off the presses today,” and then telling the duo to monitor their Teleporter messages for “two documents to download.” 

Teleporter, as the “Twitter Files” detailed, is a one-way communication platform that allowed the FBI to send secret messages to the tech behemoth. Those messages, however, reportedly disappear after 24 hours, and to date, both the content of the Teleporter messages and the documents the FBI attached for Twitter’s review remain unknown. But the timing suggests further evidence may exist showing the FBI lied to Big Tech to rig the 2020 election — and 2023 may be the year for it to emerge.

3. The Biden Laundromat

Since at least 2020, Hunter Biden has been under investigation by federal prosecutors. Many expected charges to come last year, when in March of 2022, The New York Times — one of the go-to media outlets for Democrats to prime with inside information to blunt the effects of soon-to-be-released negative news — reported based on unnamed sources that David C. Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware overseeing the criminal investigation into Hunter Biden, had a grand jury conducting “a wide-ranging examination” of Hunter “Biden’s international business dealings, with prosecutors considering charges for tax fraud, criminal foreign lobbying, and money laundering.” 

If Weiss intends to indict, 2023 will be the year to move because after that the country returns to campaign mode and it seems unlikely the DOJ would drop an indictment of the president’s son during an election year. But whether Weiss indicts or not, the House of Representatives, now under Republican control, will most assuredly investigate the Biden family money-making machine — and there is a lot to investigate, including the financial dealings of Hunter Biden, James Biden, Sara Biden, and all the corporate entities linked to them, and how Joe Biden benefitted from those financial dealings.

Further, beyond Ukraine and Hunter’s dealings there, both Hunter and James Biden (the president’s brother) negotiated deals with the communist Chinese regime, with financial records showing various entities run by President Joe Biden’s family members received wire transfers “from communist-connected Chinese businesses” that “totaled $5,000,000, with the proceeds reaching Hunter and James Biden through a variety of business organizations they controlled.” 

Profiteering from communist China represents but one aspect of the duo’s financial dealings. According to The New York Times, Hunter Biden’s joint global equity firm, the Bohai Harvest Equity Investment Fund, helped arrange the purchase by a Chinese mining company of the world’s largest cobalt source in the Congo. “Hunter reportedly launched that new joint enterprise with Chinese business partners less than two weeks after he traveled to China on Air Force Two with his then-vice president father.”

A Senate report also documents Hunter Biden’s receipt of a combined $3.5 million from the wife of the former Moscow mayor, a Kazakhstan investor, and several other individuals. “Closer to home, James Biden’s financial dealings also evidence a complicated pay-to-play scandal underlying his investing in the health care sector” with a business called Americore. James Biden reportedly held out a “promise of a large investment from the Middle East based on his political connections,” before taking “a six-figure personal loan out of Americore’s coffers,” but then the Middle East investment never materialized, and neither did James Biden’s repayment of the loan. 

Between federal prosecutors and Republican House oversight committees, 2023 promises to hang out the Biden family’s financial dirty laundry.

4. FBI Corruption

Since SpyGate exploded in 2018 with then-House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes’ release of his memorandum detailing the FBI’s abuse of the FISA court system, evidence of FBI malfeasance has continued to mount. While, to date, the FBI has avoided any real consequences for SpyGate and the burying of the Hunter Biden laptop story, last year saw a slew of agents becoming whistleblowers. 

These whistleblowers include some in “senior positions,” who reportedly told Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office that FBI officials “falsely portray[ed] as disinformation evidence acquired from multiple sources that provided the FBI derogatory information related to Hunter Biden’s financial and foreign business activities, even though some of that information had already been or could be verified.”

More whistleblowers also reached out to GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, reporting that FBI officials “allegedly pressured agents to label cases as ‘domestic violent extremism’ to boost case numbers.” And multiple whistleblowers “have disclosed how the FBI leadership is conducting a ‘purge’ of FBI employees holding conservative views,” and is allowing political bias to affect FBI investigations.

The potential for more whistleblowers, coupled with the “Twitter Files” and House oversight committees now in Republican hands, could reveal more fully the FBI’s corruption in 2023.

5. Eugene Yu Versus True the Vote

A fifth scandal to watch in 2023 concerns the fight between Eugene Yu and True the Vote. 

Last year ended with the L.A. County district attorney’s office dismissing criminal charges against Yu, the founder of the Michigan-based election-management software company Konnech. The L.A. County D.A. had previously announced Yu’s arrest, stating in a press conference on Oct. 4, 2022, that “under its $2.9 million, five-year contract with the county, Konnech was supposed to securely maintain the data and that only United States citizens and permanent residents have access to it.” Yet according to the press release, “District Attorney investigators found that in contradiction to the contract, information was stored on servers in the People’s Republic of China.” 

