Damn Right I'm Mad as Hell, My Country Is Going Down the Toilet

posted by Duke at RedState 

The other day I was engaging someone on Facebook who was simply regurgitating lines from their favorite candidate and speaking them as if they were facts. 

When I pointed out that they were not facts and provided evidence from one news source, I was told that was not a credible outlet and that I was being fooled into believing something that obviously wasn't true. When I then provided five different sources and one from a platform that this person had used before to show evidence of backing something up, I followed up with, "Does that make this a fact now, or are you still going to believe the lies that you were being told?"

Of course, in today's day and age people have a problem with being shown that they're wrong, and they would rather deflect and move on to the next subject than say, oh you know what I am a flawed human being and sometimes I do get things wrong. 

We all get things wrong. 

Each and every one of us, every person who has ever been born on the Big Blue Marble we call Earth, has inevitably and invariably gotten things wrong.

If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you should believe as I do that He was the only person ever to walk this planet who did not get something wrong. Otherwise, you can take comfort in knowing that you're in a huge boat and we have all screwed up at one point.

The last part of my engaging with this person is where I came up with the idea to do this article. 

I was told that I seemed angry and that maybe I wasn't looking at these things that were going on in the country with rational eyes. At that suggestion, I checked myself and, upon further review, my mouth opened and I wondered aloud why everybody isn't as mad as hell as I am about what's going on in this country?

Here are just some of the more recent examples of why this nation should be embarrassed and outraged. 

My first example comes from my colleague Bonchie who wrote this earlier today, New Messages Reveal Joe Biden Sought a Meeting With a Chinese Businessman After Millions in Payments

From that article:

President Joe Biden personally requested an audience with a Chinese oil executive whose company weeks earlier paid Hunter Biden millions of dollars in consulting fees, text messages obtained and released by the House Ways and Means Committee this week suggest.    

Hunter Biden said his uncle’s "brother" would be in New York City and wanted to meet with Ye Jianming, the chairman of the Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC, in an Aug. 27, 2017, WhatsApp message to CEFC director Gongwen Dong. Emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop show that he and his uncle, Jim Biden, were in the city that week to meet with Ye and discuss their ongoing business relationship. Earlier that month, CEFC had wired more than $5 million to Hunter Biden’s company, Hudson West III.

How in the name of anything you find holy can we be led by this person?

I know if you read a number of us during the 2020 election we were all united in opposition to Biden winning. Those of us who had an idea of how incompetent he was as a senator knew he was bad, but I don't know if anyone dreamed he was this much of a colossal mess up. We should be humiliated in our revolution because of how corrupt this man and his family are.

My colleague  Jennifer Oliver O'Connell touched on the incredibly sad state of last night's debate and whether this type of format is the best to sort out the GOP contenders. Was the Future Truly Debated at the Second GOP Presidential Debate?

The format still blows. My colleague Ward Clark feels that the Lincoln-Douglas style debates should wait for the general. I respectfully disagree. If you're going to have several of these debates, then pick THREE topics at most, and let everyone have at it and discuss them exhaustively. Instead, the moderators ask the question of one of the candidates, and the rest have a 30-second window to chime in or respond. This is, frankly, FUBAR. Let's throw the question out and then allow the candidates to have at it and each other. Frankly, this is where you see what they are made of and how well they handle the pressure.

Varney, Perino, and Calderón were a step above Brett Baier and Martha MacCallum, in my opinion. However, they were still closer to being monitors instead of moderators, not allowing every candidate a chance to respond or answer and scolding candidates for going over time. 

Is this truly the best we can do as a nation? Ask a serious policy question, give someone 45 seconds to respond, and have everyone jockey for top talk over?

This last one is just the icing on the crap cake.

My colleague Nick Arama tackled the lingering effects of the southern invasion we are ALLOWING and how it affects some of our most vulnerable citizens.   Shameful: 95-Year-Old Veteran and Others Booted From Nursing Home to Make Way for Illegal Aliens 

You know how bad it's been getting there when even the Democratic Mayor Eric Adams blasted Joe Biden over the issue. Of course, what they are feeling in New York City isn't even close to the problem that the cities on the border have been having. But now that it's affecting them, suddenly, New York Democrats are feeling it. As we reported, Biden blew off Adams when he was in NYC recently, not even bothering to meet with him.  That shows just how seriously Biden takes the problem, a figurative "drop dead" to NYC. 

