Democrats Have No Good Option for 2024

posted by Josh Hammer at Townhall

Former South Carolina Governor and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley's 2024 presidential announcement this week, which makes her the first Republican to declare other than former President Donald Trump himself, formally commences what should prove to be a tumultuous GOP presidential primary. But despite the impending made-for-TV tumult in the GOP primary, the fact remains that the party has a number of possible or likely candidates who are either well-qualified or broadly popular with a substantial slice of the national electorate.

The same is simply not true for the Democratic Party. And as the octogenarian President Joe Biden shows all signs of imminently launching his reelection campaign, even the mainstream press is starting to fret.

The New York Times, the closest thing to Democratic Party Pravda, has over the past year run a series of urgent articles sounding the alarm on Biden's unprecedented presidential age and declining cognitive abilities. Last July, the Times ran an article titled, "At 79, Biden Is Testing the Boundaries of Age and the Presidency"; last November, another Times article was titled, "President Biden Turns 80, Making Him the First Octogenarian in the Oval Office"; and earlier this month, left-wing commentator Michelle Goldberg titled her column, "Biden's a Great President. He Should Not Run Again." The Times followed Goldberg's column with a number of responsive letters to the editor, which ran last week under the title, "Is Biden Too Old to Run Again?"

What's more, on Thursday, Politico and CNN published nearly identical articles strongly suggesting White House palace intrigue and a party apparatus torn about what to do with its senile commander in chief: Politico's piece was titled, "Senior Democrats' Private Take on Biden: He's Too Old"; CNN's eerily similar article was titled, "Biden's age is a hot topic as he looks to extend his time in the Oval Office until he is 86." Clearly, many in the Biden White House are leaking like a loose faucet. Even more notably, the liberal press, which would normally protect an incumbent Democratic president at all costs, is the one stirring the pot.

Some card-carrying members of the insular Washington press corps are worried about the reelection prospects of the oldest-ever sitting president, who in his first term has presided over a calamitous Afghanistan withdrawal, 40-year-high inflation, soaring violent crime rates and the worst humanitarian crisis at the southern border in U.S. history. And who can blame them?

At the same time, disposing of an incumbent president -- as the recent revelation of Biden's illicitly retained classified documents and the concomitant appointment of a special counsel to investigate his scandalous negligence indicate some in the Deep State may also desire -- necessitates finding a replacement candidate. And therein lies the rub. Of the three leading alternative candidates for the Democrats' 2024 presidential nomination, there are no appealing options. All three, in fact, are terrible options.

I speak here of Vice President Kamala Harris, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and California Governor Gavin Newsom.

The fact that Kamala Harris is unlikable, unliked, generally useless and unambiguously terrible at her job is the worst-kept secret in U.S. politics today. Harris famously secured not a single Democratic National Convention delegate during her ill-fated 2020 presidential run. She is ill-informed on policy and often speaks of complex issues in an overly simplistic and juvenile way. (Who can forget her gem last year on the Russo-Ukraine War: "Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country.") She has endured massive staff turnover, and by all indications treats her staff horribly. And the Times has also seemingly soured on her; the headline of a long-form article a week and a half ago: "Kamala Harris Is Trying to Define Her Vice Presidency. Even Her Allies Are Tired of Waiting."

Put simply, it is extraordinarily difficult these days to find a Democrat who is thrilled about the prospect of a future President Kamala Harris. By contrast, most Democrats soberly recognize how awful she is. And the fact that so few are willing to say the quiet part out loud bespeaks the death grip that identity politics pablum now has on the Democratic Party.

Neither Buttigieg nor Newsom is a more enticing candidate. Buttigieg -- who, it must be stipulated, was chosen for Biden's Cabinet primarily not due to merit but rather on the basis of his personal sexual orientation -- has proved to be, bar none, the single worst transportation secretary in the history of the U.S. Department of Transportation. In barely over two years, Buttigieg has overseen a crippling supply chain crisis (during which time Buttigieg was AWOL on paternity leave); a near-horrific national rail strike avoided at the last minute; the first FAA grounding of all national flights since 9/11; and most recently, a series of high-profile, visually shocking, destructive train derailments. It is evidently not possible to be worse at one's job than the 41-year-old former mayor of Indiana's fourth-largest city is at being transportation secretary of the United States.

