A Tale of Two Presidents

posted by J.B. Shurk at American Thinker 

President-In-Name-Only Joe Biden finally decided to visit East Palestine, Ohio — the community that last year endured both a toxic train derailment and the government’s questionable decision to burn the spilled hazardous chemicals and poison the region’s air.  Given Biden’s obvious cognitive decline, it’s impossible to know whether PINO mistakenly thought he was heading out to provide aid and comfort to Palestinian terrorists in their war against Israel or whether he wanted to belatedly feign love for blue-collar Americans before demanding their votes in November.  Either way, Dementia Joe made the trip late in the day on a Friday so that coverage of his visit would disappear with the rest of the administration’s conveniently flushed news.

For their part, the good people of East Palestine were quick to declare with numerous signs that PINO Biden’s arrival was “Too Little, Too Late.”  As Wandering Joe stood anxiously behind him and fidgeted in his coat pockets, the village mayor thanked the White House’s nursing home patient for his “long-awaited visit” while “acknowledging this disaster should have never happened.”  Unlike Biden, who arrived a year late and brought only note card–scripted empty promises, President Trump visited this community in the midst of the tragedy and brought truckloads of bottled water for the victims.  He also cast a giant spotlight on the environmental disaster as it was unfolding and expressed concern for the villagers’ health.  Decrepit Joe — the guy whose administration invests heavily in “green energy” scams that fleece the American people — showed through a calendar year of radio silence that environmentalism is pointless unless it pays.  Maybe if the blue-collar workers of East Palestine had ponied up 10% from their cleanup collection fund for Quid-Pro-Quo Joe’s campaign or family coffers, the federal government would have felt that the catastrophe deserved more urgent attention.

Of all the jeering cardboard signs mocking PINO Joe for his un-timely visit, perhaps the most pointed were in the hands of two smiling schoolgirls.  One said loudly, “Resident — NOT — President,” while the other begged the Oval Office chief, infamous for creeping on little girls, “Don’t Sniff Me!”  It is common to find children carrying signs in political protests that are almost certainly designed by their parents.  However, in this instance, the mischievous grins on those girls’ faces revealed that they understood what a sad, cringe-worthy punch line Biden has become.  When nearly 90% of Americans believe that Child-Sniffer Joe is mentally unfit, kids get the joke.  Joe Biden’s “presidency” is too defective for anyone to take seriously.  

At the same time that Clueless Joe was being lampooned in Ohio, a joke of a judge in New York was handing down a jury-free judgment against Donald Trump to the tune of nearly four hundred million dollars.  His crime?  There was no crime.  The state’s attorney general (who campaigned on a pledge to target Trump) simply found a judge so intellectually tainted by political partisanship and so unburdened by any sense of ethical duty that the two could conspire to strip the Trump family of wealth and professional standing under the color of law.  Effectively, the Democrat duo committed legal fraud against Donald Trump by fabricating a laughably absurd claim that the president had engaged in some kind of mysterious civil fraud resulting in neither damages nor victims.  Before the “trial” began, the Judge-In-Name-Only (hmm...there’s a pattern here) declared as a matter of law — and without any jury to consider the colossal weight of factual evidence to the contrary — that Trump’s business had engaged in this one-of-its-kind imaginary fraud, so the only question left was how much to unjustly punish the once and future president.  

After weeks of a farcical show trial designed to give the black-robed tyrant a public stage to prance around on the Trump family’s good name, the JINO finally got around to announcing the decision that he had already reached before the spectacle began: an unprecedented fine and a three-year prohibition against doing business in the state.  Barring Donald Trump from doing business with banking institutions from New York City will hamstring his business operations everywhere, so the costly civil judgment makes it that much more difficult for the presumptive presidential nominee to defend himself against the unremitting lawfare coming from the Deep State.  As Biden’s Stalinesque Department of (in)Justice and the Democrats’ other legal assassins posing as state prosecutors and judges threaten President Trump’s freedom with criminal cases that they would never dare bring against a Bush, Biden, Obama, or Clinton, these civil cases are meant to drain his resources and divert his attention from the 2024 campaign.  The fact that so few voices have expressed outrage at this judicially sanctioned injustice is execrable proof that the Establishment’s system of control is not worth preserving.

