Sunday, December 24, 2023

2023 Was Biden’s Worst Year Yet


Hopefully 2024 will be the last year that this administration is allowed to destroy our country


In 2023, Joe Biden managed to do the unthinkable.

After doing more damage to this country in his first two years in office—than any president in recent memory—Biden found a way to top himself, capping off what was easily the worst year of his presidency.

That’s no small feat—even for someone as historically incompetent as Biden.

Remember, this is a president who prior to this year had already overseen the worst border crisis in our nation’s history, a 40-year  high of inflation, a disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal and a war in Ukraine—both a direct consequence of his weakness and ineptitude on the world stage.

This is a president who prior to this year had already weaponized the Department of Justice to go after his political opponents and stood in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, shortly before the Midterms—like some sort of third world dictator and deemed all supporters of the prior administration to be a “threat to American democracy.”

If that’s not the pot calling the kettle black—then I don’t know what is.

This is a president who in his first year in office managed to fall no less than three times up the steps of Air Force One, and in his second year in office was escorted away from a sycophantic press by a White House staffer who was dressed up as the Easter Bunny.

But just in case anyone needed a reminder of the doddering president’s disastrous last 12 months—here are some of his greatest hits in 2023:

Biden began the year by doing what he does best—lying, obfuscating, deflecting, and making excuses for his horrendous decisions.

When classified documents from his days as vice president were discovered in his garage in Wilmington, Delaware—something the Leftist corporate media had a panic attack over when it involved a different president—Biden defended his actions by saying, “By the way, my Corvette’s in a locked garage, OK? So it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street.”

Yeah, that’s totally fine, nothing to see here, said the Leftist pundits.

When Biden wasn’t pretending to be shocked that unauthorized documents miraculously appeared in his home in Delaware as though Santa just dropped them through the chimney—he was allowing a Chinese spy balloon to fly over our shores—uninhibited for an entire week before it was eventually shot down.

Lord knows what secrets were stolen as it flew over our military bases—as though it were part of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

But fret not, in November, Biden hashed things out with President Xi Jinping in San Francisco, where the progressives in charge cleaned up the feces from the street, removed the homeless encampments, rolled out the red carpet and waved CCP flags for a Chinese dictator who has no respect for our leader.

According to a White House readout of their meeting, “The two leaders underscored the importance of working together to accelerate efforts to tackle the climate crisis in this critical decade.”

Yes, discussing the Left’s favorite religion is certainly much more important than confronting a dictator about China’s belligerent behavior towards us.

For the record, China is by far the world’s largest polluter, emitting 11.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, more than double the amount emitted by the U.S.

But go ahead Joe, keep pretending to care about something you know absolutely nothing about—while destroying the energy sector and putting thousands of people out of work. Greta Thunberg, the world’s most obnoxious and ignorant antisemite must be very impressed.

When Biden wasn’t hobnobbing with Xi, he was appeasing the radical antisemites in his party and telling donors at a private fundraiser in D.C. that Israel and Bibi Netanyahu’s government would lose support for a war they did not start if they don’t change course, and stop what he referred to as “indiscriminate,” bombing of Gaza.

In other words, Biden seems to think that Israel should just leave Hamas—a barbaric terrorist group with the stated goal of wiping Israel off the map and murdering every Jew on every corner of the globe, alone.

Never mind the fact that Israel repeatedly goes out of its way to warn Gazans to get out of harm’s way. But Hamas wants their casualty count to climb so that propagandists on CNN can blame Israel for their deaths.

Just so everyone understands for the millionth time, there is no way to defeat Hamas without also killing civilians, who by the way put that devilish terrorist group in charge of their “government.”

Thankfully, Netanyahu is not interested in what college presidents at Harvard or MIT think about his strategy. He was 100 percent correct when he said soon after the attacks occurred, “We didn’t want this war. It was forced upon us in the most brutal and savage way. Though Israel didn’t start this war, Israel will finish it.”

But I digress.

When Biden isn’t trying to appease the pro-Hamas wing of his party, he continues to dodge any questions relating to his son’s shady overseas business dealings.