Gavin Newsom is hardly any better. Newsom was forced to withstand a gubernatorial recall election in 2021, and conditions are so bad in his leftist fiefdom that California recently lost a House seat in the U.S. Census for the first time in state history. It got even worse after the 2020 Census: California shed 500,000 people between July 2020 and July 2022. Homicides have soared 41% since 2019, and the Golden State's estimated homeless population last year was an astounding 173,000. Meanwhile, Californians are forced to endure exorbitant housing costs and the single highest top state income tax rate in the country. In what universe, then, does Newsom, who bears a striking resemblance to Michael Douglas' "Gordon Gekko" silver screen robber baron, qualify as presidential material?

In all likelihood, then, Democrats will roll the 2024 dice with their stammering, scandal-ridden, palpably weak, cognitively deficient presidential incumbent. And for all their own woes, Republicans surely could not be happier about that.

X22, And we Know, and more- Feb 17

 

The Republican Big Club Are All In to Have Culture War and Anti-Woke Efforts Dominate 2024 GOP Primary

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse

Prior to the 2012 election and the rise of the Sandra Fluke free birth control narrative, we used to call them social issues; however, the usefulness of cultural wars has morphed into the larger war of wokeism.

In the big picture, keeping the base GOPe voter distracted from the economic expansion of multinational globalism, the corporate ‘masters of the universe’ (ie. the Big Club), need to keep pushing anti-wokeism as a political strategy.  The cultural issues are useful tools to keep control of an alignment of voters.  It has always been thus, and even more important now that people are starting to realize the expansion of the rust belt.

The rust belt, the diminishment of the U.S. economic manufacturing base, was an outcome of corporate control over politics.  Corporations and banks seek profit, those profits are inflated by a U.S. service driven economic model.  Skilled jobs require higher wages.

If the skilled jobs can be outsourced to lower cost labor nations, the subsequent lowered labor costs drive bigger margins.  Again, it has always been thus.

At the core of the U.S. political issue, you discover that both wings of the DC UniParty agree with this basic economic model.  Republicans and Democrats now use the catchphrase ‘service driven economy‘ with bipartisan frequency.  Many voters no longer have any reference to an economic system that is anything except a ‘service driven economy’, yet nothing about that system provides long-term value for U.S. voters or workers.

Within this very specific dynamic, you find the root of the support for Donald J. Trump.  A larger, formerly considered silent majority who comprise the baseline middle class workforce, find common understanding with President Trump because he sees the flaws in the economic model.

Not coincidentally, it is only Donald Trump who has ever discussed these economic issues. Factually, no national politician in the modern era prior to Donald Trump ever dared broach the subject of economic globalism, and the negative consequences therein, because they would find themselves in the target field of the corporations who fund the political system.  A general platform more akin to a code of omerta covered the entire subject of republican economic policy.

As the pandemic years have shown, economic security is deeply tied to national security.  As an outcome, economic policy ultimately drives foreign policy.  When combined, the economic and foreign policy outlooks form the structural alignment of the UniParty platform.

Following the downstream effect of multinational corporate influence, modern Democrats support expansionist and interventionist foreign policy.  Meanwhile, modern Republicans, previously called “neocons” have always supported expansionist and interventionist foreign policy.  Leadership of both parties now align in a singular foreign policy outlook; thus, we see support for the Ukraine spending and intervention by both Democrats and Republicans.

However, outside the DC bubble of multinational corporate influence, the support for the interventionist foreign policy doesn’t exist in the same scale and scope.  Voters inside both the Democrat and Republican base do not support the intervention at the same level as the political leadership of both parties.  There is a structural breakdown between the priorities of voters and the priorities of the elected officials.  None of this is new discussion, we all accept this basic reality.

With political leadership of both parties supporting the same economic outlook, and both parties supporting the same foreign policy outlook, we find the source of opposition against U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Economic policy and foreign policy form the uniting bond that drives both parties to oppose Trump’s America First ideological outlook.