But the way they have been dealing with it in New York City hasn't been good. 

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) held a press conference to call out how NYC was dealing with the crisis on Monday. A 95-year-old Korean War veteran was there, and Malliotakis detailed the horrible story of how he and other nursing home residents had just been

There are just three brief examples and I could write another 10 about why people should be thoroughly disgusted and angry about what's going on in this country. 

The last article really gets my goat because we're making room for people who aren't bothering to come here legally and are not in severe distress, and yet we're kicking out men or women who served in one of our nation's wars. All that hoo-ha about thank you for your service and giving a thumbs up to somebody wearing a uniform of the United States Armed Forces is absolutely meaningless when we are sitting by and watching this happen.

So when I'm asked about what we should do, I have to admit that the mountain is so big, the pile of crap so high that we've created, that I sometimes just want to throw my hands up and quit. That or just watch women's soccer because that'll melt my brain almost as fast as following all this stuff day in and day out.

Yet I know we have to keep exposing this, I know we have to keep making the point that this is all unacceptable, but for the moment that's all that I can suggest to do.

However, maybe there's another way to go about this.

Back in 1976, a movie came out called Network that followed some of the trials and tribulations of those in the news media at the time. The iconic scene at the end of the movie where anchor Howard Beale stands up and starts ranting into the camera about all the ills the country is currently facing oddly enough sounds like some of the very things we're facing here today.

Beale in his speech says he doesn't know what to suggest, but he wants people to walk out onto their patios or to their porches and just yell out into the night sky, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.

I'm not necessarily saying that's the solution, of course.

Yet I do know my mom and dad and my grandparents sacrificed all of their lives to pass down a better country and a greater opportunity for myself and those behind me. I feel horrible and angry that I'm letting them down and the next generation for what the current state of this country is in at this very moment.

They didn't work and sacrifice to watch the great experiment of the United States of America swirl down into the toilet bowl of world history.

Because of that, I am as mad as hell and I don't want to take it anymore. In the meantime, I'm going to let as many people as possible know why this is wholly unacceptable and why we have to do much better than we've been doing.

Make sure to click on the links above provided to my colleague's articles and as always make sure to check out my BIO right over here or below and let me know what you think whether you agree or disagree or might be somewhere in the middle.

Give this scene a quick view also.

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

X22, And we Know, and more- Sept 29

 

Source: https://deadline.com/2023/09/greys-anatomy-9-1-1-ncis-abbott-elementary-yellowjackets-back-to-work-writers-rooms-open-1235558737/

How long have I waited to hear this? Nah, I won't say, you know how long. :) The journey to bringing Hetty back in some way begins next week!

Is Paris infested with bedbugs? Sightings on trains see officials urge action ahead of Olympics

 

Are French trains infested with bedbugs? Passengers share videos of insects and bites.

Sightings of bedbugs on French trains have spiked in recent weeks.

Social media users have reported bites and shared videos and photos of carriages allegedly infested with the blood-sucking bugs.

Usually confined to hotels and homes, the problem appears to have spread to the Paris metro system and some cinemas in the capital.

National rail operator SNCF has denied that its trains are infested with the insects but has also said it will be vigilant over the coming weeks.

Paris City Hall has asked for urgent action from the state to combat the issue ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games.  

Are French trains infested with bedbugs?

Last week, a passenger travelling on a TGV train from Marseille to Paris reported the presence of bedbugs to the train conductor.

Passengers in the carriage were informed that they could request a refund for their ticket, French daily newspaper Le Parisien reports.

Two other sightings were reported in the same week on other SNCF trains. 

The train operator reassured Le Parisien that it carries out regular preventative treatment against pests and has not had any confirmed presence of bedbugs on its trains in recent months.

Sightings have not been limited to SNCF trains. Last Friday, a passenger travelling with low-cost train operator Ouigo posted a video on X - formerly Twitter - of an insect resembling a bedbug on her seat.

It was accompanied by the caption, “Ouigo, remember to disinfect your trains, thank you”.  

The problem may have even spread to the Paris Metro with Le Parisien reporting that a driver on line 8 flagged the presence of bedbugs in his cabin on Wednesday.

