Thursday, December 21, 2023

Buy Your Kids Toy Guns This Christmas


There was recently a Twitter kerfuffle when some frustrated harridan, this time in Nebraska, blew a crone gasket because a store is selling toy guns to kids. She’s one of those Moms Demand Action types, and it’s pretty clear she’ll be demanding for a while. She frets that kids playing with toy guns “will be a problem when kids start getting them for Christmas, learn to quickly assemble their guns & bring them to school,” as if – between perverts, communists, and children of degenerate parents packing actual heat – popguns are the big threat to the kids in the schools these days. 

Won’t someone please, please, think of the children? Well, we are. Which is why they must be exposed to toy guns at a young age. And toy firetrucks and race cars and airplanes and the rest of the actiony, adventury toys that begin to teach little boys to be big men. And for girls – and only girls, because only girls will ever be mothers – there are baby dolls as well. Play is play, sure, but play is also practice. It is how children begin to model themselves on adults by copying adult behaviors. And one of the most important of adult behaviors is learning to use violence against enemies in order to defend themselves, their families, their communities, and their Constitution. 

The sour squaw, who is bitter that young boys want to be like adult men and that young girls might not want to be alone and sad like her, hates this idea. She objects to firearms being normalized for children and adults as well, and hates and demonizes those who wish to do so. Ironically, she can only embrace this boutique bigotry against the people who make her country safe because those people she despises have made her country safe for her – by using guns. 

All through human history, the weak – like her and the sissy biological males who simp for this type of woman – have been at the mercy of the strong. And strong means physically strong, not just loud, shrill, and grating. Chairman Mao, whom these people no doubt admire in every other context, observed that power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist mass murderer at least had that right. Power used to be the sole domain of the biggest and the strongest men. The guy who could swing that broadsword ruled over both the weaker men, and the women, who could not – no appeal, no negotiation. Put away these dumb modern cliches of 110-pound waifs taking on human ogres weighing in at three times their mass. Size matters. Or, rather, it matters when guns are not in the equation.

The modern gun – an effective, reliable, and affordable tool that one can operate capably with some basic training – changed that reality. Suddenly, that 300-pound berserker was no longer necessarily the undisputed boss because a 120-pound lady with a Glock could put him down. And a bunch of citizens with weapons could deter or defeat the forces of the local warlord. Just ask Great Britain. The invention and dissemination of modern firearms was a revolution in human liberty. The fact is that a gun is freedom. It is freedom from the tyranny of size and mass. You want equity? Buy a .45.

And dumb people like Demanding Mom want to undo that. 

Remarkably, they believe that somehow stripping the physically weaker of the means to protect themselves from the physically stronger will result in…well, a world that looks just like their status quo. What she and her affluent ilk claim they are seeking is the kind of society we normals generally have already, one that is pretty much (though not completely) safe outside of the savage Democrat inner city hellscapes where the vast majority of violence happens. If you live in her neighborhood, the chances of someone being murdered, by guns or anything else, are statistically insignificant. Yet what she alleges she wants, via disarming you, is that in her neighborhood the chances of someone being murdered, by guns or anything else, be nearly statistically insignificant. Except it already is.

As far as normal America outside the Democrat chaos goes, she and the gun grabbers have a solution in search of a problem. She does not want to change the outcome; what she wants to change is a variable that leads to the outcome thinking the outcome will not change. But changing variables changes outcomes. If you disarm the law-abiding people outside the blue cities, you will get the opposite of peaceful as the degenerates, thugs, and criminals that the Democrats suck up to will come out to loot and pillage the suddenly disarmed populations. But that’s not important to her type – if lowering crime was their priority, they would be clamoring to send the Army into DC to suppress the crime wave. Their priority is you being disarmed, and therefore powerless.

Why? Hate. These gun banners hate normal people – their disarmament agenda goes hand-in-hand with the agenda of defunding the police for everything except persecuting normal gun owners and people who use weapons in self-defense. Why do they hate us? A lot is aesthetic – they find us crude and dirty and scary. So scary that we must be made vulnerable to the forces they think they prefer, like the government and the criminal class, though I repeat myself. That this is suicidal never occurs to them. They cannot conceive of a society where they are at actual risk, instead of the fake risk posed by angry insurrectionist Trump voters shooting up their Whole Foods with fully semiautomatic AR15s and hundred-bullet clips. So they pull blocks out of the social Jenga tower thinking it can’t possibly fall. Well, I was on the streets with the 160th Infantry during the LA Riots and lady, I beg to differ.