Biden can hide from the press all he wants, and Hunter can dodge congressional subpoenas—but the facts will continue to come out in 2024 as the impeachment inquiry unfolds.

Thanks to House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), we now know that between 2015 and 2019, the Biden family set up 20 shell companies that somehow earned more than $24 million, even though there was no clear service that was provided, other than selling Joe Biden as the brand.

We also know that Biden lied when he said his family never received money from China. We know he lied when he said he never spoke to his son, or his associates about his business dealings, and we now know that one of Hunter Biden’s business entities, which received money from Chinese-state linked companies and foreign nationals, made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden.

Meanwhile, as Biden tries to cover up his family’s corruption, Customs and Border Protection reported a record number of single day migrant encounters on December 18, with a whopping 12,600 illegal immigrants trying to enter through Eagle Pass, Texas.

Just more proof that Biden has failed to secure our border and protect American citizens from drug cartels, human traffickers and terrorists.

It’s no wonder Biden’s approval rating currently sits at an abysmal 38 percent, with 55 percent of Americans disapproving of his performance, according to the latest FiveThirtyEight average. To put that in perspective, at the same point in his presidency, Jimmy Carter’s approval rating was 11 points higher, at 49 percent.

The latest RealClearPolitics average shows that 67 percent of Americans believe the country is heading in the wrong direction under Biden.

So, what can we expect from Biden in 2024?

More of the same.

An incoherent foreign policy that emboldens our enemies in Russia, China and Iran.

A radical domestic policy that does nothing to secure our border, curb inflation or lower the price of groceries and gas for everyday Americans.

More hyperbolic speeches like the one in front of Independence Hall—warning about the supposed threat “extremist Republicans” pose to our democracy, and of course more Biden stumbles and falls like the one during the commencement address at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado this past June.

But don’t worry, puff pieces like this recent one in Axios will keep popping up—with Biden sycophants telling us that Biden is actually “extraordinarily energetic for his age.”

Forgive me, my lying eyes must be deceiving me.

Hopefully 2024 will be the last year that this administration is allowed to destroy our country.



X22, And we Know, and more- December 24

 



Merry Christmas Eve. 🌲 hopefully your day went better then mine has.

Why Aren’t Americans Getting the New COVID-19 Vaccine?

 




Americans who do not plan to get the latest COVID-19 vaccine mostly cite protection from prior infection and safety concerns as their primary reasons for not getting the shot, new survey data finds.

A Gallup survey conducted from late November to early December found that the majority of U.S. adults – 51% – don’t plan on getting the updated shot. So far, 29% of respondents reported rolling up their sleeves for the vaccine, but an additional 20% said they plan to get the shot in the future. That means that close to half of Americans could get the latest shot, if the numbers hold true in the real world.


Still, it's significantly less than the percentage of adults – 63% – who plan to get or already had the flu shot.

“Greater rates of flu vaccination may reflect that that procedure is more of an established routine for Americans than getting annual COVID-19 shots,” Gallup Senior Editor Jeffrey Jones said in a post.

Of those who don’t plan to get the latest COVID-19 vaccine, 27% reported that their main reason for not getting the shot was having a prior coronavirus infection and believing they have antibodies.

The second most common reason was concern over safety of the vaccine. While the COVID-19 vaccines have repeatedly proven to be safe, vaccine hesitancy fueled by the coronavirus pandemic remains a significant public health issue.

There is a continued discrepancy between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccine. The survey found that 48% of respondents who said they have gotten the new shot identified as Democrats compared to 10% who said they were Republicans.


Most Americans perceive the COVID-19 situation as getting better, according to the survey. The rate is not quite as high as it was in May, but that could reflect elevated hospitalizations this fall and a new COVID-19 variant that is spreading.

“Americans seem to be heeding public health officials’ recommendation to get annual flu shots to a greater degree than they are complying with their advice to get the latest COVID-19 vaccine,” Jones said. “This may reflect lessened worry about the COVID-19 situation as it pertains to them personally and to the country more broadly.”

Public health officials have said that the COVID-19 vaccination rate is too low heading into the holidays when travel and indoor gatherings are likely to spread the virus.