As long as Donald J Trump singularly represents the only counterforce against this UniParty globalist construct, he will continue to be targeted by the system of financial controllers who fund the political system.  For the sake of brevity this alignment of multinational corporate and financial economic interests is called “the big club.”

As part of the strategic political effort, the Republican wing of the Big Club needs to carve up the supporters of Donald Trump into smaller, easier to target, pieces.  This is where the value of the culture war, what is now considered as ‘wokeism’, plays into the strategy of those who seek to control political outcomes and remove the threat that Trump represents to their financial interests.

In many ways, this is why we are seeing prominent Republican officeholders pushing the culture war as a tool for their own political advancement.  The same Big Club members who are directly fighting against the America-First economic agenda, are the same Big Club members who are funding the Republican politicians to push the culture war.

The corporations, billionaires and multinationals who are funding the Republican candidates do not have any vested interest in the culture war. For them the social issues are a tool, technique or insurance policy to guarantee security of the interest that does matter, their financial status.

There are trillions at stake, literally trillions.  Additionally, decades of their prior investment interests are contingent upon the ‘service driven economy’ being maintained.

Dollars drive the U.S. global trade and financial exchanges.  The multinationals, both corporations and banks, have pre-deployed investments all around the globe.  However, many of those investments are entirely contingent upon the retention of the U.S. economic system they pre-established before the investment was made.  President Donald J. Trump represents the threat to that entire financial system.

Once you understand this, then a great deal of the more nuanced and granular U.S. political moves, almost all of which are funded by the corporations and billionaires who are attached to the global investment process, begin to make sense.

Every non-Trump candidate, funded to create the opposition to America First, is part of this process to use anti-wokeism as a strategy.

With this level of money at stake, do not be surprised when you look at how much is being spent to construct the system that guarantees the continuation of globalism. The money spent in funding the Republican candidates to advance the distracting cultural war pales in comparison to the amount of money at risk in the 2024 election outcome.

That’s the baseline for this:

…“GOP leaders and candidates should take from this poll one important lesson: voters expect them to fight wokeness,” American Principles Project President Terry Schilling said. “Support for policies protecting families from gender ideology is off the charts, with the majority of the base showing a strong preference for tackling these issues. Meanwhile, approval of Republican establishment priorities was much more muted, with most of those surveyed even agreeing that GOP elected officials have given up too much ground in the culture war.”  

…“Any candidate who expects to win a Republican primary next year for any office needs to lead on cultural issues in order to win over voters,” Schilling said. “Perhaps the two most prominent leaders on these issues so far have been Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, so it should be no surprise they are far and away the favorites in the presidential field. It’s time for the rest of the party to pay heed and set their priorities accordingly.” (more)

On the very significant upside… Relax, President Trump understands this.

Candidate Donald Trump also understands the real priorities of the Big Club extend beyond this useful cultural war, deep into the world of economics and foreign policy.

As each of the corporate funded Republican candidates hits the cultural war (wokeism) effort as part of the distracting political strategy, watch President Trump generally agree with the ‘social issues’, but then counter the distraction with arguments specifically targeting economic and foreign policy.

The entire field of Republican candidates will hold the same economic and foreign policy outlook (Ukraine example), with only Donald Trump representing an alternative.

Georgia Grand Jury’s Report Is Garbage Because Fulton County D.A. Fed Them Garbage To ‘Get Trump’

Corporate media will unfairly brand Trump lawyers as possible perjurers, but in reality, it may have been the D.A. who deceived the grand jury.

Margot Cleveland reporting for The Federalist

“Grand jury says Trump’s election team committed perjury.”  

Without searching for the legacy media’s coverage of today’s release of a handful of pages from the report compiled by the Fulton County, Ga. Special Purpose Grand Jury, I tapped out that mock headline. Sure enough, the corporate press remains predictable.

“Georgia grand jury: ‘Perjury may have been committed’ in Trump election probe,” The Washington Post headed its coverage.  