We have a tale of two presidents that cements the federal government’s irredeemable reputation for corruption in the minds of most Americans.  In PINO Joe Biden’s case, both criminal investigators and corporate news talking heads have ignored his family’s documented history of quid pro quo bribery schemes with foreign regimes.  Even when government agents find top-secret materials carelessly stored in Joe’s garage — files that he was never entitled to possess privately as a senator or vice president — there is never any real threat of criminal punishment.  Joe gets the same kid-gloves treatment that Hillary Clinton received when FBI director Jim Comey laid out every element of her crimes for espionage and illegal retention of classified documents before giving her a pass.  The Deep State does not prosecute its friends.  

In President Trump’s case, the DOJ spent years manufacturing a Russia collusion hoax that the FBI and CIA knew to be a lie, and journalistic hacks intentionally defamed him as a bought-and-paid-for Russian stooge.  Barack Obama’s CIA used foreign governments to illegally spy on Trump’s campaign — a fact that Deep State stenographers such as Lesley Stahl continue to cover up.  Journalists Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag have documented that CIA director John Brennan “cooked the intelligence” to hide another inconvenient fact: that Russia preferred a Clinton victory in the 2016 election and “didn’t fear a Hillary Clinton presidency.”  Donald Trump took no salary while serving the American people as president, and the Deep State honored his commitment by stabbing him in the back.

Have any of the FBI agents, intelligence officers, DOJ attorneys, or special counsel prosecutors faced any professional or criminal sanctions for having perpetrated a fraud against the American people that was meant to cripple, if not prematurely end, Donald Trump’s presidency?  Of course not.  Instead, the same people and institutions that engaged in a veritable coup d’état are seeking to incarcerate President Trump for the rest of his life for having retained documentary evidence of the Obama-Brennan-Comey-Clinton crimes against his campaign and presidency — files, it should be noted, that the president declassified under his constitutional authority.  In an expanded tale of three presidents, Obama and Biden can commit crimes against Donald Trump, but the Deep State insists that President Trump be imprisoned for noticing.

At the same time, the DOJ wants Trump behind bars for using his voice to condemn the 2020 election as tainted by fraud.  Interestingly, that allegation is now backed up by so much demonstrable evidence of electoral crimes and statistical evidence of probable crimes that one recent study concludes that but for mail-in ballot fraud, President Trump would have “almost certainly” won re-election.  As the persecution of J6 political hostages has shown, noticing Deep State fraud is a bigger crime than committing fraud.  

Any system so corrupt that it protects the guilty and punishes the innocent cannot be taken seriously.  But can it be saved?

X22, Red Pill News, and more- February 20

 

Delusions, Alternate Realities, and the Biden Consortium ~ VDH

The Biden apparat has tried to present the construct 

of a dynamic president promoting a traditional 

Democratic agenda, which has succeeded brilliantly. 

Sustaining that lie requires constant deception.

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

Hunter Biden has a train of a dozen lawyers defending him on felony indictments ranging from several counts of tax fraud to gun violations. From time to time, the contents of his laptop come up, both in these criminal trials and in civil suits. The information on the laptop is, of course, incriminating and useful to various prosecutors and litigants.

Yet Hunter himself is suing the computer repairman with whom he dropped off his laptop and never retrieved—and never paid—despite signing a waiver relinquishing ownership if and when in default of payment and claim.

But the weirdest element of the Biden labyrinth of illegality is that both Hunter and his attorneys footnote their writs and statements with the inexplicable notion that the laptop is not necessarily Hunter’s own—but then again, it could be. 

In other words, they are not presenting evidence to show that either the photographs, texts, or emails are concocted, even while they are suing various parties for defamatory dissipation of the sort of true, sort of false contents. Translated: The surreal truth is that Hunter is very mad that what he did illegally in part is evidenced on his own laptop, and he wants that information either suppressed or disowned, but without perjuring himself by stating the material on his laptop is not his own—because of course it is his.

The same alternate universe surrounds Joe Biden’s cognitive decline. To prove that the Biden administration’s appointed special counsel was unprofessional and in error by referencing proof of Biden’s dementia, Biden gave a sudden and unusual press conference.