But their hate cannot be countered by reason. They want us disarmed on the way to being disenfranchised. The idea that there will be a new generation trained to be actual men and women, citizens instead of serfs, is therefore hateful to them. They want boys neutered and sitting quietly in class reading their pornographic textbooks about how some men menstruate. They want girls to be bitter, frigid faux girl-bosses like themselves – ignoring the truth that girl bosses exist now, for the first time in human history, only because people with guns keep them from being beaten into submission by physically more powerful men and other women, for that matter.

When you let your kid play with toy guns, you teach your kid about what an adult’s responsibilities are. Fighting bad people is one of them. And your kids are going to be covering for a lot of social freeloaders when they do. Her kids Kaden nor Ashliegh will ever carry their weight by carrying an AR15 – they are on the pre-school fast track to some Ivy League conformity factory. But your kid will, because your kid is going to be awesome. You will teach your kids starting young that they must be citizen-warriors. Then you will teach them to shoot real guns, and they will want to learn, because shooting guns is what free adults do. 

Those with guns and the skill and will to use them will always rule. The “use your inside voice” fantasies of a nanny state controlled not by legitimate violence but by the nagging and hectoring of wine women can only last so long. So teach your kids early, because either they will be armed and rule themselves, or disarmed with someone else ruling them.



X22, On the Fringe, and more- December 21

 




Is Obama’s Netflix Film an Attempt to ‘Pre-Program’ America?


It's a very, very peculiar film 
coming out at an even more peculiar time


Perhaps the most compelling subject of conversation in America today isn’t the impeachment of Joe Biden, the Israel-Gaza war, the Ukraine war, our spiraling federal debt or even Taylor Swift’s love life. Instead, it’s Leave The World Behind, an apocalyptic Netflix production which is currently the streaming service’s most viewed film.

Leave The World Behind is a very, very peculiar piece of art. How many motion pictures, after all, can claim a former president and first lady as executive producers? Ethan Hawke, Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali and Kevin Bacon headline the cast. It’s full of so many unusual visuals and such a bizarre plot that half of cyberspace is convinced it’s an example of predictive programming.

What’s predictive programming? Derided by our elites as a conspiracy theory, it’s the notion that certain things are embedded into the pop culture to make the public accepting of them when later they turn up in real life. The 2011 movie, Contagion, for example, presented a fictional scenario which bore a strange resemblance to the COVID-19 pandemic. Even more peculiar was a 2019 episode of Netflix’s series Explained called The Next Pandemic, in which Microsoft founder Bill Gates was seen predicting a virus would kill millions of people after originating in a Chinese “wet market.”

When COVID-19 emerged, a not-insignificant segment of the population saw the worldwide response, tinged as it was by pronouncements from suspicious actors like the World Economic Forum that the pandemic could be used to bring on a global socialist “Great Reset,” as simply the follow-through to a pre-planned release. And while that might sound like a wild theory, we’ve seen subsequent disclosure that Anthony Fauci, America’s highest-paid government employee, had directed tax dollars to perform gain-of-function research at a Chinese lab with connections to biowarfare. When that same lab was the site of a viral leak which produced the COVID-19 pandemic, a pandemic that deprived us of our most basic God given freedoms, it wasn’t just the zany conspiracy theorists who saw something sinister in the works.

Throw in the George Floyd riots and a 2020 presidential election with a series of statistically impossible anomalies, and Americans of all walks of life increasingly questioned everything our government told us to be true.

Americans always used to take truth, rooted in Judeo-Christian tradition, for granted. It was not just the basis of our civic order, but the foundation of our economic success. This was, until Barack Obama.

American Spectator columnist Scott McKay’s new book, Racism, Revenge and Ruin: It’s All Obama, makes the case that it’s Obama who’s the most important driver of change in America – and not in a good way. From race relations to economic consolidation to the weaponization of government agencies to the abuse of the culture and more, the book explains, chapter and verse, how Obama managed the “fundamental transformation” of the country in ways Americans didn’t see coming and certainly wouldn’t have voted for.