Why Aren’t Americans Getting the New COVID-19 Vaccine? (msn.com)


WaPo Shedding Hundreds Of Staff After Trump Presidency And Covid Is The Reason For The Season



One of the most unintentionally hilarious quotes from the media of 2023 appeared in Thursday’s edition of the Politico Playbook newsletter.

“The first reaction was shock,” an anonymous Washington Post reporter said, referring to a recent round of forced buyouts for nearly 250 staff writers and editors at the paper. “The Washington Post had done so well — was so profitable in the years of Trump, of Covid, and was owned by one of the richest people in the world … We’re talking about a ‘baby and the bath water,’ sort of ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ approach that left people really confused.”

Shorter version: Life was pretty great at the Post when we could run non-stop hysterical coverage of Donald Trump and an uncontrollable virus that scared everyone just in time for the election! Plus, we had a billionaire backer who gave it all his blessing! Those were the days…

To be sure, nobody should celebrate when a person loses their income. And that’s why I’m just as sorry for all of them as they would be for me if I lost my job. (It’s okay to laugh.)

It turns out that fomenting racial divisions, hyping up a worrisome pandemic, and perpetuating the Russia-collusion fake out was just a short-term business strategy. Who could’ve known?!

Now the Post is trying to recapture the magic with ridiculous stories like the one this week headlined, “Trump reprises dehumanizing language on undocumented immigrants, warns of ‘invasion.'” It had all the greatest hits.

Think of the children!: “During a campaign event in Reno, Nev.,” the article said, “the clear polling leader in the Republican race blamed President Biden for what he portrayed as a dangerous incursion on the homeland — although many migrants detained at the southern border are parents and children seeking protection, and studies show that undocumented immigrants are less likely than U.S. citizens to commit crimes.”

That’s a classic. Rather than acknowledge that, at minimum, Americans say in large majorities that the open Southern border is a serious problem that Biden and Democrats refuse to address, the Post, just as before, is fixated on reminding its readers that ackshully, many of the world’s destitute dumping themselves into our care are women and children, so have a heart, will ya?

Trump is Hitler!: Trump “accused them in a speech and in a social media post of ‘poisoning the blood’ of the country,” the story continued. “That language has caused alarm among some civil rights advocates and immigrant groups, who have compared it to the writings of Adolf Hitler.”

If at first you don’t succeed, heil, heil again. Perhaps there’s still some mileage in the Nazi charge. Biden’s campaign instructions for the media suggest there is.

The tried and true “claimed without evidence”!: “He is the first former U.S. president to be indicted on criminal charges and has been indicted in four cases,” the Post said. “Trump has denied wrongdoing and alleged without evidence that his four indictments and 91 charges are politically motivated.”

What made the Trump-era “claimed without evidence” so annoying before is that it was always used in reference to an expression of opinion, for which evidence isn’t needed to hold. That’s why it’s an opinion. But to use the grating, childish line in reference to a matter literally involving a political opposition’s prosecution of a former president for the supposed crimes of exercising his First Amendment rights and retaining government documents — which every president before him has done — is truly a work of art. Trump doesn’t need “evidence.” There’s extensively documented proof that it’s politically motivated. It’s on video!

It seems The Washington Post doesn’t have the income coming in anymore. Maybe a few more articles like that will do the trick.


Americans Are Tired of Joe Biden's 'Retiree' Lifestyle


President Joe Biden can barely walk up a flight of stairs, let alone run the United States, causing Americans to second guess giving him their 2024 vote. 

As the 81-year-old president’s approval ratings continue to plummet, it is becoming more apparent to Gen-Z voters he shouldn’t be in the White House for a second term. 

According to a Monmouth University poll, 61 percent of respondents disapprove of Biden’s job performance, while only 34 percent approve. 

Kale Ogunbor told Fox and Friends First that she is tired of having a president who acts like he is already retired. 

“It’s been reported that over 40 percent of Joe Biden’s presidency has been spent on vacation. And I think a lot of Americans, including Gen Z, don’t want a president who seems more like he’s retired the next four years after 2024.” 

Earlier this year, Axios reported that Biden only works on average 30 hours a week and spends most weekends on the beach in Delaware. 