In the latest twist, bedbugs have been reported on TCL buses in Lyon, reports news site Actu.

Bedbugs have also been reported in Paris cinemas

Last month, a report of bedbugs in a UGC cinema in Paris spread panic on social media.

After visiting the cinema in Bercy Village, in the city’s 12th arrondissement, an X user posted photos of bites on her body allegedly received while watching a movie there.  

The cinema later posted an apology to customers via a press release on X, saying that it enacted an emergency procedure following sightings of bugs, including canine detection and high-temperature steaming.

It stopped short of offering customers a refund, saying it is difficult to determine the origin of bites.

Further reports of bedbugs were made in MK2 cinemas in Beaubourg and Bibliothèque, as well as other UGC cinemas in Châtelet-Les-Halles, Noisy-le-Grand and Bercy or the Pathé Alésia, according to newspaper Le Figaro.

MK2 says it continuously inspects its cinema rooms and has carried out intervention and detection procedures at sites with reported infestations. 

Are bedbugs dangerous?

Between 2017 and 2022, more than one in 10 French households faced a bedbug infestation, according to a recent report from Anses - the French National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety.

It puts the rise in infestations down to the growth in travel and increasing resistance of bedbugs to insecticides.

Although bedbugs do not spread diseases, their bites can be itchy and uncomfortable and the insects can spread rapidly. Dealing with an infestation can be difficult and costly.

The problem, which Anses says impacts households of all socio-economic backgrounds, costs on average €866 to fix. It advises non-chemical treatment methods such as extreme heat or freezing. 

What is being done to combat France’s bedbug problem?

In a letter addressed to PM Elisabeth Borne, Paris City Hall has urged action against the city’s bedbug problem, Le Monde reports.

“Bed bugs are a public health problem and should be reported as such,” wrote the city’s Deputy Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire. “The State must urgently bring together all the stakeholders concerned in order to deploy an action plan commensurate with this scourge as the whole of France prepares to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2024.”

To prevent the problem from spreading on its trains, SNCF says it carries out regular thorough cleaning and anti-pest procedures, including using traps and insecticide in inaccessible areas.

Preventative treatments are typically carried out every 60 days, it told radio network France Inter, but following recent reports it has stepped up checks to every 15 days for at least the next month.

If reports of pests on a specific train are proven, it is taken out of service until the problem is fixed, SNCF added.  

https://www.euronews.com/travel/2023/09/29/trains-and-cinemas-in-france-reportedly-infested-with-bedbugs-as-paris-officials-urge-acti   

The Ukrainian Gordian Knot ~ VDH

Risk of being cut by a Russian nuclear sword

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

Most Americans understandably favor the Ukrainian resistance against Vladimir Putin’s Russian naked 2022 aggression.

Yet for Ukraine to break the current deadlock—our generation’s Verdun with perhaps 600,000 combined casualties so far— and “win” the war, it apparently must have the military wherewithal to hit targets inside Russia.

Such strategically logical attacks might nevertheless provoke a wounded and unpredictable Russia finally to carry out its boilerplate and ignored existential threats.

From the last 75 years of big-power rivalries, the operational “rules” of proxy wars are well known.

In Vietnam, Korea, and Afghanistan, Russia supplied America’s enemies—sometimes even sending Russian pilots into combat zones.

Thousands of Americans likely died due to our adversaries’ use of Russian munitions and personnel.

Likewise, Russia lost 15,000 fatalities in its decade-long misadventure in Afghanistan. In part, Moscow’s defeat may have been due to deadly American weapons, including sophisticated Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.

In the bloody decades of these big-power proxy wars, many were fought on or near the borders of Russia or China.

Yet none of these surrogate conflicts of the nuclear age ever led to hot wars between the U.S. and Russia or China.

But Ukraine risks now becoming a new—and different—proxy war altogether.

Never has the U.S. squared off against Russia or China in a conventional proxy war over either’s respective historical borders (whether illegitimate or not).

Neither has Russia nor the U.S. itself ever provided weapons to a proxy belligerent that were used directly inside the respective homeland of either side. They understood superpowers react unpredictably to any third-party who fuels direct conventional attacks on their homelands.