“Georgia Grand Jury in Trump Inquiry Sees Signs of Perjury By Witnesses,” The New York Times echoed.  

USA Today similarly headlined its reporting, “Georgia Grand Jury Recommends Perjury Charges for Unnamed Witnesses in Trump Investigation.”  

But color me skeptical that any perjury occurred — because of what the Special Purpose Grand Jury said on page two of its report and because of what the partisan Fulton County D.A., Democrat Fani Willis, said in various court filings related to her “investigation.”  

In January of 2022, the Democrat D.A. first sought to impanel a “special purpose grand jury” to assist in her investigation into “any coordinated attempts to unlawfully alter the outcome of the 2020 elections in this state.” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Christopher Brasher granted D.A. Willis’ request, allowing her to launch a public relations attack on Republicans — including election lawyers, candidates for state office, and even the sitting U.S. senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham.  

While the state court allowed the circus to proceed, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney put the brakes on the most obvious — and outrageous — aspect of Willis’ political farce, holding that “this District Attorney and her special prosecution team may no longer investigate Senator [Burt] Jones [an alternate elector in the 2020 election and Republican 2022 candidate]” and may not subpoena him or obtain any records from him via subpoena. Judge McBurney further held that Willis’s special prosecution team “may not publicly categorize [Jones] as a subject or target (or anything else) of the grand jury’s investigation, and they may not ask the grand jury to include any recommendations about him in their final report.” 

Willis’ efforts to target Jones were halted because “well after the grand jury had begun receiving evidence from witnesses called and examined by the District Attorney’s team of prosecutors, the District Attorney hosted and headlined a fundraiser for [Charlie] Bailey.” And at that time, Bailey was in a runoff contest to be the Democrat nominee for lieutenant governor to run against Jones in the November 2022 general election.

The political targeting of Republicans was bad enough, but worse still was Willis’ blatant misrepresentation in a federal court filing about Donald Trump’s Jan. 2, 2021, telephone conversation with Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.  

Willis made that false representation in a response brief she filed to support her right to subpoena Sen. Graham, telling the federal court that “a central focus” of her investigation into the 2020 election “is former President Donald Trump’s January 2, 2021, telephone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger requesting that the Secretary ‘find 11,780 votes’ in the former President’s favor.”

But as I detailed at the time, the transcript of Trump’s conversation with Raffensperger established that the then-president “did not request that Raffensperger ‘find 11,780 votes.’ Period. It never happened.” Rather, during that “telephone conversation between Trump’s legal team and the secretary of state’s office, Trump’s lawyer explained to Raffensperger that ‘the court is not acting on our petition. They haven’t even assigned a judge.’”  

Ironically, the judge who was “not acting on” Trump’s petition was the same Judge Brasher who authorized Willis’ Special Purpose Grand Jury.

The transcript of Trump’s call with Raffensberger also reveals the truth about a second lie Willis peddled in the handling of the Special Purpose Grand Jury. During the Jan. 2, 2021 call with the Georgia Secretary of State, Trump’s “lawyers ticked off the numerous categories of illegal votes of which they had concrete evidence — some 25 categories. Trump had challenged those votes in the petition referenced by his attorney, but the court delayed the proceedings, which is why the legal team asked the secretary of state’s office to investigate the problem.”

Yet, as I previously reported, in subpoenaing Trump’s lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, Willis “reportedly asserted that Mitchell was a necessary witness for the grand jury proceedings because Mitchell participated in the call and allegedly ‘parroted claims of voter fraud.’” 

Mitchell did no such thing: She was “not pushing claims of voter fraud, but instead wanted the secretary of state’s office to investigate violations of Georgia election law.”

This brings us to page two of the final report issued by the Special Purpose Grand Jury, wherein the group summarized its findings as follows:

“The Grand Jury heard extensive testimony on the subject of alleged election fraud from poll workers, investigators, technical experts, and State of Georgia employees and officials, as well as from persons still claiming that such fraud took place. We find by a unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election.”