White House aides reportedly have said that scheduling “public or private” events with Biden at certain times of day is tough since he usually doesn’t start his day until 10 a.m. and ends it at 4 p.m.

Gen Z voter Ryan Edwards said age and Biden’s physical health have been issues since he took office. 

“I just think he lacks the cognitive ability to lead the country,” Edwards said. “I feel that over the last four years, we have seen a constant decline in his true ability in leading America… and I think in order to lead the free world, to lead America, you must make hard and complex decisions in the blink of an eye, and I don’t think we have that in Biden.” 

It’s been a clown show in the White House since day one of Biden’s presidency. He has a 6-hour window in his day, barely holding press conferences or attending events. When he does manage to muster up the energy to address the country, he reads from a teleprompter— however, even then, he botches it. In addition, the president has embarrassed Americans several times, falling upstairs while riding a bike, tripping across a stage, and fumbling over his own words while speaking. 



John Kirby Struggles to Name a Single Biden Foreign Policy Achievement


NSC spokesman John Kirby struggled to name a single foreign policy achievement this year under the Biden Administration. 

This week, Kirby was asked to explain President Joe Biden's "foreign policy achievement of the year." However, the official failed to answer the question correctly because, honestly, the president has had a lack of success. 

"What would the president say is his foreign policy achievement of the year?" CBS News' Ed O'Keefe asked. 

"There's a lot that we've achieved in foreign policy, and Karine's already made sure that you know that we're running late, and I don't want to belabor this. So, this answer could go on for like 20 minutes," Kirby started.

His answer included a lot of nonsense fluff that made it sound like Biden has achieved things. 

Kirby launched into a rant, listing off several initiatives, such as the Indo-Pacific strategy involving the Quad and AUKUS, aimed at equipping Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. He also said one of the most "important" things Biden has done is "sure up and revitalize our vast network of alliances and partnerships." 

However, he failed to name a singular aspect Biden achieved in 2023. It's no wonder why his polling numbers are among the lowest in history. 

According to a Washington Post report, Biden has reportedly expressed dissatisfaction with his plummeting approval ratings. 

The president reportedly delivered stern remarks to his aides about his unacceptably low polling numbers, demanding to know what his team and campaign will do about it. 

A recent CNN poll found that only 24 percent of Democrats under the age of 35 approve of Biden's job performance in handling the Israel-Hamas war. In comparison, 59 percent of respondents believe the president should not seek a second term. 

Biden and First Lady Jill Biden have reportedly complained for months that former President Trump is beating the president by a large margin in the 2024 race. 

However, less than a year before the election, Americans expressed significant frustration with the president. 



Interior Department Transgender Policy Threatens Employees Who Won’t Play Along With Fake Pronouns



The U.S. Department of the Interior sent an internal bulletin to employees in September on “Supporting Gender Transition in the Federal Workplace.”

According to documents published on X by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, the department sent out guidelines establishing “gender identity” as a protected class under its federal policy. “Gender identity,” according to the Interior Department, is defined as “an individual’s internal sense of being male, female, another gender, no gender, of multiple genders, or fluid in gender.”

“The document states ‘it is not DOI’s intent to be overly protective,'” the Oversight Project reported, “but then goes on to establish policies governing confidentiality and privacy, dress and appearance, names and pronouns, inclusive language, restrooms and related facilities, workplace assignments and duties, recordkeeping, sick and medical leave, and hiring process.”

“An employee’s transition should be treated with as much sensitivity and confidentiality as any other private or highly personal life experiences,” the department memo reads. “Transitioning employees often want as little publicity about their transition as possible.”

The bulletin also outlines codes for “dress and appearance,” encouraging employees to “evaluate, and consider eliminating, where appropriate, gender-specific dress and appearance rules.”

“Once an employee has informed management that they are transitioning, consistent with the employee’s wishes, DOI dress codes should be applied to employees transitioning to a different gender in the same way that they are applied to other employees of that gender, as appropriate,” the policy reads.