Nobly protecting both Ukraine and Taiwan understandably holds a potential risk of big-power escalation that even Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, and Iraq likely did not.

The U.S. rightly is very sensitive to intrusions of any rival big power near its own borders.

When the Soviets had supplied missiles aimed at the U.S. to its proxy communist Cuba, the Kennedy administration was willing to risk war against Moscow. Indeed, America went to DefCon 2, the second highest level of nuclear readiness.

If all the current 1916-style talk of going into Mexico—ostensibly to stop the cartels from importing drugs over an inert border that kill 100,000 Americans a year—were to be reified, would the U.S. warn Moscow not to supply Mexico or the cartels with weapons or advisors?

The U.S. in 1917 declared war in part because of German interference in our own territorial affairs.

A hacked telegram from German State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Arthur Zimmermann revealed Germany had promised a potential proxy, Mexico, some U.S. territory if it were to join the Central Powers to defeat the Allies. That provocation helped convince enraged Americans to enter World War I.

The 9/11 hit was followed by an immediate American invasion of Afghanistan on the grounds that the third-party Taliban helped terrorists strike our homeland.

Additionally, nowhere in the world has territory been more disputed than in Ukraine.

Seventy-eight years ago, Joseph Stalin’s Russia formally annexed his previously stolen western regions of currently independent Ukraine. The lands were taken mostly from Poland, but also a few parts from Hungary, Romania, and the former Czechoslovakia.

Russia also seized and occupied Crimea in 2014. The peninsula had previously been Russian from 1783-1954.

Yet Crimea was only ceded by Soviet Russia to Soviet Ukraine in 1954 as a political ploy of then Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev —himself born near the Ukrainian border.

Khrushchev sought to ensure that a restive Ukraine stayed an integral part of a supposedly eternal Soviet Union by ceremonially including Crimea into one of its own Soviet state’s sub-jurisdictions.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, the short-lived Russian-majority, and independent Republic of Crimea (1992-95), was annexed by the newly independent Ukraine.

It then remained part of the Ukrainian nation for 19 years until the 2014 invasion.

Why Putin for a third time dared invade Ukraine is obfuscated by contemporary domestic politics.

He likely enacted his irredentist agenda of restoring the borders of the former Soviet Union in 2008, 2014, and 2021, because he gambled—correctly—that the Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations could not successfully oppose his serial annexations.

Equally forgotten were the policies of the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations regarding the 2014 Russian annexation of the Donbas and Crimea. Prior to the February 24, 2022 Russian attack on Kyiv, none of the three had ever sought to force Russia to give up either the borderlands or the Crimea.

The Obama administration’s disastrous 2009-2014 Russian “reset” appeasement policy, the 2015-16 Russian collusion hoax, and the humiliating American skedaddle from Kabul also convinced Putin that America either would not or could not oppose his 2022 invasion.

America should help Ukraine resist Russian aggression. But we should be mindful in doing so that the entire region is an historical Gordian Knot of poorly understood but ancient intertwined and competing threads—one that may risk being cut by a Russian nuclear sword.

Biden's New Office of Gun Violence Prevention Has Little to Do with Curbing Gun Violence

Jeff Charles reporting for RedStateVIP 

Prepare to be shocked. President Joe Biden has tapped an anti-police activist to head up the brand-spanking new Office of Gun Violence Prevention. The new initiative, which will be overseen by Vice President Kamala Harris, is intended to employ solutions to decrease the amount of gun-related violence occurring across the country.

They've tapped a curious choice to help lead the effort. Greg Jackson, a former left-wing activist, has quite a history of advocating against funding law enforcement. The Biden administration is touting the new office as a critical step in addressing violent crime, but the presence of someone like Jackson underscores what others have seen: This is merely an effort to attack the right to keep and bear arms, not to deal with gun violence.

The Biden administration announced the formation of the new office last week.

A leader of President Joe Biden’s anti-gun violence initiative is a former left-wing activist who decried larger police budgets in the wake of the George Floyd crime wave.

Biden launched the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention on Sept. 22, as part of his administration's effort to "combat the epidemic of gun violence that is tearing our families, our communities, and our country apart." Officially helmed by Vice President Kamala Harris, the initiative will be led in part by Greg Jackson, the former executive director of the left-wing Community Justice Action Fund.