But almost immediately, he lost his temper. Biden lied numerous times in contradicting the evidence of the special counsel’s report, falsely claiming many files in question were not classified. He lied that the files were securely stored in locked cabinets when they were sloppily strewn around in boxes in a rickety garage. He falsely asserted that he had notified authorities once he discovered that he had classified files in his possession, although he did not do so for roughly another five years—just days before his administration was to appoint Jack Smith to investigate Donald Trump for many of the same alleged crimes that Biden might also have been guilty of. And inter alia, he referenced President Abd el-Fattah el–Sisi of Egypt as the president of Mexico—apparently as part of his public demonstration of his own mental cogency.

Biden further misled by damning the special counsel for supposedly prompting Biden about the date of the death of his son, the year of which Biden did not recall. But in truth, Biden himself, not Mr. Hur, brought up Beau Biden’s passing voluntarily to Mr. Hur—although again without the ability to cite the year in which he died.

Furthermore, it is President Joe Biden who serially raises the tragic death of Beau (who died in a Washington, D.C., hospital from a glioblastoma brain tumor), often among grieving gold star families, by falsely stating variations of “We lost Beau in Iraq.”

Note Biden’s general disconnect: serial lies about special counsel Hur’s report; lies that Trump’s once secure border is somehow responsible for Biden’s by-design open border; lies that Trump caused the Putin invasion of Ukraine on Biden’s watch that never occurred on Trump’s.

In the last week, Biden’s circle—press secretary Karin Jean-Pierre, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Democratic Congress representatives and senators—have all publicly emphasized not just that Biden is alert but vigorous, hale, and more dynamic than most in his briefing sessions. That alternate reality is at odds with 70-80 percent of the American people who variously poll in surveys that their president is not fit to serve and should not run for reelection. The more Biden flaks insist the President is dynamic, the more he restricts his schedule to a three-day work week, forgets where he is and what he is to say, and confuses names, dates, and people daily.

Since January 2021, the southern border has been destroyed. It no longer exists as a protective bulwark of American sovereignty. Some 8 million illegal entrants have made their way into the US—illegally, without audits, criminal background checks, English fluency, or skills to become self-supporting.

No matter: for the last 1000 days, Americans have watched on their televisions and computer screens thousands swarming the border every day, juxtaposed with assurances from recently impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Kamala Harris, and President Biden that the “border is secure.” 

Now with an election looming, the Bidenites are no longer either indifferent to or preening about their accomplishments of allowing (“surging”) millions illegally into the U.S. but instead scrambling to blame their suddenly declared “secure border” on Donald Trump or Republicans in Congress. Even more bizarrely, they are blaming the Congress for not giving them new laws and more money to resecure a supposedly already declared secure border, even though Donald Trump left office in 2021 with a genuine secure border and without any need for more appropriations or legislation.

President Biden keeps bragging about Bidenomics and its role in lowering inflation (January 2024: 3.1% rate of per-annum increase) and his massive deficit spending since January 2021 of perhaps $10 trillion dollars in borrowed money that spiked interest rates threefold.

Yet Biden ignores the fact that since he was elected, the average price of consumer goods has risen 17.2 percent. Even that increase does not represent the reality that most important consumer purchases such as staple foods, appliances, automobiles, rent, mortgages, building supplies, and home purchases have soared about 30-40 percent in the last three and a half years and have neither abated nor been matched by commensurate increases in wages.

The analogy to Biden’s fallacious argument that inflation is nearly licked might be that of a victim who suffered a near-fatal, unhealed wound and is then supposed to be relieved that subsequent additional wounds were relatively minor—even as he suffers permanent injury from the initial lesion. So the more Biden praises his fiscal policies, the more the public polls reflect the fact that in just three years, accustomed consumer goods are now unaffordable.

A final example of these strange disconnects is the Biden administration’s courtship of Iran. The more it has lifted sanctions on Iran, begged to restart the Iran deal, restored funding to Iranian surrogates like Hamas, or taken the terrorist Houthis off the terrorist list, the more Iranian satellites have butchered Israelis and attacked 170 American installations. In response, the more the United States offers the boilerplate that, while Iran may have supplied such aggressors, there is no direct evidence of Iranian skullduggery to justify an accounting from Teheran. 

So everyone knows Iran is at the heart of the exploding Middle East, and everybody knows that they are not supposed to say they know, lest it lead to holding Iran accountable. 