Shortly after Yu’s arrest, the self-proclaimed “nation’s leading voters’ rights and election integrity organization,” True the Vote, announced that it had “played a small role” in the investigation of Konnech and applauded the L.A. County D.A.’s office for its work on the case. True the Vote’s involvement in the case apparently prompted the far-left D.A. to rethink the charges and eventually led to the dismissal of the criminal case, because of its concerns “about both the pace of the investigation and the potential bias in the presentation and investigation of the evidence.” 

While LA. County did not rule out refiling charges against Yu, to date, none have been filed. Meanwhile, Yu has pending a civil lawsuit in a federal district court against True the Vote and two of its representatives for defamation and other claims. Yu, for his part, maintains that Konnech has never stored election worker data on Chinese servers. Conversely, True the Vote maintains it provided the FBI with evidence confirming Konnech illegally used foreign servers. 

2023 will see these conflicting accounts play out and, more importantly, reveal the FBI’s role in the scandal — because the real import concerns neither Yu nor True the Vote, but the FBI. 

Court documents indicate a confidential human source provided the FBI with evidence that Konnech maintained the personal information of election workers on a Chinese server, and it was based on that evidence the L.A. County D.A. office indicted and arrested Yu. But those charges were later dismissed because the state prosecutor seemed concerned about the authenticity of the evidence.

While the public still does not know whether the CHS’s server data was authentic, the FBI does and did long before Yu was arrested. But following Yu’s arrest, the FBI remained silent, apparently abandoning multiple confidential human sources and discarding an 18-month investigation into evidence that Yu maintained the personal information of tens of thousands of American election workers on a server in China. The other option is that the bureau allowed Yu to be arrested for crimes he did not commit and permitted the innocent American to be branded a felon and traitor by not informing the L.A. district attorney’s office that the China-server data was false.

With Yu’s civil case against True the Vote still pending in Texas, this year should bring some clarity to the question.

6. Supreme Court Leak

While much overdue, 2023 should also bring closure to the Supreme Court leak scandal. That scandal, of course, concerns the leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to Politico. The May 2022 leak prompted Chief Justice John Roberts to direct Gail Curley, a former Army colonel and the court’s marshal, to investigate the source of the leak. 

At the time, Roberts promised a full investigation and indicated the justices could expect a report from him in late fall, but to date, no report has been made public. Watch for 2023 to reveal details — and hopefully justice for the leaker.

7. Covid-19

Several scandals related to Covid-19 seem poised to blossom in 2023. The “Twitter Files” revealed the government’s push to silence critics of the federal response, and those details will likely spur many questions about those efforts — from the origins of Covid-19 and the likelihood of a lab leak, to the funding of gain-of-function research, to the safety and efficacy of the jab. Related scandals may also evolve if it becomes clear that those responsible for formulating the government’s response to Covid knew of the validity of contrary scientific opinions and lied to the public. 

8. SpyGate

2023 will likely also be the year Special Counsel John Durham finishes his investigation of the Crossfire Hurricane and Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigations. Conventional wisdom says Durham’s team is done indicting individuals and that all that remains is a written report. If true, those hoping for significant jail time for conspirators will be disappointed. Nonetheless, a detailed synopsis of the Russia collusion hoax will expose the depth of the deceit peddled to our country by corrupt actors in the deep state.

Such a report, when coupled with “Twitter Files” revelations and the growing number of whistleblowers, might be just the impetus needed for a cleaning of intelligence agencies.

9. Pro-Life Targeting

Another scandal developing in 2023 concerns the Biden administration’s targeting of pro-lifers, with the federal prosecution of Mark Houck providing a platform to expose further DOJ politicization.

The Biden administration’s targeting of Houck first made news when some 20 law enforcement officers, including many with ballistic shields, long guns, and a battering ram, swarmed his family home in late September 2022 to arrest the father of seven on charges that he violated the Federal Access to Clinic Entrances, or FACE, Act. Since then, Houck has fought back in court, filing a motion to dismiss the charges and asserting it was the purported escort for Planned Parenthood, not Houck, who violated the FACE Act. Houck also argued in the motion that the Biden administration’s selective use of the FACE Act to prosecute pro-lifers compels the dismissal of the charges.

While a court has yet to rule on the motion, Houck will surely appeal a denial, forcing the Biden administration to defend its ham-handed attack on pro-lifers. And if the charges aren’t dismissed, Houck’s defense — that the Planned Parenthood escort was both the aggressor and the true perpetrator of a FACE Act crime — will be paraded for both the jury and the public at large. At the end of the day, it will likely be the Biden administration on trial.

10. Journalists’ Silence

The tenth scandal of 2023 is one that can’t be watched because it is the dog that didn’t bark: the press that didn’t report.

After years of left-leaning bias in the press, Trump broke the establishment media. The reporters employed by the supposed standard-bearers of journalism abandoned any pretext of professionalism. They peddled the Russia collusion hoax and ignored the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. They stopped being watchdogs for our constitutional republic and began being propagandists for their preferred politicians. And given the media elite’s lack of response to the first nine scandals, their continuing silence in 2023 seems an assured final scandal.