The president lauded Jackson and Rob Wilcox, whom Biden also tapped for the office, for "being advocates for change." But the change Jackson advocates for puts him at odds with a major White House stance.

Jackson has attacked police departments and their budgets throughout his career, including in a January 2021 University of Maryland policing seminar when he lamented that he is "struggling to survive while … police budgets thrive." That same year, Jackson participated in an Obama Foundation webinar entitled "Re Imagining Policing," during which he touted "community-led violence intervention and prevention strategies" in place of traditional law enforcement. The goal, Jackson said, is to "ultimately reduce the need for policing."

Jackson has also been involved in conversations regarding the reimagining of policing. In 2021, he touted community-led violence intervention and prevention strategies as alternatives to traditional law enforcement. The underlying objective is to decrease the necessity for policing, which seems to contradict Biden’s stated support for traditional law enforcement.

The new official is also affiliated with the Community Justice Action Fund, a leftist organization that opposes increased funding for law enforcement agencies. Backed by George Soros, it has openly argued in favor of governments divesting from aggressive policing practices. The fact that the organization scrubbed Jackson’s bio from its website seems to suggest that the White House might understand that his positions might be controversial, given the issue he is tasked with addressing.

There is merit to the notion that policing in America needs to be reformed. But this does not truly appear to be Jackson’s goal. Folks like him seek to eliminate policing and replace it with something that could be worse, no matter how good it sounds. Yes, community action is also necessary to preventing crime, but when it comes to violent offenders, there is some level of policing that is needed, which underscores what many believe the new office’s true objective is.

The reality, as I’ve stated before, is that the Biden administration’s new office has little to do with curbing gun-related violence and everything to do with imposing more gun control measures that will make it harder for law-abiding Americans to obtain and carry firearms. Doing away with law enforcement without having a viable strategy to address violent criminals is contradictory to the stated objective of the new office. This will do nothing to stop these individuals from victimizing innocent civilians.

But again, if the true objective is to limit legal gun ownership, why would the White House bother to focus on the true root causes of violent crime? In fact, it makes more sense to allow these offenses to persist because it helps them continue making the case for more gun control. The official stance of the new office is to address gun violence. But as more details emerge, it becomes even more clear that the true goal is more gun control.

Trump Impeachment Cheerleaders in Media Do Biden’s Bidding with Blackout on Republicans’ Impeachment Inquiry

Jordan Boyd reporting for The Federalist 

Corporate media like CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, and ABC, which were once eager to amplify Democrats’ sham impeachments of former President Donald Trump, did the bidding of the Biden administration on Thursday when they refused to air footage of Republicans’ impeachment hearing.

Instead of covering the GOP’s impeachment inquiry and showing the public the latest round of Biden corruption evidence, several notorious Trump impeachment cheerleaders such as CNN and MSNBC chose to flood their front pages and the airwaves with footage of Biden’s “democracy”-themed Arizona speech.

Those media organizations that acknowledged the impeachment inquiry was happening only did so to cartoonishly glad-hand Democrats for using “GOP’s own talking points against them” and pen dishonest “fact-checks” designed to discredit evidence of Biden’s corruption.

 

The blackout appears to comply with a memo disseminated to the media by White House spokesman Ian Sams, who earlier this month demanded that outlets “ramp up [] scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies.”

Sams specifically warned press like CNN, The New York Times, the Associated Press, and CBS News that the inquiry should “set off alarm bells for news organizations” because he claimed it lacked evidence.

Since the beginning of the Biden corruption investigation, corporate media claimed over and over and over and over and over that the Republicans’ inquiry was politically motivated. The press’ response to Biden’s influence peddling is starkly different than their behavior when their number one political opponent was the president under congressional scrutiny.

The media’s Trump impeachment celebrations started well before the Republican was elected. By the time he entered the White House on Inauguration Day 2017, The Washington Post had published an article declaring, “The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.”

In 2019, when Democrats moved to impeach Trump for the first time, they relied on reports from CNN and other corporate media outlets to spur their scrutiny and pressure Republicans to denounce their party leader.

“Trump’s GOP support hardens despite damning impeachment testimony,” one Washington Post headline read.