What explains all these alternate realities? In a word, we are witnessing the meltdown of an entire American presidency. It was born in a 2020 Faustian bargain in which a cognitively challenged, ethically compromised candidate agreed to run by offering a pseudo-moderate veneer in exchange for the support of the far left, which in turn owned his agenda.

Since then, the Biden apparat has tried to square the circle of packaging and promoting a far-left menu that the American people did not want, delivered to them by someone who, by any fair standard, would not be able to serve as a teacher, Uber driver, or lawyer. The result was the present construct of a supposedly dynamic president promoting a traditional Democratic agenda that has succeeded brilliantly here and abroad. 

And to sustain that myth requires constant deception and falsehood.

Not Your Father's Democratic Party

posted by Derek Hunter at Townhall 

The Democratic Party is a group of insufferable children, spoiled and entitled, throwing a constant series of temper tantrums without interruption. They are the brat kid in your child’s class, constantly indulged with hugs and reassurances that they’re “special” and important, when what they really need is a butt-reddening series of spanks that make it difficult to sit for a week. That won’t happen because leftists don’t have any adults on their side. 

Well, maybe that’s overstating it a bit – they have adults, but they aren’t interested in acting like one. They are more interested in an agenda über alles approach to life, written in its original German because, well, that’s who they are. 

Along those lines, the Democrat Party has allowed their fringe to run wild and destroy lives. Now they not only control the party, they are the party. 

Conventional wisdom in the media is that “The Republican Party has moved so far to the right…” This is never backed up with any facts, just stated as if it were true because it was said. But if you think about it, the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan is pretty much the Republican Party of today in almost every way except tone. 

The attitude of the rhetoric has absolutely gotten more pointed; harsher. For years, when Republicans were attacked by the fascistic left, they took an almost apologetic approach. Only Reagan could turn a friendly sounding rebuttal into a smiling stinger that left a mark, other Republicans just cowered, wanting to be liked by the people beating them.

Donald Trump changed that. Hit him and he’d hit back, sometimes with a brutal observation or takedown everyone knew to be true to no Republican had the guts to say, other times with the equivalent of “You’re fat and ugly.” One is less productive than the other, but both leave a mark. 

Democrats have been doing this forever. They got away with it because who was going to call them on it? Journalists? Television comedians? They weren’t about to be critical of their own team, especially when they were engaging in the tactics they, themselves, pioneered. 

As the left has gotten more radical, they’ve gotten more insistent that it is the right who’ve changed. The party of Reagan was pro-life, pro-border security, pro-growth, pro-America, pro-marriage and traditional family and anti-communist. Democrats used to have a fairly large contingent of members who were a couple of those things too, now they have none. 

It’s like sitting next to someone on a long bench, then sliding all the way down to the other end of the bench and complaining that the other person has gone so far away from you. Yes, there is a chasm between the two of you, but they’ve barely moved. It’s about perspective and who frames it more than the reality. 

Just a few years ago, no Democrat would allow their cities to burn, the neighborhoods they govern to be destroyed by a band of anti-American goons; they would have shut it down the second anything destructive started to happen. Now, they fundraise for bail money for people who throw firebombs at police and burn local, black owned businesses. But it’s Republicans who’ve changed?

Most curious is how there is literally no one on the left willing to be critical of it. There has been no “Sister Souljah moment,” no Democrat willing to tell this violent mob, or the entitled brats on college campuses, or arrogant and ignorant Members of Congress that this country is not the horrific, racist, sexist, homophobic root of all evil in the world they chant it is. 

Not one Democrat stands up for the country against this destructive mob, they embrace it.

This is not the party of JFK – someone who served this country, who was anti-communist. He wasn’t perfect, but he wasn’t anything near what that party is now. Their 1960 nominee would not even be allowed a daytime speaking slot at their convention today. 

As you hear Joe Biden whine about how the Republican Party has changed, as him how? Look up everything he’s spent his career advocating and ask if any of what he said he supported in his first presidential run in 1988 is something he supports today. His only legislative “accomplishment” in four decades in the Senate was the 1994 crime bill, which he had to denounce because Democrats no longer support the idea of imprisoning criminals. 

So, ask your liberal friends one simple question: Which party changed again?