The appearance of Leave The World Behind, with its bleak, hostile and even misanthropic tone in describing the end of the world brought on by a combination of cyberattacks, nuclear terrorism, disinformation and other means, is more than peculiar.

It’s sinister.

This is a time, after all, when the country is already on edge with a perception that Obama’s former Vice President Joe Biden is totally inadequate to the job and not really in charge, that our institutions have been corrupted and no longer serve us, that community spirit in America has broken down, that our infrastructure is compromised and that we’re in a pronounced national decline. And given all of that, Barack and Michelle Obama come along to produce a film which offers a window into our national destruction?

You can’t blame the internet for raising the specter of predictive programming with respect to this movie. Especially when Esmail told the entertainment press that Obama’s role was to offer notes on the script in an effort to add “realism” to the scenario. But what Obama certainly added was racism, revenge and ruin, as McKay’s very important book suggests. Leave the World Behind is a very, very peculiar film coming out at an even more peculiar time. And Barack Obama has not earned the benefit of our doubt.




Netflix and the Erasure of History

It was good while it lasted


Trust should not be doled out easily to anyone, especially white people.”
– Excerpt from “Leave the World Behind,” ~ Netflix December 8, 2023

If anyone thinks Netflix has abandoned the so-called woke programming that earned them sustained criticism back in the spring of 2022 and may have played a role in their cratering stock price at the time, their new movie should put that thought to rest. Woke, for lack of a better term, is alive and well at Netflix. Their cozy relationship with nouveau plutocrat power couple and White House alumni, Barack and Michelle Obama, and the blockbuster bomb of a movie they’ve produced together, epitomizes the culture of Netflix today. Such casual racism. “Don’t trust white people.” It’s ok when they do it. But don’t you dare.

To truly appreciate where Netflix is today, one must recall how they began. During the golden age of movie DVDs, in the late 1990s, Netflix arose as the mail-order alternative to renting videos from walk-in stores. But creative destruction never ends. Just as Netflix movies by mail drove corner movie rental stores out of business, streaming made DVDs delivered by mail obsolete.

On September 29, Netflix shipped their last DVD to subscribers and cancelled the service. And with that, one of the last, best windows into nearly a century of American culture was closed forever. At its peak around 2019, more than 100,000 movie titles were available on DVD, arriving in the familiar red envelopes. But as the subscriber base for DVDs shrank and competition from other streaming services grew, Netflix management decided the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze.

This is a rational business decision. Netflix, a content behemoth with an enterprise value that has soared to more than $170 billion, doesn’t need the headache of managing 17 DVD distribution centers tasked with shipping and receiving actual physical media. Netflix owns server farms that dispatch movies electronically, and their investment in physical assets must now prioritize production studios where the company invests literally billions in generating original content. With more than 50 percent of all video consumption in the U.S. now consisting of user generated content at zero cost to platforms like YouTube and TikTok, Netflix’s challenge is keeping their 240 million streaming subscribers, not hanging on to a dwindling cadre of 1.2 million DVD clients.

Nonetheless, losing public access to what was, by far, the greatest collection of movies ever compiled is a tragedy. Netflix streaming services currently offer around 3,600 movies, barely 3 percent of what could be found in their DVD archives. It’s easy to miss the significance of this loss for any American under 30 (or 40?). When it comes to mass entertainment, late millennials and members of Gen Z have spent their entire lives exposed to almost nothing but garbage – stylized violence, mandatory diversity, movies without plots; nothing but action, special effects, and political indoctrination. Why would anyone who hasn’t sampled the rich legacy of American film before the age of woke have any idea what they’re missing – not only what movies once were, but how they depict what life was once like?

For 25 years, Netflix gave us all a chance to touch the memories that defined us, the world we knew. Movies are an incomparable window into American history and culture, good and bad. They incorporate bits of everything, not merely the stories we told but the fashion, the music, the technology of the time. They show us what our nation looked like in each decade, who we were and how we lived.