As this summary shows, the Grand Jury focused solely on questions of election fraud, which is understandable because it was D.A. Willis who fed the group the supposedly relevant facts and law. And as the other court documents establish, Willis falsely represented Trump’s call to Raffensperger, as well as inaccurately claiming Trump’s lawyer, Mitchell, was presenting claims of election fraud.

Thus, even if the Special Purpose Grand Jury impaneled from the heavily Democrat Fulton County acted impartially, it could only attempt, as it itself said in the report, “to understand the facts as presented and the laws as explained.”

Garbage in. Garbage out.  

And so, the grand jury’s view “that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it,” is meaningless without any context.  

Sure, maybe one of the witnesses lied on some other matter, but the most likely scenario is that those called before the Special Purpose Grand Jury testified truthfully that the Georgia election results were invalid because of widespread violation of state election law — including an outcome-determinative number of illegal votes. But with Willis’ bait-and-switch focus on fraud, the citizen jurors saw instead perjury.

Unless and until Willis charges those unnamed witnesses, however, everyone connected to Trump who testified will be unfairly branded a possible perjurer, when in reality, it may have instead been Willis who deceived the grand jury.  

After Affirmative Action

After Affirmative Action

Richard SamuelsonFebruary 15, 2023 Real Clear Politics

The betting odds are that the Supreme Court will soon rule against affirmative action. It is worth asking how we got here, and what we should do about it.

Why is affirmative action in jeopardy? The main reason, ironically, might be the increasing ethnic diversity of the United States. In 1960, the U.S. was roughly 88% white and 12% black. The census category “Hispanic” did not yet exist. Similarly, the U.S. did not have a separate “Asian” category for the less than one million Americans from various nations in Asia, though the 1960 census had separate boxes for some, but not all, Asian countries. Today the U.S. is 61% white and dropping. Among American children, the white/nonwhite population is rapidly approaching 50-50.

This demographic change is making our post-Jim Crow civil rights enforcement scheme unworkable. Passage and enforcement of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was an effort to end the tyranny of Jim Crow. Technically, the law made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, skin color, religion, sex, and national origin in most public and private domains, such as voter registration, employment, and public accommodations. But the interpretation of the law rapidly transformed from prohibiting categories of action to creating “protected classes” of people, to the point where it essentially pits white men – and now, with the introduction of sexual orientation as a protected class, specifically straight white men – against everyone else. Other than that shrinking group, all others are supposed to be “protected” from discrimination in our DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) regime.

Thanks in part to our demographic revolution, this approach is increasingly rife with contradictions. The lawsuit against affirmative action at elite private and public institutions is on the docket because its plaintiffs are Asian Americans, a protected class. From the perspective of elite university admissions offices, Asian students overperform and thus make it hard to admit the number of non-Asian, nonwhite applicants the schools would like to admit, without affirmatively favoring their candidacy on the basis of their protected status. Kenny Xu, writing in the Spectator, notes that “an Asian American student must score 450 points higher on the SAT to have the same chance of admission as a black student with the [otherwise] same qualifications.” In other words, affirmative action pits protected classes against each other.

If the Supreme Court cuts the Gordian Knot and rules affirmative action illegal under the Civil Rights Act, and/or declares that it is unconstitutional, what should be the next step? Even without affirmative action, our administrative bureaucracies, dedicated to the principle of equality of outcome, will work mightily to sustain the division between protected classes of people and others. They will, after the fashion of previous supporters of racialized schools, practice massive resistance. They, like their predecessors, need to be fought.

One way to fight may be to rework the government’s racial identification scheme. At the heart of our diversity enforcement one finds America’s census categories. One cannot apply to a college, or for a job, a promotion, a loan, or much else without being asked to check off optional demographic boxes. That fosters what one might call a protected class consciousness, and sows the seeds for conflict between what the bureaucrats and activists now call BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color), and anyone else. According to the logic of our civil rights regime, all nonwhite people, bound together under their oppressed status, share a fundamentally common interest.

The problem here is that by forcing all “people of color” into the same category, even after rapid demographic change fed by six decades of large-scale immigration, our legal regime points us toward civil war.