Dem Govs & Mayors Throw Hissy Fits at Each Other Over Shipping Illegal Aliens Back and Forth

Mike Miller reporting for RedState 

Let's begin with one of life's truths. The American Democrat Party is the most hypocritical organization on the face of the earth. Yeah, I know; you already knew that — but this article will more than illustrate that truth.

When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis first began shipping busloads of illegal aliens to northern "sanctuary cities," state and local Democrat leader lost their ever-loving hypocritical minds. 

Welp, as more and more illegals continued to find their way north, plaguing cities like New York City, Chicago, and even Denver, a funny thing happened to the sanctuary-city mindset: "We gotta get these illegals outta here!" 

Hence, as first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times last Thursday, Democrat governors and mayors in affected areas have been fighting among themselves over shipping illegal aliens back and forth. 

The back-and-forth hissy fits have grown particularly snitty between Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker. According to the Sun-Times report:

"The Illinois governor [J.B. Pritzker ] said that, in the meantime, migrants were being sent to Denver, which was then sending them to Chicago, which Pritzker called ‘unhelpful.’ He said Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis told him, ‘We're not telling people to go to Chicago. They're just getting off the bus and saying they'd like to go to Chicago.’ I said, ‘Come on. That’s not the case. You know, you guys are buying tickets to Chicago.’ I said to him, ‘We can do the same thing back, and we're not going to. This is not how we should be operating.’"

Such a shame, huh? Two Democrat governors going after one another like cats in the alley over a crisis with which they were perfectly content — as long as it remained in southern border states. 

Pritzker also took a shot at NYC Mayor Eric Adams, among the biggest hypocrites of them all with respect to illegal aliens.

There’s actually a list that I handed to the mayor of Chicago [Brandon Johnson] since he is close to the mayors. I said, ‘Here's a list of how many people have been sent to Chicago. You should call each mayor, starting with the mayor of New York, and tell them, "You’ve got to stop doing that."

Did you just spit whatever you might be drinking all over your screen? I have a better idea for Gov. Pritzker: How 'bout you call Joe Biden and tell him: "You've got to stop doing that?" 

The Sun-Times also reached out to Chicago's former disastrous mayor, Lori Lightfoot — with Brandon Johnson being the current disastrous mayor —about illegal aliens shipped from Colorado to the Windy City. Lightfoot told the paper:

He [Gov. Polis] didn’t stop until we outed him in public. We sent him a letter. We released it to the press, and then they decided, ‘Oh, I'm getting bad publicity.’ I mean, it was just, it was the crassest form of politics that I think I've experienced in quite a long time. 

Oh, please.

Polis might very well be "crass," but Lori Lightfoot — of all people — accusing anyone of "the crassest form of politics" takes the hypocritical cake by a mile.

Finally, Pritzker told the Sun-Times that when illegals first began to arrive in Chicago, he didn't think it was that big of a deal.

I did not regard it as a threat. Even when the first buses arrived, I just viewed it as a stunt and did not think this was going to be 40,000 people arriving. Because how would you know? And they certainly weren’t telling anybody.

And Lightfoot called the arrival of illegal "an ambush." (I wonder if Ms. Lightfoot saw the irony in the term.)

In those early days, we really didn't get much in the way of a heads-up. We didn’t know anything about numbers, who was on the manifest of these buses, what their situation was, who they were, what their countries of origin were, what, if any, medical needs. We really got next to no information. It was like an ambush. That's what it felt like.

Mind-numbing hypocrisy at its "best."

The Bottom Line

While Texas border towns like Eagle Pass and El Paso, along with Arizona's Tucson sector and El Paso, New Mexico, suffer from hundreds of thousands of illegal alien invaders on an ongoing basis, Illinois, Colorado, and New York Democrat politicians pitch fits at one another over a fraction of the reality facing southern border cities and towns.

Given the depth of the left's hypocrisy, I find their whining satisfyingly humorous.

Marine Le Pen to defy Macron’s request not to attend event for WW2 resistance hero

 President said he was against members of far-right RN attending ceremony for Missak Manouchian  

The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen is set to defy requests to stay away from a national ceremony to honour a second world war resistance hero.

A spokesperson for Le Pen described President Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion she should not attend the event on Wednesday as “outrageous”.