The average American now spends two hours and 24 minutes every day on social media, typically either blowing out their emotional equilibrium in pointless, endless acrimony, or flipping through addictive, useless videos. The average American between the ages of 15 and 24 spends over an hour every day playing video games, equally addictive and equally useless.

Netflix, until September 29, offered something more. It not only offered a boundless oeuvre of cinematic drama, a glimpse into America’s soul, it offered long-form content devoid of cheap tricks and vacuous, agenda driven narratives. These old movies delivered intricate plots that required sustained attention.

With old movies we can see clearly how each decade brought a new way of looking at the past. What was dramatic and authentic then is often seen now as ham-handed and corny. In the early American Westerns, our portrayals of Indians were arguably toxic but also naive. A white actress would play the part of an Indian squaw, with incongruous blue eyes and red greasepaint on her face that the makeup artist didn’t even bother to extend to her hairline. White men would act the parts of Indians by wearing dark wigs with ponytails and neglecting to conjugate their verbs. And the music: a brass section ominously blasting pentatonic melodies in parallel fifth harmony every time an Indian appeared on the horizon or galloped up on horseback. There is value in seeing these tropes today. It reminds us how far we’ve come.

Old movies also remind us how far we’ve fallen. Movies show us what life was like before, for example, oligarchs started using “green” building codes to turn the U.S. into a rentier economy. Ward Cleaver today would not be strolling up a path surrounded by lawn to greet his wife and sons in a detached home with a yard. That man today would come home to a condo, his “owned” square footage part of a building with sixteen units per acre and no yard. He and his wife would both work full time to pay a mortgage that would consume every spare dime they could earn. Children, if they had any, would be holed up in a dark bedroom, glued to their screens.

Movies remind us of what we faced in more difficult times, and how we coped with challenges that dwarf – at least so far – the problems of today. Watch a young Sterling Hayden, a commander in the classic 1952 World War 2 drama “Flat Top,” whip his recruits into shape for air combat. Watch Henry Fonda try to keep his family together in “The Grapes of Wrath,” as they are displaced during the Great Depression in the 1930s. Watch Jimmy Stuart’s character in “It’s a Wonderful Life” fall into despair, then recover his optimism with the support of his small community, or watch the entire City of New York rally behind Edmund Gwenn’s character in “Miracle on 34th Street.” These and countless others were inspiring, sobering movies that have lasting relevance, produced by people who loved this country and wanted to encourage values of unity and selflessness. Movies made by people whose social consciousness expressed itself by presenting and upholding inspiring role models, traditional values, and patriotism, and by rejecting decadence. Try to find these classics on Netflix streaming. You might find a few dozen of the biggest hits. The rest, which are nowhere to be found, will fade further into obscurity, along with the culture that made them.

Movies from decades long past show what life was like in America before the nation simultaneously drowned itself in debt while its suddenly disenfranchised youth disappeared into an online stupor. They show us what life was like before, without anyone being consulted, and within just a few decades, we overturned our entire national ethnic composition at the same time as our ruling class decided to teach all of America’s new arrivals to view those of us who were already here as privileged racists living on stolen land. Movies made before this historic betrayal depicted a high trust society, flawed to be sure, but committed to a shared culture and shared heritage.

All of that is gone now. Without the ability to see our history, dramatized and made accessible through old movies, will enough of us tomorrow recognize the revolutionary intent of movies like Leave the World Behind? Its part in the movement to Fundamentally Transform America? Or will our history and our people have melted into an undifferentiated, timeless, Pavlovian, algorithmically curated now?

Netflix gave us something beautiful, then took it away. It was good while it lasted.



Queer Activists Are Putting Pornographic Books In Little Free Libraries

‘We want the bottom shelf to be accessible by littles,’ says the queer-supporting atheist working to share sex books with kids.



The president of Northern Indiana Atheists raised money to build several Little Free Libraries in 2024 specifically to “share banned and challenged diverse books,” including those with LGBT messaging and pornographic material. 

Troy Moss fundraised for the project over his Facebook page in November, surpassing his goal of $800. According to Moss, he gathered almost $1,000 for the project, which will begin in 2024. Little Free Libraries are small wooden boxes planted in neighborhoods that serve as book exchanges. Moss’s libraries will be built in the South Bend and Mishawaka, Indiana areas.