Even with the help of publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post, which edited the transcript of Trump’s Ukraine call to accuse him of abusing power, Democrats’ impeachment failed.

“Right up through the end of Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-Calif.) impeachment hearings, the media were impeachment’s most enthusiastic supporters,” The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway noted in 2019.

Democrats tried again in 2021 by relying on the propaganda press’ inflation of the importance of the January 6 Capitol riot. Their efforts, despite support from corporate media, once again failed.

Nancy Mace Drops the Hammer on Dems' 'Bullshit" Defense of Biden During Impeachment Inquiry

Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

The impeachment inquiry started with a bang on Thursday. 

As I reported, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) lit up the room as he produced charts and messages, and asked a forensic accountant and a former assistant attorney general about those messages, blowing up the Democratic line that there was nothing here and "no evidence." 

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) opened by saying she wasn't going to stand for any of the Democratic talk about a vote on impeachment inquiry when in the past, Democrats like Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) had argued there was no formal rule for how such an impeachment inquiry was to begin. "I don't want to hear another word," she said. "This is complete and total hypocrisy."

Warning: coarse language

Mace pointed to a 2017 deal with Chinese company CEFC, alleging the deal involved making millions "off of granting access to Joe Biden."

"Hunter even arranged for Joe Biden to share office space with the CCP-aligned company CEFC," she said.

We've reported on that here. 

She then pointed out -- in very colorful terms -- how the claim that this all happened when Biden was no longer vice president wasn't true. 

"My Democrat colleagues say none of this is relevant because Joe Biden wasn't vice president while his family did these shady deals," she said. "Turns out that's complete and total bulls---. It's a lie."

"Hunter Biden referred to access to his father as the keys to his family's only asset. Those words are going to come back and haunt Hunter Biden and his family forever," she said.

Mace laid out what Tony Bobulinski had told the Committee, including the CEFC was closing significant business deals in a variety of countries, including in Kazakhstan and the Middle East, and they were trying to use the Biden name and their connection to it to advance their interests. That connection -- and help from Jim Biden and Hunter Biden -- was going on when Joe was vice president.

Hunter and Jim didn't get compensation while Joe was VP, according to Bobulinski, because of the concern about CEFC connection to the Chinese government. But of course, they're Bidens; they still wanted the money. Then the Bidens made a million dollars shortly after Joe Biden left office. Mace termed that "back pay." 

Mace also brought another text involving a meeting with the Chinese and Hunter's uncle's "BROTHER" (all in caps). "Hmm, I wonder who that could be," Mace mused. "I can't quite figure it out." That showed evidence of Joe's involvement. 

"Betraying your country is treason," Maces finished explosively.

New Messages Reveal Joe Biden Sought a Meeting with a Chinese Businessman After Millions in Payments

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

With the first impeachment inquiry hearing underway on Thursday, the slow drip of evidence against Joe Biden continues. A new report has revealed text messages showing that the now-president requested a meeting with a Chinese businessman who had just weeks prior paid Hunter Biden millions of dollars. 

President Joe Biden personally requested an audience with a Chinese oil executive whose company weeks earlier paid Hunter Biden millions of dollars in consulting fees, text messages obtained and released by the House Ways and Means Committee this week suggest.    

Hunter Biden said his uncle’s "brother" would be in New York City and wanted to meet with Ye Jianming, the chairman of the Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC, in an Aug. 27, 2017, WhatsApp message to CEFC director Gongwen Dong. Emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop show that he and his uncle, Jim Biden, were in the city that week to meet with Ye and discuss their ongoing business relationship. Earlier that month, CEFC had wired more than $5 million to Hunter Biden’s company, Hudson West III.

This appears to be the same Chinese "chairman" mentioned in another bombshell WhatsApp message. In it, Hunter Biden said that his father was "in the room" during an attempted shakedown of Henry Zhao, a CCP-connected businessman. Hunter Biden also indicated that Joe Biden would be directly involved in punishing Zhao if the money was not handed over. 

In these latest messages, we see Hunter Biden very careful not to mention his father's name directly, instead referring to him as his uncle's "brother."

"My uncle will be here with his BROTHER who would like to say hello to the Chairman," Hunter Biden texted Dong as they were arranging a luncheon meeting with Ye later that afternoon. "So please give me location and time. Jim’s BROTHER if he is coming just wants to say hello he will not be stopping for lunch."