Employees with the National Park Service (NPS) apparently violated the agency dress code during an LGBT “pride” celebration this summer when staff held a parade at Yosemite National Park featuring celebrity environmentalist drag queen Pattie Gonia. While the NPS uniform code expressly prohibits employee participation in demonstrations or public events “wherein the wearing of the uniform could be construed as agency support for a particular issue, position, or political party,” staff draped their uniforms in activist apparel anyway.

In October, the drag queen was featured by the department again with a bizarre clip promoting the false narrative that “queer rights are more under attack than ever” alongside Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.

The transgender policy deployed by Interior leadership in September urges employees to “use gender-neutral language in broad communications to avoid assumptions about gender identity.” Examples of “pronouns,” according to the policy, are “they, them, theirs, ze/hir/hirs, ze/zir/zirs, xe/xem/xyrs.” Bathroom use is up to personal discretion, it says, and those who refuse to abide by departmental policies are warned of retribution for “unlawful discrimination.”

“Repeated, intentional refusal to use the employee’s affirming name/gender/pronouns, and/or repeated reference to the employee’s dead name/gender/pronouns by supervisors/managers, or coworkers is contrary to the goal of treating all employees with dignity and respect,” the policy states. “Such intentional conduct could constitute unlawful discrimination.”



Nikki Haley Makes The Worst Possible Argument Against Trump

Haley is telling voters to support her because ‘rightly or wrongly, chaos follows’ Trump, but it’s absurd to think a different GOP president won’t also face an utterly lawless and well-coordinated attack on his legitimate use of power.



During a speech in South Carolina late last month, Haley trotted out a rather interesting line of attack against Trump: “And the truth of it all — and this is another hard truth — I believe President Trump was the right president at the right time. I was proud to serve America in his administration, and I agree with a lot of his policies. But the truth is, rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him. You know I’m right. Chaos follows him. We have too much division in this country and too many threats around the world to be sitting in chaos once again.”

These were not tossed-off remarks. Byron York, the only political reporter who seems to have grasped the significance of the remark, notes that Haley has been road-testing some variation of the “chaos” line since October, and it appears it’s a regular part of her stump speech. York has done a typically thorough and thoughtful analysis of this, including why Haley’s line might ruffle some feathers among Republicans.

Now, certainly, there are many Republicans out there who might be inclined to agree with a facile reading of this line. There’s hardly a Trump voter out there who hasn’t at least privately lamented Trump saying inflammatory things that detract from his actual policy accomplishments.

But ultimately, Haley’s line about “chaos” spectacularly misreads the problem and, along with it, the sentiment of a lot of Trump voters she needs to win over. When she says “the truth is, rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him,” the word “wrongly” in that sentence pretty much gives up the entire game. The biggest source of chaos in Trump’s presidency wasn’t mean tweets; it was the entire Washington establishment and administrative state breaking laws and violating norms both to impede his policies and attempt to throw him out of office. This was, indeed, very, very wrong and exposed a rot so deep that the number one requirement of any future Republican president is dismantling this corruption that threatens the foundations of the republic.

Let’s recap what the “chaos” in the Trump administration looked like, shall we? Starting before Trump was elected, the FBI was investigating and wiretapping the guy — an investigation that continued well after he was elected. The FBI’s “sources” for their investigation of Trump were treasonously colluding with Russia to steal an election. These included, among other standout individuals, a paid informant at the heart of multiple political scandals who had been apparently lying on his resume for decades and a report from… Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.

The man responsible “for 80% of the ‘intel’” in that report was a Russian national who the FBI had previously conducted an inconclusive counterintelligence investigation into, and it turns out that disreputable Russian got much of his information on Trump’s ties to Russia from a lawyer for… Hillary Clinton. And given such quality information, it’s hard to imagine that an FBI lawyer would get caught manufacturing evidence on warrant applications just to keep spying on a man who was a legitimately elected president.

Nonetheless, the entire media establishment treated this obviously political sham investigation with grave seriousness and even gave themselves awards for regurgitating politically motivated leaks on a story that was back-to-front false. This false information dominated the news throughout Trump’s presidency. It triggered a two-year investigation where the special counsel knew from the beginning that there was no substance to the accusations and instead tried and failed to mount a case for obstruction of an investigation that was baseless to begin with.