“We have installation locations ready to go,” Moss said in a recent update. “We will spend the winter months building and collecting books and we will install them in the spring of 2024 when the ground thaws.”

Moss wrote the project was motivated by recent efforts from “local religious extremists” to put books for children that show and describe queer sex acts on request-only shelves in the local government-run library.

“We want the bottom shelf to be accessible by littles,” Moss said, displaying his Little Free Library design. Neither Moss nor the Northern Indiana Atheists responded to requests for comment.

The Little Free Library national organization “does not police what stewards put in their Little Free Libraries,” spokeswoman Margret Aldrich said in an interview. The Little Free Library organization states on its website that “everyone who uses the library has the right of helping make sure the types of books in it are appropriate to neighbors of all ages and backgrounds.”

The libraries popping up in neighborhoods around the nation could easily be browsed by kids without any parental oversight. A young person coming home from the school bus or just walking around his neighborhood could grab any book out of the small houses — indeed, that’s what Moss appears to be hoping for.

As a largely volunteer and local-driven outfit, Little Free Library cannot control the contents of every Little Free Library across the nation. Yet the national organization actively encourages local libraries to stock extremist political books that many parents wouldn’t want their children to read.

Through their Read in Color program, started after the George Floyd riots, the national LFL organization promotes buying and stocking Little Free Libraries with LGBT materials that can, in theory, be accessed by children of any age. Little Free Library offers Read in Color reading lists that include categories for Jewish, Neurodivergent, African American, and Antiracist. Among the lists is one with LGBTQ+ books geared toward children as young as 4. 

“We feel like everybody deserves to see themselves in the pages of a book,” Aldrich said. “That’s really powerful. We also think we can all learn from reading different perspectives. We feel that can help empathy and understanding and inclusion become a bigger part of our world.”

The organization partners with Banned Books Week Coalition, the American Library Association, HarperCollins Children’s Books, and Penguin Random House to spread books the majority of taxpayers don’t want subsidized through public schools or libraries. Little Free Library sells “This Little Free Library Shares Banned Books” signs on its website for stewards to place on their libraries.

Not all so-called banned books are equal. In fact, the “banned book” crusade deliberately conflates quality books with obscenity, anti-white racism, and pornography. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird challenges the very real racism present in the 1930s Deep South. Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl presents the hard truth of a life in Nazi Germany.

Books like those are a far cry from Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, yet all appear on “banned books” lists. That 2019 graphic memoir includes explicit depictions of masturbation and oral sex. While Lee and Frank’s works are appropriate for older children and adults, it’s an open question whether Kobabe’s book deserves any readership at all, its innocent cover art notwithstanding.

Little Free Library and similar groups use the past or current “banned” status of these books to pretend all “banned” books have been unfairly rejected for public subsidy. Adults need to consider that while some books may be too mature for young children but beneficial to older ones, others are grossly inappropriate for any age. Older children may be ready to learn about the nuances and dark moments of history, but under no circumstances should be taught to touch themselves from a book.

One of the greatest benefits of reading is an experience of someone else’s life, especially when that experience gives the reader sensitivity to nuance and inspires virtue. Yet, belying claims of inclusivity, “diversity” as it is used by left-leaning organizations too often takes on an anti-white, anti-Christian meaning. The benefits of challenging content end when a charming story tells children lies they are too young to perceive.

Of course, children need to learn empathy, understanding, and inclusion, but that doesn’t come by way of lesbian and transgender stories for 4-year-olds. Rather, they need a firm grounding in the truth — girls are girls, boys are boys, and all people have dignity and value — in order to become the friends this world desperately needs. 

Fairy tales and other well-written children’s literature teach children important things without venturing into obscene sexual messaging. They introduce children to the realities of sin, sorrow, and death without blurring the lines between good and evil.

Anyone who cares about the innocence of children should think before purchasing a Little Free Library kit or charter sign from the organization, rather than building a non-branded one themselves. “We have a retail arm where we sell Little Free Library boxes. The revenue that comes in from those sales goes directly into our programs,” Aldrich said. This includes the Read in Color program.

Adults should be conscious that Little Free Libraries near their homes may contain pornographic material and be prepared to guide children accordingly. Titles with innocuous, childlike cover art are not necessarily lovely and harmless: It’s worth skimming through a book before handing it to your voracious reader. 