Hunter Biden appears to be referring to his father, who had extensive involvement in the Biden family’s dealings with CEFC. His other uncle, Frank Biden, had no known involvement with the Chinese company.

We keep seeing these "coincidences," and there's no reason to actually believe they are coincidences. Why was Joe Biden wanting to "say hello" to a CCP-linked businessman who had just given $5 million to his son for "consulting." Further, what was the consulting for? 

None of this makes any sense. There would be no reason for Biden to want to meet with a man whom he supposedly didn't even know because he was so disconnected from his son's dealings. What this clearly appears to be is a sort of proof of influence play. Biden shows up to "say hello," and the Chinese are then satisfied that they are getting what they are paying for. There was no legitimate service being provided by Hunter Biden.

Lastly, it's worth noting that Hunter Biden's associates regarding his dealings with CEFC Energy have been charged with FARA violations. Why has Hunter Biden himself not been charged? Why was it illegal for Gal Luft to make money from CEFC Energy as an unregistered foreign agent but it wasn't for the president's son? I certainly have my suspicions.

Club For Growth Cries Uncle – McIntosh Tells Donors No Attack Effort Against Trump is Working

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

It is important, VERY IMPORTANT, to remember the Club for Growth (CfG) is the Ron DeSantis career financial vehicle.  Ever since his first steps into congress, CfG has been the primary financial sponsor for the now Florida Governor.  There is no moment in the political career of DeSantis where CfG does not exist.

While the DeSantis SuperPAC Never Back Down is the mechanics of the DeSantis election strategy, CfG is the well invested advising side and David McIntosh has been the source of DeSantis career guidance for a decade.  That’s how intrinsically connected Club for Growth is to Ron and Casey DeSantis.

CfG has also opposed Donald Trump for his “America First” economic plan from the moment they realized Trump was serious about economic nationalism, control over immigration, a renewal of the American manufacturing sector, balanced trade and reciprocal tariffs.  All of these policy points are against the interests of McIntosh and larger Club for Growth agenda.  The CfG has been working against Trump since 2016.

That is the appropriate context for a memo written by David McIntosh to those who fund Club for Growth as reported by the New York Times.  McIntosh writes a brutally honest letter to the professionally republican donor class saying all of their efforts against Trump have been futile, and there is no effective strategy that will break the bond the American middle-class voter has with President Donald Trump.

(New York Times) – A well-funded group of anti-Trump conservatives has sent its donors a remarkably candid memo that reveals how resilient former President Donald J. Trump has been against millions of dollars of negative ads the group deployed against him in two early-voting states.

The political action committee, called Win It Back, has close ties to the influential fiscally conservative group Club for Growth. It has already spent more than $4 million trying to lower Mr. Trump’s support among Republican voters in Iowa and nearly $2 million more trying to damage him in South Carolina.

But in the memo — dated Thursday and obtained by The New York Times — the head of Win It Back PAC, David McIntosh, acknowledges to donors that after extensive testing of more than 40 anti-Trump television ads, “all attempts to undermine his conservative credentials on specific issues were ineffective.”

[…] “Even when you show video to Republican primary voters — with complete context — of President Trump saying something otherwise objectionable to primary voters, they find a way to rationalize and dismiss it,” Mr. McIntosh states in the “key learnings” section of the memo.

“Every traditional postproduction ad attacking President Trump either backfired or produced no impact on his ballot support and favorability,” Mr. McIntosh adds. “This includes ads that primarily feature video of him saying liberal or stupid comments from his own mouth.”

[…] The memo says this of Win It Back’s most promising pandemic-themed ad: “This ad was our best creative on the pandemic and vaccines that we tested in focus group settings, but it still produced a backlash in our online randomized controlled experiment — improving President Trump’s ballot support by four points and net favorability by 11 points.”

Win It Back did not bother running ads focused on Mr. Trump as an instigator of political violence or as a threat to democracy. The group tested in a focus group and online panel an ad called “Risk,” narrated by former Representative Liz Cheney, that focused on Mr. Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021. But the group found that the Cheney ad helped Mr. Trump with the Republican voters, according to Mr. McIntosh. (read more)