That was all pretty chaotic, right? And it’s just the tip of the iceberg. We could walk through the events of the first Trump impeachment, where the case against Trump was so open and shut Congressional Democrats had all the witnesses testify behind closed doors; the rapid emergence of a censorship industrial complex sponsored by federal agencies and law enforcement; the open endorsement of violent BLM riots that destroyed city centers by Democratic politicians; billionaires funding liberal get-out-the-vote experts to infiltrate local nonpartisan election offices; the self-described “conspiracy” and “cabal” that worked to “control the flow of information” and “fortify” our elections in 2020 by flooding every state with mail-in ballots. By the way, you’re an election-denying bigot if you think said ballots encourage fraud.

You don’t have to like Trump, and you can, as I have on many occasions, acknowledge that he is frequently his own worst enemy. And yet it is beyond obvious that the mere suggestion that “rightly or wrongly” Trump invited this utterly lawless and well-coordinated assault on American institutions, up to and including the endorsement of actual violence, is offensive to anyone who didn’t spend the last seven years in a coma. And further, for all the retconning that has gone into making the horrible events of Jan. 6 justify all the anti-Trump establishment’s anti-American and criminal behavior beforehand, what does it say that even Republicans such as Haley want to bulldoze past the fact that all this “chaos” happened because a bunch of influential people had a series of malicious tantrums because they couldn’t accept the results of the 2016 election?

The thing is, acknowledging that much of what happened during Trump’s presidency was unjust and damaging to the country need not be an endorsement of Trump. Ramaswamy and DeSantis have both made the case that they’re better suited to address corruption exposed by Trump while acknowledging the campaign against him during his presidency was an alarming subversion of American rights, norms, and laws. (Similarly, it is telling how a figure such as Biden who has brazenly lied about his own corruption — indeed, the first Trump impeachment was held behind closed doors so Republicans could not publicly ask very obvious and damning questions about whether Trump’s inquiry into the Biden family’s corrupt business in Ukraine was warranted — is so obviously insulated from “chaos” by the same people who instigated it under Trump.)

DeSantis and Ramaswamy have at least campaigned in a way that acknowledges this basic reality: For a lot of voters, the number one issue facing the country is the fact that American democracy is being held hostage by a broad array of forces that will use violence and information warfare, in addition to every hidden lever of administrative, legal, and cultural power to punish Americans if they vote for someone they don’t like. Never mind that even mild populist and rhetorical pushback on issues such as interventionist foreign policy or deliberate toleration of mass illegal immigration is cause for punitive measures.

You can pretend to wave away the existence of these insidious forces as being only applicable to Trump, but without exposing them and holding them accountable, no serious person believes they won’t cause more “chaos” to whoever is the next politician that threatens them. The whole point is to amass enough coordinated power that you can both artificially create chaos and then be in a position to take it away, depending on which suits your purposes of incentivizing voters.

Accordingly, if Haley’s strategy for winning in 2024 is to sell voters on the idea she can restore calm and normalcy by ignoring recent history and simply moving on… well, perhaps that speaks to the fact she’s much less threatening to our pernicious establishment than other Republicans. There are certainly major issues, such as foreign policy, where Haley is obviously more in sync with the military-industrial complex than Trump and other GOP candidates.

But it’s hard to imagine that there’s much of an appetite for a candidate who is in denial about what’s happening, much less amenable to these insidious political forces. Haley could be much clearer about the “rightly or wrongly” distinction. There’s a case to be made that the way Trump genuinely subjects himself to criticism means he’s perhaps not the best candidate to deal with the corruption he himself was wrongly subjected to, and DeSantis and Ramaswamy have made this argument to varying degrees.

By contrast, Haley’s argument that removing Trump is the way to get chaos out of politics only rewards the people most responsible for creating the chaos to begin with. And it’s a damning rationale for a candidacy that’s clearly­­ still in search of principles and purpose.



A Glaring Sign of Rot Within the CIA

If there's a new administration in January 2025, 
it will have its work cut out for it


In his powerful new book, Neutering the CIA: Why Us Intelligence Versus Trump Has Long-term Consequences, former CIA analyst John Gentry discusses how the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) agenda has harmed national security by elevating the goals of left-wing identity politics as paramount in the selection and promotion of officers. For example, late last month, the Financial Times revealed that a CIA officer posted pro-Palestinian images on her Facebook page and a selfie photo with the caption “Free Palestine.”