Missak Manouchian will enter the Panthéon in Paris, France’s mausoleum of revered historical figures, the country’s highest posthumous honour.

In an interview with the communist newspaper L’Humanité, Macron said he was “personally against” representatives from the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) attending the ceremony.

Last week, RN leaders accepted a request by the family of former minister and laywer Robert Badinter not to attend a national event honouring the man who abolished the death penalty in France.

“As for Robert Badinter’s homage, for which RN MPs were absent, the spirit of decency and consideration for history should oblige them to make a choice. Far-right groups would be well advised not to be present, given the nature of Manouchian’s struggle,” Macron told the paper.

He did, however, say the RN was “no longer openly antisemitic and negationist”, as its predecessor the Front National (FN) had “resolutely” been.  

In response, Le Pen confirmed she would be present at the Manouchian ceremony. “Despite the outrageous suggestion from the president, Marine Le Pen will attend the solemn ceremony marking the nation’s homage,” her spokesperson said. Other members of the RN are also expected to attend.

Manouchian, born in 1906 in what is now Armenia, fled the Armenian genocide when he was nine and came to France. He was a turner at the Citroën factory in Paris and joined the Communist party in 1934. After war broke out, he led a small group of foreign resistance fighters to defy the Nazi forces occupying France. The group, including members from Spain, Hungary, Poland, Italy, Romania and Armenia, carried out attacks and sabotage raids on German units. 

In 1943, 23 members of the group, including Manouchian, were caught and sentenced to death by a German military court. They were executed by firing squad on 21 February 1944. A poster issued by the collaborationist Vichy government of Marshal Pétain justified the executions by describing the resistance fighters as “foreigners, communists and Jews”.  

Manouchian will be interred at the Panthéon with his wife Mélinée, who escaped the 1944 round-up, survived the war and died in 1989.

Jean-Pierre Sakoun, the president of the committee responsible for Manouchian’s entry to the Panthéon, said the RN’s attendance was “not one of the greatest pleasures”, but as a parliamentary party the RN had the right to be there.

“There is only one question to ask Ms Le Pen: ‘Are you [the RN] in any way the heirs of a party [the FN] founded by Nazis and collaborationists?’ The answer cannot be maybe. It is yes or no.” 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/20/marine-le-pen-to-defy-macron-request-not-to-attend-event-for-ww2-resistance-hero?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1708436580   

30 Questions Likely To Stump The ‘Sharp’ And ‘Vigorous’ Joe Biden

posted by Shawn Fleetwood at The Federalist 

Joe Biden has the greatest mental acuity of any president in the history of the United States — at least that’s what the White House wants you to believe.

Throughout the past week, regime-approved media and administration officials have twisted themselves into pretzels trying to gaslight Americans into believing Biden is as “sharp” and “vigorous” as he’s ever been, despite incident after incident showing he’s in mental decline. These laughable claims come in response to the release of the Hur report, which found that Biden mishandled classified documents but concluded that “no criminal charges are warranted in this matter” because the president “would likely present himself to the jury … as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

“It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness,” federal prosecutors claimed.

[4 Lies Joe Biden Spouted Off In Angry Special Counsel Press Conference]

Despite the White House’s attempted spin, it’s obvious to anyone with eyes and ears that Biden’s mental faculties are rapidly waning. Recent polling has shown the vast majority of Americans (76 percent) have “major or moderate concerns” about the president’s overall physical and mental fitness.

While corporate media will never admit it, Biden can barely answer basic questions, let alone complete a sentence. So, to bring a little humor to your day, The Federalist has compiled a list of 30 questions likely to stump America’s befuddled commander-in-chief.