If a local Little Free Library offers queer children’s books, consider taking them out and replacing them with something beautiful, such as Little BearThe Wind in the Willows, or Little House on the Prairie — titles I grew up with. Those books and so many others teach friendship, sensitivity, and virtue without pushing any kind of sexual messaging on young readers.

You could even build your own neighborhood library and stock it with enjoyable classics for all ages. If anything, we need more quality books readily available, not fewer.



Why Is Joe Biden Screwing Seniors To Subsidize Electric Vehicles?

The Biden administration is more interested in pet projects, unsustainable green schemes, and ideological revenue redistribution than in the core functions of government.



The Biden administration is so obsessed with making electric vehicles (EVs) work as part of its green agenda that it’s taking money away from seniors — namely, drug savings under Medicare. Unsurprisingly, it has also failed to advertise that fact.

The news of EV and green energy subsidies flew under the radar until a poll conducted in Arizona alerted voters there to the scheme. Fully three-quarters of Arizona voters polled (76 percent) said they didn’t know the Biden administration diverted money from Medicare “savings” to subsidize green projects, and by an 80-10 margin, respondents strongly opposed such a tactic. 

The information came from a report by Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), which shows the inaccurately named Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 diverted some $280 billion from Medicare’s prescription drug provisions to green tax credits and other leftist climate initiatives — instead of lowering prescription drug costs for seniors. The ATR report reveals the so-called Inflation Reduction Act as nothing more than a pork-laden payoff to cronies and an effort by the Biden administration to implement the Green New Deal. 

EVs have had a rotten track record in recent years. Example after example shows what a terrible investment they are. In Florida, EVs caught fire in the aftermath of flooding from Hurricane Ian in 2022. Several EVs burst into flames and then reignited later. This year, a Tesla lost control and rolled down a boat ramp into the intercoastal waterway — the fire department reportedly had no choice but to let it burn itself out underwater. Fire departments are fully unprepared to deal with the types of fires caused by the interaction of rare-earth elements in EV batteries and exposure to water. 

More to the point, EVs also represent a terrible fiscal commitment. One report indicates electric vehicles depreciate in value by roughly 50 percent over the first five years of their lives, significantly more than standard vehicles. This stands to reason, as the batteries are prohibitively expensive to replace and owners can expect to spend more on repairs to EVs than standard gasoline-powered vehicles. That helps to explain why they’re more difficult and more expensive to insure as well. 

EVs don’t save the average consumer on refueling costs, either. The equivalent price of “refueling” an EV works out to approximately $17 per “gallon” in a comparable internal combustion engine vehicle. That cost includes tax credits, rebates, subsidies to vehicle manufacturers, and regulations and mandates by various agencies.

EV owners experience the real sensation of “range anxiety,” in which the limited range of a battery charge, combined with a lack of charging station infrastructure outside of major metropolitan areas, leads drivers to wonder if they’ll get stranded somewhere with a dead car. Perhaps this explains why EVs have sat unsold by the thousands at car lots across the nation — not that you’d know it from listening to the corporate media. Holiday commercials continue to encourage viewers to buy that special someone a luxury electric SUV for Christmas, despite increasing reports of malfunctions, expensive repairs, deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and a thorough lack of consumer enthusiasm for these expensive new products.

The massive subsidies the Biden administration pays to the green energy industry overall seem to go into a giant rat hole, which makes using the Medicare drug savings to pay for them all the more insulting. For instance, one California-based luxury EV manufacturer, Lucid, loses $430,000 on each vehicle it sellsFord also loses thousands on every EV it sells

Despite all the problems, the Biden administration continues to subsidize the manufacture and sale of EVs to advance its decarbonization and net-zero goals. Green subsidies are far from trivial, with renewable energy receiving about three and a half times as much as the “fossil fuel” industry. 

But the Biden administration is more interested in pet projects, unsustainable green schemes, and ideological revenue redistribution than in the core functions of government — and seniors hoping for relief on drug prices get screwed once again.



The Final Battle



Throughout the timeline of human endeavors, do you know what the greatest story is?  It’s the comeback story.  From the divinity of the resurrection to the great stories of human achievement; the greatest stories -the ones that inspire legend- always surround the comeback.