The agency officer, later identified as Amy McFadden, reportedly posted at least one of these images to the Internet after the horrific October 7, Hamas attack on Israel in which more than 1,300 Jews were killed by Hamas terrorists, many of them raped and mutilated, and more than 250 taken hostage.

According to the New York Post, two weeks after the Hamas terrorist attack, the senior CIA official “changed her cover photo to an image of a man waving a Palestinian flag in a keffiyeh-patterned shirt — a design euphemistically referred to as a symbol of Palestinian ‘solidarity’ popularized by the late Palestine Liberation Organization terrorist-in-chief Yasser Arafat.”

But McFadden is hardly the only example. A State Department employee publicly accused President Biden of being “complicit in genocide” by providing military assistance to our ally Israel. Sylvia Yacoub, a foreign affairs officer in the Bureau of Middle East Affairs, tweeted directly at the President with his handle “@POTUS,” and also tweeted directly at the Vice President, “Embarrassingly out of touch @VP,” after Vice President Kamala Harris met with the Prime Minister of the U.K., our closest ally.

It is important to note that these are not obscure bureaucrats. McFadden is one the Agency’s most senior officials, currently serving as Associate Deputy Director of the CIA Directorate of Analysis, a position overseeing thousands of analysts. Prior to this top CIA post, McFadden oversaw the production of the President’s Daily Brief (PDB), arguably the most important U.S. intelligence community analysis product. Yacoub is a graduate of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, one of America’s most prestigious graduate schools that feeds thousands of its graduates into U.S. national security jobs. She also spent three years working at the Obama Foundation and more than a year working on the Hillary Clinton campaign for President. It was on the strength of these credentials she was selected to serve, not as a political appointee, but as a State Department careerist.

The rot we are experiencing in government isn’t just in failing to screen for individuals who hold views antithetical to the United States, its interests, and its allies. It is also how the embedded ideology in the U.S. government promotes them not based on excellence in their work but on whether they share the DEI movement’s radical ideology.

People with experience working in the U.S. Intelligence Community, like myself, might be inclined to ask two questions. How did individuals entrusted with our nation’s most sensitive national security information demonstrate so little common sense that they would publicly attack our president and vice president and post pro-Hamas material on their social media? And how is it they were hired in the first place into nonpartisan career positions and, in the case of McFadden, could advance so quickly to two of the CIA’s most prestigious positions?

I ask these questions because I know that top CIA jobs like leadership of the Directorate of Analysis and the PDB staff historically have gone to analysts who have distinguished themselves over many years in high-profile and challenging assignments where they produced critical and incisive analyses.

Both McFadden and Yacoub appear to be partisan officials who advanced their careers by punching the right career tickets. This is how the far-left ideology of DEI is undermining our national security and foreign relations at the CIA, the State Department, and countless other national security agencies.

CIA Director John Brennan began the corruption of the CIA career service by imposing radical DEI personnel policies in 2013. The Trump Administration never repealed these controversial policies and they remain in place today. As a result, a former senior CIA official recently told me that “the Directorate of Analysis promotes faster than anywhere else and it’s been a problem for a long time.” This comment tracks with another observation by Gentry, who wrote that “excessively rapid promotion rates raised rank structures and entitlement expectations” for a huge number of employees hired by the CIA after 9/11.

McFadden’s inappropriate pro-Hamas Facebook posts have made her a symbol of this mismanagement of the CIA workforce. This incident has wider implications for U.S. national security and the U.S. taxpayer because it suggests the agency is giving critical high-paid jobs to mediocre and incompetent employees for political and social engineering reasons instead of promoting the most qualified personnel to help protect American national security in an increasingly dangerous world.

A former CIA officer told me after reading a draft of this article: “The Obama era policies have had a significant negative impact on [CIA] morale, mission, focus, and accomplishments. In fact, they have fueled mediocracy and politicization, fed the weaponization of HR against our best officers, and degraded the ranks of A-players.”