1. What day is it today?

2. What are the names of your grandchildren? (And how many do you have…?)

3. When is your birthday?

4. What is a woman?

5. Who’s the president of France?

6. What year is it?

7. When were you first elected to the Senate?

8. What are the main ingredients in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?

9. What is aluminum foil made out of?

10. How many fingers are on your left hand?

11. What year did you fight Corn Pop?

12. What color is the White House?

13. What is the shape of the Oval Office?

14. What NFL team just won the Super Bowl?

15. What’s the opposite of up?

16. What numbered day in July does the Fourth of July fall on?

17. What’s the name of your vice president?

18. Why do Christians celebrate Easter?

19. Where do babies come from?

20. What does 5+5 equal?

21. What state were you born in?

22. What’s the difference between “effect” and “affect”?

23. Where does Santa Claus live?

24. How many hours are in a day?

25. Are you wearing an adult diaper right now?

26. How many inches are in a foot?

27. How do you pronounce your press secretary‘s last name?

28. How many sides does a pentagon have?

29. How do you spell “Mississippi”?

30. What continent is South Africa on?

David French Claims MAGA's Violent Threats Are a Serious Problem

posted by Jeff Charles at RedStateVIP 

Anti-Trump columnist David French is David Frenching all over the place again. The journalistic version of Liz Cheney published an op-ed on Sunday in which he took the latest in a miles-long list of potshots at the MAGA movement and former President Donald Trump.

In this article, French claimed that violent threats coming from members of the MAGA movement are somehow “warping life in America,” according to the headline of his article.

In the piece, the author referred to an NPR interview in which the participants discussed embattled Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ predicament in finding lawyers who were willing to engage in the politically motivated prosecution against the Orange Man What Is Bad™, noting that prosecutors were too afraid to take on the case because of the possibility of violence.

Late last month, I listened to a fascinating NPR interview with the journalists Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman regarding their new book, “Find Me the Votes,” about Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. They report that Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis had trouble finding lawyers willing to help prosecute her case against Trump. Even a former Georgia governor turned her down, saying, “Hypothetically speaking, do you want to have a bodyguard follow you around for the rest of your life?”

He wasn’t exaggerating. Willis received an assassination threat so specific that one evening she had to leave her office incognito while a body double wearing a bulletproof vest courageously pretended to be her and offered a target for any possible incoming fire.

French went on to detail how the judge overseeing Trump’s J6 trial and the special counsel prosecuting him have been swatted. He also highlighted how members of Colorado’s Supreme Court who voted to disqualify Trump from the ballot, along with politicians like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), have also received violent threats.

The author also discussed the threats he has received from MAGA folks for his obsession with Trump.

My own family has experienced terrifying nights and terrifying days over the last several years. We’ve faced death threats, a bomb scare, a clumsy swatting attempt and doxxing by white nationalists. People have shown up at our home. A man even came to my kids’ school. I’ve interacted with the F.B.I., the Tennessee Department of Homeland Security and local law enforcement. While the explicit threats come and go, the sense of menace never quite leaves. We’re always looking over our shoulders.

In his diatribe, French gives the obligatory acknowledgment that folks on the left make violent threats as well. He highlighted leftists getting crazy during the George Floyd riots. But he quickly comes back to MAGA, claiming that their violent threats are somehow different – or worse.

But the tsunami of MAGA threats is different. The intimidation is systemic and ubiquitous, an acknowledged tactic in the playbook of the Trump right that flows all the way down from the violent fantasies of Donald Trump himself. It is rare to encounter a public-facing Trump critic who hasn’t faced threats and intimidation.

French, just like most of those who do the “Orange Man Bad” routine, failed to mention the high-profile violent threats made against Republican officials. For some reason, he did not deem it necessary to mention how former Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn received threats on his voicemail.

The voicemail begins innocuously enough. “Yeah, this voicemail is for Madison,” a man says, casually, as if he’s trying to get in touch with an old friend.

But then steel enters his voice. “I am armed. I am dangerous. And I know where you and your staff are.”

That threat against Madison Cawthorn was just one of thousands sent to members of Congress last year. It may not surprise many that Cawthorn, a North Carolina Republican who himself once urged his supporters to “lightly threaten” their representatives, inspired such vitriol.

Also, what about that time when some lunatic sent white powder to Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign office?

Two people have been taken to a hospital after they were exposed to a powdery substance in a piece of mail that was sent to Sen. Ted Cruz's Houston campaign office.

Of course, we would also be remiss to forget when a former Democratic Senate intern doxxed Republican senators, publicizing their addresses for all to see.

A Democratic congressional intern was arrested Wednesday and accused of posting the personal information of at least one Republican senator during last week's hearing about sexual assault claims against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, authorities said.

U.S. Capitol Police said 27-year-old Jackson Cosko was charged with making public restricted personal information, witness tampering, threats in interstate communication, unauthorized access of a government computer, identity theft, second-degree burglary and unlawful entry. Police added that the investigation was continuing and more charges could be filed.

None of these incidents seem to have fazed French. The reason why is obvious: These threats were made against people French doesn’t like, which pretty much sums up the reason why these threats, and even political violence, will continue to be a disturbing part of American politics.

French, like most other influencers, doesn’t care about an issue unless it affects himself or his allies. When people are only concerned about violent threats when they are aimed at those on their political team, it means we can’t work together to stand against them. If America wants to be serious about addressing this issue, then people will have to oppose it regardless of who the perpetrators and targets are.

White House Calmly Announces Action at the Border, Undercuts Years of Media Excuses

Brad Slager reporting for RedState 

It is always revealing in the current media climate which of the stories continue beyond the 24-hour news cycles, and the border issue has certainly proven to be one of those lasting concerns. This takes place when there exists issues that concern either side of the political aisle and the contretemps carry import that means political capital is in the balance. After years of denial by the Democrats and the press, both have engaged in the issue and suddenly it has been looming.

What caused this? A move by the Democrats in the Senate to tie their desired extended funding of Ukraine war efforts to those tabbed for Israel, and then spot-welding this new spending proposal to legislation allegedly addressing needs concerning uninvited arrivals pouring across the Texas state line. The concept was that Republicans would be so hungry to pass such they would agree to this farce (75 percent of the spending in this “border bill” was going to other nations).

Of course, the flip side would be attempting to shame the GOP if they turned down the bill and claim their outrage at the border crisis was all a political show. The problem became for once the Republicans actually showed a rare strengthening in the spinal cord and pushed back at this gambit. 

They pointed out that the border aspects of the bill were pathetic, and this was further diffused by noting there had been a tougher, stand-alone border bill penned by the Republicans in the House, and that had been passed.

This became a successful return serve because now it was shown that Chuck Schumer and the Senate Democrats were sitting on a border solution for nine months. The discussion has drifted as a result, with the focus now being placed on a separate spending bill for those countries, with Senate leadership appearing more disinterested in border talk. That has turned into a conversation resembling, “The Republicans do not want to discuss the border - so we’ll change the subject.”

But now word has trickled out from the White House that President Biden may act on the southern tier, and this is ripe to cause some true challenges. 

At Axios, they provided an overview of the various ways the White House is working to rehabilitate Joe Biden’s stature and his flagging campaign, with an eye on the upcoming State of the Union address being a prime tool to rejuvenate his standing. 

In this rundown of the methods being game-planned was this nugget of a proposal. You may find this intriguing/surprising/revealing (circle all that apply.)

One bold move that Biden has considered, we're told, is an executive order that would dramatically stanch the record flow of migrants into the Southwest. This could even happen in the two weeks before the address, allowing Biden to say he took action while Republicans just talk.

You can easily see the political calculations at work with this proposal, but the cynical approach to take some form of action at the border in an effort to make the GOP appear ineffectual on the matter is a complete misfire. This plot alone - regardless if they follow through with any actual EO - exposes quite a bit. Just for starters, it shows that Biden is clearly the one not approaching the border with a serious eye.

This also undercuts the past few weeks of claims that Biden was sitting eagerly and waiting on Congress to pass legislation so he could finally take some action. As we have known all along, Biden always possessed this ability. Not only did he always have the potential to act, but we have seen him take action of this nature already – when he took office.

Upon his entering the White House Biden went on a spree of Executive Order signings, nearly a third of which were specifically written to repeal Trump-era border measures or take new actions to benefit arrivals. In a little over a month of his time in office, Biden began having to deport arrivals (something he pledged not to do when he campaigned), he was reopening the allegedly horrific holding facilities, and those hit over 95% capacity in that time.

He instantly created this fiasco, and Democrats and the press have been attempting to lie to us during the ensuing time frame. They are now becoming exposed by this one attempt to rehab his stature. Just by simply saying the new executive orders concerning stemming the tide at the border are a consideration means they are admitting the EOs are an existing option. 

This unravels years of claims made in the press that there was no means for him to act, to go along with those who insisted there had not been a crisis. For him to take this action blithely as something they are announcing for a possible strategic maneuver shows off what a lie this has always been, as it means it could have been easily employed at any time.