The story of defeat and yet a powerful return in resilience, determination and resolute battle to overcome, is always the story that inspires.  To learn and return, bolder, stronger and with more power than before, is the story that brings out emotion – because we can all connect to it.  The comeback is always stronger than the setback. {Direct Rumble LinkWATCH:



From Vigilance to Overreach: The Disturbing Growth of the U.S. Terrorist Watchlist


In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States implemented a series of policies intended to safeguard Americans from the threat of continued violence perpetrated by radical extremist groups. One of these measures was the creation of the terrorist watchlist, which was designed to screen individuals suspected of having ties to terrorism or terrorist activities.

However, a new Senate report revealed that this list has drastically expanded since its inception in 2001, which raises concerns about national security and the protection of rights.

The report, titled “Mislabeled As A Threat: How the Terrorist Watchlist & Government Screening Practices Impact Americans,” highlights several areas of concern with how the state has identified potential threats to national security. One of the most pressing issues is the expansion of the list over time.

The size of the terrorist watchlist has increased dramatically. As of November 2022, there are approximately 1.8 million records in the terrorist watchlist up from 150,000 in 2004…Additionally, the terrorist watchlist includes individuals who are relatives or associates of known or suspected terrorists and individuals it suspects of being terrorists but does not have enough supporting evidence to list as terrorists.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee recently highlighted that this expansion could infringe on a traveler’s civil liberties being that the list is far too broad, which could lead to unwarranted screening of Americans. Moreover, the report points out that the “risk of misidentification continues to be a problem especially as the number of identities in the terrorist watchlist increases.”

The report also notes the impact of the watchlist on Muslim Americans, who are disproportionately subject to misidentification.

Nevertheless, misidentifications are of particular concern for the Muslim American community because alleged leaked versions of the terrorist watchlist show the overwhelming majority of names on the terrorist watchlist are Muslim. In amicus briefs in recent litigation, the Muslim American community raised concerns that the number of common Arabic names within the Muslim American community has led to a significant number of misidentifications. Further, in Sikh culture, most men share the same last name and most women the same last name, which may lead to excessive additional screening for members of this community.

From a Constitutional perspective, the watchlist poses several concerns related to individual freedom and the right to privacy. As the list continues to swell, the eventuality that innocent people will become ensnared becomes even higher. The fact that the list also includes friends, relatives, or associates reveals a shift from targeted surveillance to a more generalized approach that has inevitably resulted in innocent people becoming caught up in the program.

Indeed, the risk of misidentification is not a theoretical concern. The report notes instances in which high-profile individuals like former Sen. Ted Kennedy and former Rep. John Lewis were erroneously stopped at airports due to name similarities with individuals who are on the watchlist. The system is clearly flawed, and the expansion of the list has only contributed to the problem.

The issue is also problematic because of the logistical and operational challenges it brings. The report details how managing such a vast databr requires a significant level of resources and also presents a risk that the number of people on the list is diluting the focus on actual threats to the American people. Having such an expansive list is straining the resources of law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

As the size of the watchlist and screening enterprise grows, so does the chance of misidentification, the need for additional resources, and the risk that existing limited resources may be spent on low risks, overlooking real threats.

According to the report, the expanded watchlist could actually be making it easier for real terrorists to get by undetected.

While it is important to protect the American people from the threat of terrorism, the unchecked expansion of the watchlist brings with it serious concerns about the government infringing on constitutional rights. If the Senate is going to reform this program, hopefully it will revamp it in a way that protects national security without encroaching on the Constitution.



Anti-Israel Activists Stage Another 'Insurrection' at US Capitol Building, Police Arrest About 60 of Them


Jeff Charles reporting for RedState 

Members of the anti-Israel lobby have staged yet another insurrection at the United States Capitol building. Pro-Hamas activists flooded the rotunda led by Linda Sarsour, a far-leftist agitator, to call for a ceasefire in the war in Gaza.

The incident was reminiscent of an earlier insurrection held by anti-Israel elements in October.

Police arrested “roughly 60” anti-Israel protesters inside the Capitol Rotunda Tuesday after a group led by controversial activist Linda Sarsour staged an illegal rally in the iconic venue.