If there is a new administration in January 2025, it will have its work cut out for it to reverse the damage done to U.S. intelligence agencies by DEI and woke personnel policies begun by the Obama Administration which continue today.

In the meantime, the congressional intelligence oversight committees should immediately begin investigations to assess the extent these radical policies have undermined the capabilities and effectiveness of America’s intelligence agencies and propose reforms to reverse this damage.



Guess Who Else Is Funding Pro-Hamas Protests Across the Country


Jeff Charles reporting for RedState 

The Tides Center, a prominent leftist dark money outfit, has been supporting the wave of anti-Israel and antisemitic activism taking place across the country since the start of the war in Gaza. But even worse, you and I are helping to pay for these propaganda organizations, according to a recent Washington Examiner report.

The report details how the Tides Center is receiving funding from taxpayers, while it pumps resources into the creation of pro-Hamas propaganda.

An influential liberal dark money group propping up anti-Israel activism across the United States has pocketed massive amounts in taxpayer-backed grants and contracts in recent years, according to a Washington Examiner analysis of federal spending records.

The Tides Center, which funds organizations behind Hamas-sympathetic protests held after the terrorist faction's deadly Oct. 7 attack against Israel, has long helped shape the progressive agenda with the financial backing of billionaire philanthropists such as Bill Gates and George Soros. But the Democratic-allied charity sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars in assets also retains another key supporter in the federal government, which directly or through subawards steered more than $81.2 million to the Tides Center between 2006 and 2023, documents show.

The U.S. government's extensive support for the Tides Center is a window into how taxpayer dollars regularly flow to charities closely affiliated with the anti-Israel movement. The Tides Center has faced scrutiny from conservatives for facilitating a dark money pass-through system allowing wealthy Democrats to pour donations into initiatives housed under the nonprofit group, whose projects do not have to file their own tax forms with the IRS. This process, known as fiscal sponsorship, has the effect of obscuring sources for donations to and from the California-based charity.

The report also describes precisely how the federal government funds the Tides Center through subcontracts.

Nearly half of the $81.2 million that flowed to the Tides Center was routed through a subcontract or subgrant, meaning the charity received the cash after the federal government first made a prime award to another entity, such as the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, City and County of San Francisco, and universities, the Washington Examiner found. During President Joe Biden's time in office alone, the Tides Center has been awarded roughly $38.3 million in taxpayer money, either directly or through subawards, records show.

Yes, you read that correctly. We have paid this organization almost $40 million to shill for a Palestinian terrorist group that recently murdered 1,200 Israeli civilians.

Billionaire financier George Soros has used the organization to funnel millions of dollars to various pro-Hamas groups, which have been demonstrating in the streets and on university campuses.

Far-left billionaire kingmaker George Soros has funneled more than $15 million since 2016 to groups behind this month’s pro-Palestine protests, where demonstrators openly cheered Hamas militants’ craven terrorist attacks on Israel.

A Post examination of Open Society Foundations records shows Soros’ grant-making network gave $13.7 million of the money through Tides Center, a deep-pocketed lefty advocacy group that sponsors several nonprofits who’ve justified Hamas’ bloody attacks while claiming Palestinians obsessed with the eradication of the Jewish state are the real victims.

Tides’ beneficiaries include Illinois-based Adalah Justice Project, which on the day of the Oct. 7 massacre posted a photo on Instagram of a bulldozer tearing part of Israel’s border fence down and a caption: “Israeli colonizers believed they could indefinitely trap two million people in an open-air prison… no cage goes unchallenged.”

This development is problematic on multiple levels. Firstly, the federal government is using the money it takes from us to fund groups bent on supporting a terrorist organization. Sure, the Tides Center might actually use some of the money for civil society innovation and healthcare programs, but it is also funding a group that massacres Israeli and Palestinian civilians.

Moreover, the groups that receive the funding have been engaging in some rather raucous protests and have even used threats and violence to get their points across. The government is essentially funding an outfit intended to intimidate people into supporting their anti-Israel crusade.

The Washington Examiner and others have continued to investigate the Tides Center and other organizations receiving funding from the state to pursue questionable activities, so there could be even more shocking information ahead.