Voltaire once wrote that “If one religion only were allowed in England, the Government would very possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut one another’s throats; but as there are such a multitude, they all live happy and in peace.” James Madison was fond of that statement, which informed his famous argument for an extended republic in Federalist10. “Extend the sphere,” Madison wrote, “and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens.”

Though we have extended the sphere with regard to protected classes, our enforcement bureaucrats act like it’s still 1964, with white men dominating the population and economy while everyone else scrambles for scraps. The binary enforcement guidelines reward people for identifying themselves among aggrieved, protected classes, ensuring that the American polity will remain divided and become more so as groups compete for the allocation of resources.

One way to counter this tendency is to extend the identity revolution further. If identity boxes must exist, why not make them more specific, allowing Americans to list their countries of origin, or even racial or ethnic identities beyond that. After all, it is not reasonable to put the descendent of indigenous people in, say, Bolivia, with a descendant of the (still largely Spanish more than African or indigenous) Mexican elite in the same box. And that puts aside the absurd idea of calling the descendant of a Nazi war criminal who fled to Argentina “Hispanic.”

The BIPOC identity is like the mirror image of the traditional racist perspective that all nonwhite people are alike. As such, it’s worth attacking on a moral basis. And extending the identity sphere would make it difficult for our cultural imperialists to sustain their efforts to impose the BIPOC identity on roughly half of the rising generation of Americans, and would, I suspect, point us away from cultural civil war by fostering assimilation after the fashion of previous generations of immigrants.

Allowing everyone to self-identify in the most specific way or ways they wish would explode the existing system of categorization, and could potentially disrupt and destabilize our racial caste system, as the number of protected classes proliferates beyond control.

Allowing for more genuine identity categories would point us toward civic peace, foster civil friendship among Americans of all background, and block the efforts of elites and activists to divide us to suit their own ambitions.

Arms delivery to Ukraine accelerates Russian withdrawal, not prolongs it – German Chancellor Scholz

 

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke at Munich Security Conference (MSC) and urged allies to supply Ukraine with battle tanks. Scholz told the plenum that anyone who could do so should “really do it now.” At the Munich conference, he, along with Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, would promote this initiative, as reported by Spiegel.

In addition, Scholz also defended the arms deliveries in his speech as a contribution to an earlier end to the war.

“It is not our arms deliveries that are prolonging the war. The contrary is true,” asserted Scholz.

 

Additionally, Scholz stated that “the sooner President Putin realizes that he will not achieve his imperialist goal, the greater the likelihood of an early end to the war, of withdrawal of Russian conquering forces.” 

 

 

According to the chancellor, Germany now offers security leadership.

Scholz stated that “we take upon ourselves the responsibility that a country of Germany’s size, location, and economic power must bear in such times.”

He urged partners capable of sending Western-type tanks to Ukraine to do so.

“All those who can send battle tanks of this type should do so. Defence Minister Pistorius, Foreign Minister Baerbock, and I personally strongly advocate for this. Germany will do everything in its power to make these decisions easier for partners. For instance, by training Ukrainian soldiers to drive tanks here in Germany or providing  support in terms of supplies and logistics,” emphasized the German Chancellor. 

According to reports, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius stated that it would be difficult for Western allies to assemble two complete battalions of Leopard 2 tanks to fulfill their commitment to Ukraine.

Following a meeting with his German counterpart in Kyev, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov stated that 80 Leopard 1 tanks would be delivered to Ukraine by the end of the year, with the first two dozen arriving “by summer.”  

https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/02/17/arms-delivery-to-ukraine-accelerates-russian-withdrawal-not-prolongs-it-german-chancellor-scholz/  

Ron DeSantis Wins the Coveted George Soros Endorsement – Describing DeSantis as “Shrewd, Ruthless and Ambitious”

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

Saying that DeSantis “is shrewd, ruthless, and ambitious”, George Soros delivers an endorsement of the Florida governor adding, “He is likely to be the Republican candidate.”

When billionaire leftist and creepy globalist George Soros is complimenting your personality attributes, you just might be doing the whole Republican presidential candidate thing wrong. Just sayin’.

WASHINGTON DC – In a wide-ranging speech, Soros ripped Trump’s presidency and complemented elements of DeSantis’s style.  “DeSantis is shrewd, ruthless, and ambitious,” said Soros, adding, “He is likely to be the Republican candidate.”

Trump, on the other hand, “has turned into a pitiful figure continually bemoaning his loss in 2020. Big Republican donors are abandoning him in droves,” he said.

Soros, an international financier and philanthropist, typically dumps millions of dollars into political races and committees. He heads a global liberal network of groups pushing climate change, financial reform, and changes to the criminal system.  He recently teamed with Charles Koch and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to revive the Iran nuclear deal, according to reports. (read more)

This might be problematic.  In addition to DeSantis supporters needing to defend the unlimited Ukraine grift, and the value of eating bugs as a conservative lifestyle, now they have to spin an endorsement of ruthless ambition by Darth Soros.  Eh, sucks to be them.

George Soros never complimented Donald Trump.

In Presser, Biden Can’t Explain Why He’s Softer On Chinese Spying Than On Weather Balloons

Jordan Boyd reporting for The Federalist

The three unidentified objects the U.S. military shot out of North American airspace last week using six-figure missiles were “most likely” instruments owned by private research and recreation organizations for scientific purposes, President Joe Biden told reporters during a press conference on Thursday.

According to Biden, the U.S. government is still uncertain about what these objects are and what they were used to do, which is why crews are working to uncover the downed objects’ debris.

“We don’t yet know exactly what these three objects were,” Biden admitted. “But nothing, nothing, right now suggests they were related to China’s spy balloon program or they were surveillance vehicles from other any other country.”

Despite the objects’ seemingly innocuous purposes, Biden bragged that if “any object presents a threat to the safety and security of the American people, I will take it down.”

But what about objects that aren’t classified by Biden, his advisers, or anyone else in the intelligence-military complex as a “threat to the safety and security of the American people?” That’s what happened with the Chinese spy balloon.

Unnamed bureaucrats repeatedly assured Americans that the Chinese spy balloon, which was clearly equipped with “multiple antennas” that were “likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications” for “intelligence surveillance” above some of the nation’s most sensitive locations, did not “pose a military or physical threat.” The Biden administration used that unsourced claim as justification to wait to take out the enemy device until it had made its way across the entire continental U.S.

The Pentagon repeated similar assurances about the next three unidentified flying objects that were discovered hovering over North America days later.

“These objects don’t present a military threat to anyone on the ground,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.

But the objects were quickly fired out of the sky with missiles that cost $400,000 each because officials claimed the UFOs were a hazard to commercial aircraft.

How is it that the U.S. military, informed by intelligence agencies and commanded by Biden, scrambled to shoot down objects that officials clearly said didn’t pose a threat to U.S. national security, but wouldn’t shoot down an object launched by the United States’s top foreign adversary?

To recap, Biden said no one can definitively state what these objects were used for, but then said they are probably weather balloon lookalikes. The Pentagon said these UFOs weren’t a threat to national security, but then shot them down anyway. Meanwhile, the real threat, Red China’s espionage device, didn’t get blown out of the sky and sunk below the waves in the Atlantic Ocean until more than a week after it was detected.

None of Biden’s justifications for quickly shooting down weather balloons but not the Chinese spy balloon make sense, but Biden still insisted Americans should be proud of him.

“We shot it down, sending a clear message, clear message: the violation of our sovereignty is unacceptable. We will act to protect our country and we did,” Biden said.

The president brushed off questions about his own major conflicts of interest. Independent journalists have documented multiple Biden family members accepting millions from foreign officials throughout Joe Biden’s time in high-level government positions. Some of the largest of these national-security-implicating payments to Bidens have come from Chinese Communist Party officials, according to journalist Peter Schweizer and former Biden family business partners.

Biden said his job as president and commander-in-chief is to “always act to protect the interest of the American people and the security of the American people,” but Americans aren’t going to buy that when he can’t articulate why he rushed to shoot down a potentially friendly research device yet waited days to go after a hostile one.