“Not another nickel! Not another dime! No more money for Israel’s crimes!” chanted members of the group, holding “Stop Arming Israel” signs.

It is illegal to hold demonstrations inside the Capitol, though violators of the prohibition are inconsistently prosecuted by the DC US Attorney’s Office after being arrested.

“We were aware of a group’s potential plan to take a tour of the US Capitol Building and then start a protest,” Capitol Police said in a statement.

“It is against the law to demonstrate inside the Congressional Buildings, so we brought in additional officers to be prepared for the moment the group would break the law. The group was screened when they entered the building. Once they broke the law, roughly 60 people were immediately arrested for [violating] D.C. Code § 22–1307 — Crowding, Obstructing, or Incommoding.”

Combined with the 300 protesters who were arrested at the Capitol in mid-October, this means that about 360 insurrectionists should be facing years of jail time and solitary confinement. In fact, the number is likely higher since the FBI is going to track down the rest of those who were never arrested and take them into custody as well, right? Also, we can’t forget those who were never even at the Capitol in the first place, can we? They should also be arrested, especially if they sent text messages talking about the insurrection.

Alright, allow me to remove my tongue from my cheek for a moment.

Yes, the protest was not an actual insurrection, just like J6 was not an insurrection. But, the two events are being treated differently, as we recently saw with Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser's recent failure to call for protesters to be removed during the city's holiday celebrations. While hundreds of protesters were arrested, it will be a serious shock if any of them receive punishment on par with the individuals who committed the crime of walking peacefully around the building in 2021.



Trump Demands SCOTUS Go Slowly in Deciding Absolute Immunity Issue—No Need for 'Reckless Abandon'


Bob Hoge reporting for RedState 

Former President Donald Trump filed a brief with the Supreme Court Wednesday urging justices to delay a decision on whether he has “absolute immunity” for actions he took as president. He has been charged by Special Counsel Jack Smith with plotting to overturn the 2020 election.

In his filing, Trump urged the Court to take a deliberate approach and not to acquiesce to the special counsel’s request to bypass a federal appeals court and rule on the immunity question on a quick schedule: 

“This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy,” Pet. 2—whether a President may be criminally prosecuted for his official acts. The “paramount public importance” of that question, Pet. 15, calls for it to be resolved in a cautious, deliberative manner—not at breakneck speed.  

Trump’s team said the urgency demanded by Smith was artificial and detrimental to his case:

The Special Counsel urges this Court to bypass those ordinary procedures, including the longstanding preference for prior consideration by at least one court of appeals, and rush to decide the issues with reckless abandon.  The Court should decline that invitation at this time…

The filing further went on to argue that due to the historic nature of the prosecution, more time should be taken rather than less:

Yet importance does not automatically necessitate speed.  If anything, the opposite is usually true. Novel, complex, sensitive, and historic issues—such as the existence of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts—call for more careful deliberation, not less.  When a case “arouses keen interest,” “courts should respond to that circumstance in a calm, orderly, and deliberative fashion in accordance with the best traditions of the law.

Smith has been all-in on a March 4, 2024, court date, but Trump's lawyers have said the date has no "talismanic significance.” Of course, it might have significance to Jack Smith, considering it falls one day before the Super Tuesday primaries, where approximately one-third of all delegates to the presidential nominating conventions will be won. 

Election interference, anyone?

Trump seems to agree:

“He [Smith] confuses the ‘public interest’ with the manifest partisan interest in ensuring that President Trump will be subjected to a monthslong criminal trial at the height of a presidential campaign where he is the leading candidate and the only serious opponent of the current administration,” the brief said. “The combination of an almost three-year wait to bring this case and the special counsel’s current demand for extraordinary expedition, supported by the vaguest of justifications, creates a compelling inference of partisan motivation.”

One thing is crystal clear: Jack Smith wants to get this thing rolling as quickly as possible, regardless of whether it tramples on Trump's rights to a fair trial, while Trump is adamant that the whole process needs to slow down.

We will let you know how the high court rules in this key decision. Meanwhile, Trump made his feelings clear on this and all the other legal hurdles thrown his way by the DOJ: