Have nothing to do with the [evil] things that people do, things that belong to the darkness. Instead, bring them out to the light... [For] when all things are brought out into the light, then their true nature is clearly revealed...

-Ephesians 5:11-13

Category Archives: Politics

Senator Manchin Has Buried Biden’s Build Back Better Bill

Monday, 20 December 2021 15:41
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, December 20, 2021: 

West Virginia Democrat Senator Joe Manchin removed all doubt anyone might have had about Senate passage of Joe Biden’s massive signature legacy bill, Build Back Better, on Saturday. After informing the White House, Senator Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that he was withdrawing from any further negotiations over the bill, he went public on Fox News:

When you have these things coming at you the way they are right now, I’ve always said this: if I can’t go home and explain it to the people of West Virginia, I can’t vote for it.

 

And I can’t vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I just can’t.

 

I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there.

 

Fox News host Bret Baier asked: “You’re done? This is a no?”

Manchin replied: “This is a no on this legislation.”

What “things?” Manchin referred to “inflation,” “geopolitical unrest,” “the COVID variant,” leaving unsaid the most important “thing”: the impact BBB would have on the voters in West Virginia.

West Virginia is the nation’s fifth-largest energy-producing state. It has the nation’s third-largest reserves of national gas. The state’s economy revolves around energy. And Biden’s BBB would eviscerate West Virginia.

The ultimate result of BBB would be to end West Virginia’s dependence upon fossil-fuel generation. What Manchin did was respond to the simple fact that geology trumps ideology.

In a statement following the interview, Manchin’s office said that the BBB was a lie: “The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office [CBO] determined the cost is upwards of $4.5 trillion, which is more than double what [its] ardent supporters have claimed. They continue to camouflage the rest of the cost … behind this bill.”

He expanded:

If enacted, the bill will also risk the reliability of our electric grid and increase our dependence on foreign supply chains….

 

I will never forget the warning from then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff … during my first year in the Senate. He testified that the greatest threat facing our nation was our national debt.

 

Since that time our debt has doubled.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki assured Manchin’s implacable resistance to any further bills the Biden administration might care to present in the future by calling him a liar:

Senator Manchin’s comments this morning on Fox are at odds with his discussions this week with the president, with White House staff, and with his own public utterances….

 

They represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate.

She then dismissed Manchin’s claim that the bill would add trillions to the national debt by repeating the canard: “The plan is fully paid for, is the most fiscally responsible major bill that Congress has considered in years, and reduces the deficit in the long run.”

She followed by denying reality: “We will continue to press him to see if he will reverse his position yet again, to honor his prior commitments and be true to his word.”

The White House will press on, regardless, said Psaki: “We will not relent in the fight … Build Back Better is too important to give up. We will find a way to move forward next year.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer took the lead from Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders by announcing that when the Senate returns early next year he will press for a vote on BBB, forcing Manchin to “go public” with his decision. Said Sanders:

We’ve been dealing with Mr. Manchin for month after month after month. If he doesn’t have the courage to do the right thing for the working families of West Virginia and America, let him vote no in front of the whole world.

If this happens, it will cement Manchin’s opposition to anything Schumer or Sanders care to present next year. Manchin is the single lawmaker who now controls the debate and the conversation, without whose support Biden cannot pass a single new law or confirm a single nominee.

Taxpayers can breathe again. Most of them oppose many of the items in the massive bill, including making reparation payments to illegal immigrants, expanding the power and reach of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), weakening work requirements for welfare benefits, forcing the transition to electric vehicles, expanding Medicare further, and providing federal funding for abortions.

Thanks to the scorched-earth statements issued by Psaki and Schumer, there is virtually no chance that BBB will be resurrected next year, leaving Democrats with little to brag about as the November midterm elections approach.

Trump Sues New York AG for Engaging in “Witch Hunt” Against Him

Monday, 20 December 2021 15:37
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, December 20, 2021:  

In a lawsuit filed on Monday, former President Donald Trump charged New York State Attorney General Letitia James with “allocat[ing] precious taxpayer resources towards a frivolous witch hunt. Plaintiffs [Trump and his company, Trump Organization LLC] now come before this Court to hold James accountable for her official misconduct and to preserve the integrity of the office she holds.”

Even before taking office, James, a Democrat and far-left activist long involved in New York politics, had targeted Trump, even building her election campaign for attorney general around him.

Her attacks began as she opened her campaign for AG in May 2018, making “taking on Donald Trump” the focal point of her campaign. She claimed, and continues to claim, that Trump had engaged in “public corruption” without any evidence to back it up. It was all political oratory.

She “shamelessly campaign[ed] on her unfounded allegations against Trump and his family,” says the suit, “in a misguided effort to garner media attention and promote her fundraising efforts.” She boldly declared that “New Yorkers need a fighter who will take on Donald Trump.… I’ll be that fighter. Join my campaign.”

On the Democrat fundraising platform ActBlue, she posted messages such as “I need your help in this fight against Donald Trump … and his harmful administration.”

At a political rally in July 2018, she said she would use the law as a “sword,” adding that if elected she would “look forward to going into the office of Attorney General every day, suing him, defending your rights, and then going home.”

The lawsuit claimed that James charged Trump with various crimes without knowing any facts — making them up along the way: “Defendant [James] boldly alleged that Trump was actively engaged in criminal conduct, despite having no knowledge of any specific wrongdoing or any insight into Trump’s business activities.”

It didn’t matter. The message was gaining traction, so it continued:

In [a video from September 12, 2018, James] baselessly accused Trump of a slew of crimes, including obstruction of justice and laundering money from foreign governments, and demanded that he be indicted….

 

Defendant’s call for Trump to be investigated was devoid of both fact and merit. Nevertheless, Defendant concluded by promising that “the days of Donald Trump are coming to an end.”

The day she won election as New York’s AG, James promised to “shin[e] a bright light into every dark corner of [Trump’s] real estate holdings.” Even before assuming office, she vowed to, said the lawsuit, “use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well.”

The lawsuit concluded its summary:

Defendant promised to investigate Trump dozens of times over seven months, all before she ever assumed office or was privy to a single fact known to law enforcement.

 

Defendant did not state a legal or factual basis for such promises. She could not. After all, her knowledge of Trump’s business activities was no greater than that of any other citizen.

 

Rather, her only justification for the forthcoming investigation was her political opposition to Trump.

Since then, James has sought every way possible to embarrass, shame, pressure, and harass Trump and sully the former president’s reputation. In covering the story, the New York Times essentially admitted that James is conducting a witch hunt, hoping to find something to hang around the former president’s neck:

If Ms. James were to find evidence of wrongdoing, she could file a lawsuit against Mr. Trump.

She started her “investigation” in March 2019, seeking information that would prove that Trump had, among other things, inflated the value of some of his real-estate holdings to obtain more favorable financing, while at the same time downgrading the values of others of his holdings for tax purposes.

She has ramped up her investigation. She said she would seek to question the former president under oath in January. The Northern District Court of New York now has the opportunity to quash her vindictive and politically charged investigation altogether.

Biden Administration Ends Negotiations Over $450,000 Payments to Illegals

Friday, 17 December 2021 16:56
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, December 17, 2021:

 In a conference call with ACLU attorneys on Thursday, Biden Justice Department officials informed the group that they were pulling out of negotiations over paying damages to some 5,500 children brought into the United States illegally in 2018.

The ACLU saw a chance to hurt the Trump administration by joining with other groups in suing for damages, claiming that the families whose children had been separated from their parents while those parents served time in jail for entering the country illegally were harmed. They suffered from separation “trauma,” said the ACLU, after they were “forcibly” separated from their parents. ABC News called it an “abhorrent” policy instigated by the Trump administration to discourage other families from entering the United States illegally.

In fact — as ABC News no doubt knows, and knew at the time — there are no “family detention facilities” available in federal prisons and so the children were moved into government-run shelters until their parents had served out their sentences. After the parents had served their time, efforts were made to reunite them with their children. However, as evidence that many of those children were used as pawns by illegals, the “parents” of hundreds of those children are yet to be located.

Initially the ACLU demanded $3.4 million for each family but under negotiations that have been going on for months, the group reduced its demand to $1 million, or about $450,000 per family member.

It wasn’t until the Wall Street Journal reported about the “reparations” that pushback began. Republicans called the reparations “insanity,” “unacceptable,” and a “slap in the face.”

When Biden was quizzed about the proposed settlement he claimed that he knew nothing. When Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy asked him about the proposed settlement, Biden declared flatly, “It ain’t gonna happen,” adding, “you guys [over at Fox News] keep sending that garbage out. But it’s not true.”

But it was true. Uncle Joe wasn’t in the loop. After being briefed, he changed his tune, declaring that those settlements were justified:

If, in fact, because of the outrageous behavior of the last administration, you coming across the border, whether it was legally or illegally, and you lost your child — you lost your child.

 

It’s gone [and] you deserve some kind of compensation, no matter what the circumstance. What that will be, I have no idea.

Republicans in Congress mounted an effort to keep the DOJ from paying out the $450,000 in reparations, but Democrats quashed the move. It wasn’t until Thursday that the DOJ withdrew from those negotiations.

It was now ACLU’s time to be outraged. Said its lead attorney Lee Gelernt:

It’s hard to understand DOJ’s decision other than it was influenced by political considerations.… Little children were deliberately abused by our government [under Trump], yet the Biden administration is now going to defend [Trump’s] practice in court. This is shameful.

Let’s recount: Some 5,500 children crossed the southern border of the United States in 2018, many accompanied by their parents, others accompanied by strangers seeking to use them as pawns to get into the country and then abandoning them, others accompanied by traffickers. To ensure that the children were kept out of harm’s way, and to ensure they were placed with actual family members, they were held in special facilities away from adults.

This caused those families “trauma.” Even though they were here illegally, the ACLU and other groups such as the American Immigration Council claimed that the American taxpayer somehow owed them reparations for their alleged trauma, pain, and suffering because of the separation.

Lest readers celebrate prematurely, the DOJ told the ACLU that while it is withdrawing from negotiations en masse, the Biden agency is prepared to press for payments on a “case by case” basis, thereby spreading out the negotiations for years and keeping any settlements out of the public eye.

The DOJ said:

While the parties have been unable to reach a global settlement agreement at this time, we remain committed to engaging with the plaintiffs and to bringing justice to the victims of this abhorrent policy.

So, the American taxpayer will be paying reparations. He just won’t learn about it from the mainstream media.

Trafalgar Poll: Most Americans Think Media’s Reporting Is Propaganda

Friday, 17 December 2021 16:53
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, December 17, 2021:  

The Trafalgar Group’s poll results released Thursday go far beyond just exposing the mainstream media’s bias. It revealed that a vast majority of Americans think it has become a propaganda arm for the Left.

According to Trafalgar, three quarters of those polled believe the media are “advancing their own opinions or political agendas.” Less than a quarter believe the media are exhibiting true honest journalism by “finding and reporting the facts.”

When Gallup asked if “Owners of news outlets attempting to influence the way stories are reported” is a concern, 69 percent of those polled said it was a major problem, while another 24 percent said it was a minor problem. When asked if there is “too much bias in the selection of what stories new organizations cover or don’t cover,” 64 percent said it was a major problem while 29 percent said it was a minor problem.

Similar results came in response to the media “reporting from a particular point of view rather than being neutral” and “not enough investigative journalism to uncover important facts.”

In other words, the media’s cover is blown. Nearly gone are those readers and watchers who still think the media is doing honest journalism and what they are reporting can be relied upon as fact.

Robert Stacy McCain lamented the reality following the exoneration of Kyle Rittenhouse. He wrote:

Tens of millions of Americans believe that [he] should have been convicted of homicide in Kenosha [and] that “Russian collusion” explains how Donald Trump was elected president.

 

They believe these things because powerful institutions of American journalism — from the New York Times and the Associated Press to CNN and the nightly broadcast news programs — want them to believe in such falsehoods….

 

Big Media … are now so completely in the tank for Democrats that their “news” coverage is practically a contribution-in-kind to the DNC [Democratic National Committee].

McCain had predicted the outcome of the Rittenhouse trial before it even began. But the media saw an opportunity to promote its agenda with the narrative of a white supremacist murdering innocent and peaceful protesters.

Wrote McCain:

Nearly every crucial fact that came out in Rittenhouse’s trial was known within days of the shootings — including the criminal records of convicted child rapist Joseph “JoJo” Rosenbaum and the other rioters who attacked Rittenhouse — but the liberal media suppressed these facts, which didn’t fit their “racial justice” narrative.

 

So biased was the media’s coverage, in fact, that many people erroneously thought Rittenhouse had shot black people (Rosenbaum and the other two were white).

He asked, “Why would professional journalists disgrace themselves this way? In a word: politics.” Every story that comes into newsrooms is analyzed for its political possibilities, says McCain:

Everything is now political, in the view of our elite media class, who evaluate every story in terms of how it will influence elections and policy decisions.

 

Police shot a domestic abuser with a knife who was resisting arrest? People got killed in a riot? “Well,” the network news producers ask themselves, “how can this story be used to help advance the interests of the Democratic Party?”

 

Believe it or not, police still shoot lots of white criminals, and a lot more people died during last year’s riots than were shot by Kyle Rittenhouse.

The good news is that most Americans know this and have put up a mental “screen” while watching the news. And they are disregarding and ignoring the major news outlets that are most egregious in pushing their propaganda.

In a survey taken in May, just 20 percent of those polled trusted CNN “a lot,” while 39 percent trusted the network “not much” or “not at all.” Since then, CNN’s numbers have gotten worse. Fox News reported that since January of this year, the liberal network has lost 76 percent of its audience.

The poll results from Trafalgar confirm the fact that the media no longer reports the news but what the networks believe to be helpful in promoting their progressive agenda. Happily, the public isn’t buying it.

Biden’s Build Back Better Monstrosity Is Dead

Thursday, 16 December 2021 20:34
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, December 16, 2021: 

The chances the Senate will pass Biden’s signature piece of legislation — his “Build Back Better” bill — are now close to zero. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has “punted” the bill into March of next year, all but assuring its demise.

As NBC News commented after speaking with “four sources familiar with planning by … Schumer’s office,” “simple math” precludes the bill from reaching Biden’s desk.

It’s all Senator Joe Manchin’s (D-W.V.) fault: Talks between him and Biden were going “very poorly,” so poorly in fact that they “have broken down” over the size, scope, and cost of the monstrosity. Part of the problem is that sections of the bill haven’t even been written yet in hopes that Manchin and the White House could come to some sort of compromise, allowing him to vote for it.

At the moment, however, Manchin remains firm: It’s too costly and will further increase inflation, which is now the No. 1 concern of voters. The death knell was rung by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which reported on Friday that the BBB would increase the national debt by more than $3 trillion over the next 10 years, putting the lie to the claim by Biden that his plan would be “totally paid for” by generating additional taxes on the wealthy and the tax-avoiders. CBO didn’t buy it, and after its analysis reported the discrepancy.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said last rites at Fox News:

The [Congressional Budget Office] and the inflation number last Friday, I think, killed Build Back Better. They were trying to pass a lie. And God Bless Joe Manchin for sticking to his guns.

 

I think Build Back Better is dead forever and let me tell you why: Because Joe Manchin has said he’s not going to vote for a bill that will add to the deficit….

 

If you do away with the budget gimmicks, Build Back Better, according to the CBO adds $3 trillion to the deficit.

 

Build Back Better was the signature issue of the radical left. It died in the Senate because [of] the CBO….

 

[The CBO looks] at the bill as if all of the programs, like the child tax credit, go for 10 years, not one year. The child tax credit over 10 years is $1.6 trillion over 10 years.

 

The bill written in the Senate is a lie. The CBO exposed that lie, and when it comes to deficit spending, it’s [adding] $3 trillion to the deficit.

The BBB legislation runs thousands of pages long, and would overhaul the country’s healthcare system and public education, fund climate-change “investments,” increase taxes on everyone, and extend numerous COVID-19 programs even after the virus has been neutralized.

In a word, it would erase the last vestige of the free-enterprise system upon which the country was built, replacing it with a welfare state where people are forced to become dependent not on themselves but upon the government for permission and subsistence.

The death of BBB has political consequences. It might actually slightly reduce the Democratic Party’s chances of being totally annihilated in next November’s midterms, as most taxpayers would have viewed its passage as generating additional price increases on everything they buy.

It also improves the chances that the Senate might pass the odious and unconstitutional Freedom to Vote Act (FVA) as it moves its focus away from Biden’s bill and on to the FVA as the way to ensure voter fraud in favor of Democrats forever.

For the moment, the death of Biden’s Build Back America bill is to be celebrated. But the freedom fight continues.

Salvation Army Donations Down; Group Blames COVID, Inflation

Thursday, 16 December 2021 20:30
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, December 16, 2021:  

The Salvation Army receives three-quarters of its more than $3 billion in annual revenues in November and December. Places such as Seattle and Elmira, New York, are seeing those donations dropping by half.

“There are many reasons why both financial and toy donations are down this year,” said Salvation Army Colonel Cindy Foley of Seattle, “not the least of which is likely pandemic fatigue and concerns about employment and the future.… We are seeing few people donating at our … physical kettles.… The situation is dire.”

Salvation Army Major Stanley Newton in Elmira, New York, where donations are down by 50 percent this year, blamed inflation and COVID:

Inflation has killed us this year. Gas prices were probably 30% of what they are now — $1 to $2 [a gallon] — now it’s $3.50.

 

You have COVID resurfacing at a higher level so getting volunteers has been really difficult.

Nothing was said about the Salvation Army going “woke” earlier this year. While most who donate at those friendly red buckets know nothing about the Army’s shift from salvation to guilt, those who do are shying away from giving this year.

 

Following the death of George Floyd in May 2020, the Salvation Army’s International Social Justice Commission began to focus race. In February, the General of the Salvation Army, Brian Peddle, claimed that its guidebook titled Let’s Talk About Racism would help “overcome the damage [that] racism has inflicted upon the world, and yes, the Salvation Army.”

 

In that guidebook, the Salvation Army states its regret for being racist: “The Salvation Army acknowledges with regret that Salvationists have sometimes shared in the sins of racism … [that] racism is very real … [and that Salvationists must] “lament, repent and apologize for biases or racist ideologies held and actions committed.”

It added:

The meanings of these [racial categories such as White, Black, Latin, and Asian] have changed over time.

 

What has not changed is that racial groups are placed in a hierarchy, with White or lighter-skinned people at the top; non-Indigenous People Of Color (POC) subjugated beneath lighter skinned people; Black and Indigenous people at the bottom of the racial system.

The guidebook used terms such as “systemic racism,” “anti-racism,” “institutional racism,” “racism as a social construct,” it celebrated the “martyrdom” of George Floyd (the drug abuser and felon who died while resisting arrest), and warned of the dangers of a colorblind society.

When a firestorm of indignation and anger resulted, the Army pulled its guidebook with half an apology: “Headquarters realized that certain aspects of the guide may need to be clarified … [and] has now withdrawn the guide.”

But that non-apology was too late. They can’t row that canoe back up over the falls. They are suffering the consequences of offending the very people — innocent of being racists — they depend upon for their livelihood. Donors are deciding with their pocketbooks, punishing the Army for believing that it can simultaneously offend them while asking them for money and help.

Biden Uses Anniversary of Sandy Hook to Push Gun Control

Thursday, 16 December 2021 05:33
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, December 15, 2021:  

In a video message from the White House, President Biden mourned yesterday with the families who lost children in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, nine years ago. He assumed the patina of a sincere close friend familiar with their suffering, claiming that it was “one of the saddest days” during his time as vice president under Barack Obama.

He then turned the memorial service directed to those families into political theater directed to anyone else who might be watching: “We owe all of these families more than our prayers. We owe them action.”

Biden sounded like President Obama when Obama made a televised statement following the shooting back in December 2012. Said Obama at the time, “We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this.” He said he would “use whatever power this office holds” to prevent future such tragedies.

All of which is hyperbole, tiresome repetitions of remedies that have nothing to do with preventing future Adam Lanzas from committing similar mayhem. But those “remedies” have everything to do with continuing the government’s war against private ownership of firearms by American citizens.

Lanza, it will be remembered, had no criminal record. His mother was a law-abiding citizen and owner of a number of firearms which she had purchased legally over time. Lanza’s first crime was theft. He stole a few of his mother’s firearms and used them first to murder his mother and then kill a total of 28 people, including himself. 

The report from Connecticut’s attorney for the District of Danbury, where Sandy Hook Elementary School is located, concluded that the firearms and ammunition that Lanza used were legally purchased by Nancy Lanza and then stolen by her son Adam.

 

Wrote AWR Hawkins, a freelance writer with a Ph.D. in U.S. military history:

All of the guns were lawfully purchased by Lanza’s mother as was all the ammunition. Lanza then bypassed all gun control [laws] by stealing the firearms before using them to carry out his heinous crimes.

 

Because the guns were stolen [gun control laws did] nothing to prevent the crime at Sandy Hook Elementary.

What Biden’s mourning did was reveal once again that the issue wasn’t preventing similar atrocities in the future but continuing the long war on private gun ownership in the United States.

So, the chipping away at the Second Amendment continues. In his message, Biden said he already had “curbed the proliferation of ghost guns, crack[ed] down on rogue gun dealers, and promot[ed] safe storage [rules for firearms].”

And, if history is any guide, Biden is likely to unleash a barrage of illegal executive orders that have nothing to do with preventing future tragedies but everything to do with continuing the war on guns.

Following the shooting in 2012, President Obama issued 23 executive orders that were irrelevant to the shooting, including:

  • Directing his Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure that dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks;
  • Proposing a rule giving law enforcement authorities the power to run background checks on an individual before returning a seized gun;
  • Publishing instructions from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers;
  • Directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to research [the causes of] gun violence; and
  • Directing the attorney general to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies.

One can see at once how the war is being conducted. Under the cover of the Sandy Hook shooting, that war will be ramped up once again, this time by the Biden administration, not in any attempt to prevent another Sandy Hook shooting, but to continue the steady chipping away at and erosion of precious rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

CNN Analyst Calls Midterms for Republicans

Tuesday, 14 December 2021 11:52
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, December 14, 2021:  

CNN political analyst Harry Enten has called the 2022 midterms for Republicans. After reviewing the available polls and recent victories in state races in November, Enten said that “pretty much every single indicator that pointed to a Democratic wave in the 2018 midterms now points to a Republican one in the 2022 midterms.”

And that “Democratic wave” petered out, giving the Democrats razor-thin majorities in the House and an even split in the Senate. Only Vice President Harris’ tie-breaking votes have kept alive the Biden agenda to spend the U.S. into bankruptcy and tyranny.

According to the latest CNBC All-America Survey, Republicans now have a historic 10-point advantage over Democrats in its generic poll. Said Jay Campbell, the Democratic pollster behind CNBC’s poll: “If the election were held tomorrow, it would be an unmitigated disaster for the Democrats.”

Enten agrees:

There have only been two midterm cycles since 1938 when Republicans had any lead on this measure at this point….

 

[In] 2010 … they were up by two points on the generic ballot at this point in time [and] went on to gain 63 seats [in the House].

There are three primary indicators that Enten uses to gauge the future: presidential approval, special elections, and retirements from the House. On each, the numbers bode ill for the Democrats. On Biden’s approval rating, Enten said that Biden’s “is the second worst approval rating for an elected president at this point in their first term.”

As for special elections, Virginia stands out among the 60 such races that were decided in November. While Republican candidates on those races averaged five points better than the margin for the presidential race in 2020, in Virginia “they swept the top of the ticket (governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general) and gained control of the House of Delegates,” wrote Enten. 

Retirements of nearly 20 Democrats before the next election also bodes ill for the party. As Enten said, “retirements are not a perfect indicator of future midterm outcomes, but they’re a sign.” He added:

 

Elected officials are looking at the same statistics [that] we are. They aren’t likely to retire en masse unless they sense they’re going to lose.

Enten concluded:

The opposition party has picked up 5 or more seats in 34 or 38 midterms since 1870. Not a lot so far suggests that the 2022 midterms will be any different.

This is tantamount to surrender before the game is over. When the lead cheerleader is forced to admit that his team has lost, his team has lost.

Looking beyond the taking back of control of Congress by Republicans next November, two questions must be answered: What is the margin, and how many of the new faces will take seriously their oaths of office to uphold and defend the Constitution?

Would it be too generous to suggest that Republicans might duplicate their success in 2010, and take control of the House with a gain of 63 seats? Would it be too generous to suggest that half of those seats will be occupied by true constitutionalists who see the damage being done to the Republic by the Democrats and commit to beginning the long road to restoration?

Would that be enough to overcome the inevitable RINOs who sneak in by speaking like constitutionalists but committing treachery to their oaths by going along with the Republican House leadership?

That question can only be answered at the grass-roots level, where informed citizens select true Americanists to represent them in Congress. That’s where the battle for freedom and restoration will be decided.

Colorado’s Democratic Governor Declares COVID “Emergency” Is Over

Monday, 13 December 2021 20:29
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, December 13, 2021:  

Colorado Democratic Governor Jared Polis told Colorado Public Radio on Thursday that his state’s citizens no longer need to wear masks. He is lifting the mandate that suffocated freedom in the once-red state, and now is saying that health officials stepped beyond their bounds.

It was a classic political move: When the heat in the kitchen gets too hot, blame one of the other cooks.

He never apologized for violating peoples’ rights or infringing on their freedom of movement or right to make their own decisions. Instead, he “followed the science” and Coloradoans folded like a cheap lawn chair:

Our top goal is always to follow the science, and there was a time when there was no vaccine, and masks were all we had and we needed to wear them and Colorado stepped up, which was great.

And there is little doubt that when the next “emergency” occurs, and “science” says how the people should behave, Polis’ actions have set a precedent.

Said Polis:

[The mask mandate that I ordered is] the kind of thing that I … didn’t hesitate to do in the emergency.

And then he stepped away from taking responsibility:

You know, public health officials don’t get to tell people what to wear. I mean, that’s just not their job.

But when there’s an “emergency,” that IS their job, said Polis:

When you’re in an emergency situation, public health would say to always wear a mask … but you don’t tell people to wear a jacket when they go out in winter and force them to. If they get frostbite, it’s their own darn fault.

Then came the accusation. Those who have chosen not to get vaccinated are to blame:

If you haven’t been vaccinated, that’s your choice. I respect that. But it’s your fault when you’re in the hospital with COVID….

It’s almost like they made a deliberate decision not to get vaccinated.

And the reason? Those who chose to risk their lives and the lives of everyone around them by not getting vaccinated are getting their information from an “alternative misinformation universe”:

There are people that believe you and I are part of some massive conspiracy. Some of them believe there is no COVID; some of them believe the vaccine doesn’t work; some believe the vaccine has serious side effects.

 

The truth is, they’re in their own bubble, and it’s very hard to penetrate.

This is how tyrants such as Polis justify their illegal and unconstitutional actions: Anyone opposed, no matter how sound the reasons, are brushed off as conspiratorialists, or worse. 

Eric Boehm, writing in Reason, wrote about visiting Denver recently, noting the “absurdity” of the mask mandates:

 

In Denver, for example, masks are required indoors, even for vaccinated individuals. That means you have to engage in the nonsensical bit of COVID theater in which you don a mask to walk from the front door of a brewery to the bar, then remove it to eat, drink, and socialize in close proximity with other people.

 

If my experience visiting the city earlier this month was any indication, most people go along with the mandate but roll their eyes at the absurdity of it all, if you ask.

Will they “roll their eyes” the next time the powers-that-be declare that there’s another “emergency,” and just go along with the next illegal and illogical mandate? Or will they see with their own eyes the “absurdity of it all” and disregard it and make their own decisions?

New Poll: Nearly Half of Registered Voters “Strongly Disapprove” of Biden’s Performance

Thursday, 09 December 2021 12:26
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, December 9, 2021:  

The Wall Street Journal launched a new poll of its own, headed by lead pollsters from each party. On Tuesday, the Journal released its results: Just 19 percent of registered voters “strongly approve” of the job Biden is doing, while 46 percent “strongly disapprove,” generating an astonishing “underwater rating” of 16 points.

And, thanks to the pollsters’ larger sample size, they can also examine demographic groups more closely. Among independent voters, Biden is underwater by 36 points (30/66), and among undecided voters he’s underwater by 34 points (29/63).

As the pollsters admitted, “That’s abysmal.”

While Biden and Harris tour the country pushing his ill-conceived and pork-laden Build Back Better agenda, voters are worried about inflation eating into their paychecks. “The number one issue facing voters,” they wrote, “[is] the economy [where] Republicans hold a double-digit advantage, 46 to 35 percent.”

The poll also revealed just how voters feel on other related issues. Sixty-three percent say “the country is on the wrong track.” Republicans lead Democrats on the economy by 11 percent, on inflation by 18 percent, and on securing the border by 36 percent.

The pollsters drilled down into the demographics and found that “one year after giving Democratic House candidates more than 60% of their vote … the Journal survey found that Hispanic voters are [now] evenly split in their choice for Congress.

The Journal’s poll came just one day after another poll, this one by highly respected and accurate pollster TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics (TIPP), revealed that only 22 percent of American voters want Biden to run for reelection in 2024. When TIPP polled for Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) in the previous four election cycles, they were the most accurate in predicting the outcomes.

Even Democrats are giving up on Biden, according to TIPP, now partnering with Issues and Insights (I&I). Just 37 percent of registered Democrats want Biden on the ticket in 2024, and even fewer want Harris, at 16 percent.

That led TIPP to ask those surveyed whom they would rather have on the ticket. They posited the names of 16 potential Democrat candidates as alternatives to Biden, including Pete Buttigieg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Kennedy, Stacey Adams, Corey Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Gavin Newsom, Michael Bennet, Gretchen Whitmer, Jay Inslee, Michelle Lujan Grisham, and J.B. Pritzker. These are the leading lights of the Democratic Party.

None of them “rose above single digits,” said the pollsters. Most were in the low single digits — one to four percent.

The pollsters didn’t offer another choice — “none of the above“ — but if they had, a whopping 31 percent who said they were “unsure” would likely have checked that box.

In other words, according to the latest polling from skilled, experienced, and highly accurate pollsters, the Democrat Party’s brightest and best don’t even light up a 50-watt bulb.

Cato: New Hampshire Freest State; New York Still Least Free

Monday, 06 December 2021 15:47
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, December 6, 2021:  

There were few surprises in the Cato Institute’s sixth annual “Freedom in the 50 States” report released last week: New Hampshire is No. 1 while New York is No. 50. And for the same reasons. In New Hampshire, government is the most restricted, allowing the state’s citizens the most freedom. In New York, it’s the reverse: The state’s citizens are controlled, mandated, restricted, regulated, and heavily taxed.

In determining its rankings, the institute measures three broad categories in each state: personal freedoms (smoking, licensing, speed limits, marijuana, starting and running a business, etc.); fiscal policies (state debt, pension liabilities versus assets, income and sales taxes, etc.); and regulatory policies (speed limits, helmet laws, COVID mandates, zoning, and so forth).

Without saying so out loud, eight of the top 10 states for freedom in Cato’s ranking are run by Republicans, while eight of the 10 least-free states are run by Democrats. It’s ideology in practice: The freest states value freedom by limiting government, while in the least-free states, governments have been allowed to interfere and trespass personal freedoms almost without limit.

New Hampshire:

New Hampshire grabs the top spot overall because it does well in both economic freedom (3rd) and personal freedom (2nd)….

 

New Hampshire’s overall tax burden is well below the national average at 8.1 percent. The state government taxes less than any other state but Alaska [which ranks 24th in overall freedom]….

 

New Hampshire’s regulatory outlook is not so sunny.… The Granite State’s primary sin is exclusionary zoning … [along with] the absence of a right-to-work law [and] no exceptions to the [state’s] workers’ compensation mandate….

 

The state is above average on occupational freedom solely because the health professions enjoy broad scope of practice….

 

New Hampshire is quite personally free.… Nondrug victimless crime arrests are down significantly [and] the state enacted a significant asset forfeiture reform in 2016….

 

Educational freedom is extensive in the Granite State.… A 2021 expanded ESA (Educational Savings Account) will help the state improve its ranking in this category….

 

It is one of the two best states in the country for gun rights. The “constitutional carry” [no permit needed] bill was enacted [in 2017].

On the other hand, New York deserves to be dead last as it has been rated by Cato for years. “In fact,” wrote the authors of the study, “the Empire State has been the worst state for freedom in every year since our data set began in 2000.”

The state levies both state and local taxes, which together (7.9 percent plus 6.6 percent, respectively) total 14.5 percent, almost twice that of New Hampshire’s. From a regulatory perspective, New York, New Jersey, and California are nearly tied as worst in the nation. Wrote the authors, “Land-use freedom is very low, primarily because of the economically devastating rent control law in New York City.” It has a minimum-wage law and a disability insurance mandate, plus paid family leave.

From the perspective of personal freedom, New York ranks last because, wrote the authors, “New York is perhaps the worst state for homeschoolers.… It has no private school choice program, and only a meager public program.”

As for the Second Amendment, “gun rights are hedged about with all kinds of restrictions,” wrote the authors. A case now pending before the Supreme Court is likely to change all of that, however, making it vastly easier for the state’s citizens to obtain a concealed-carry permit than it is currently. With that single victory, New York might be able to move out of the basement on freedom in Cato’s study next year.

For the record, here are the top and bottom states from the Cato study, along with the governor’s party:

In overall freedom, the top 10 states are:

New Hampshire – Republican governor

Florida – Republican governor

Nevada – Democratic governor

Tennessee – Republican governor

South Dakota – Republican governor

Indiana – Republican governor

Michigan – Democratic governor

Georgia – Republican governor

Arizona – Republican governor

Idaho – Republican governor

The worst 10 states for freedom:

New York – Democratic governor

Hawaii – Democratic governor

California – Democratic governor

New Jersey – Democratic governor

Oregon – Democratic governor

Maryland – Republican governor

Delaware – Democratic governor

Vermont – Republican governor

New Mexico – Democratic governor

Rhode Island – Democratic governor

Big Banks in New York City Advising Workers to “Dress Down” as Felony Assaults Increase

Monday, 06 December 2021 10:27
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Sunday, December 5, 2021: 

Top executives at the Bank of America in New York City are quietly advising their associates and staffers to “dress down” to avoid becoming a target in the increasingly violent city. They told staffers that dressing up, or wearing anything with the BofA logo on it, could attract attention to them by criminals seeking easy prey.

In just the past 28 days, felony assaults, according to the NYPD, have jumped by 15 percent when compared to a year ago. It’s not being helped by the fact that with daylight savings time ending last month, more employees are returning home in the dark. Most of the lower-rank employees enter the city in the morning through Penn Station or Port Authority and then walk to work on or near Times Square. At night they return home the same way — in the dark.

New York City is one of the most violent cities in the country. According to Neighborhood Scout, the violent crime rate in the Big Apple is 5.3 per 1,000 residents, with the odds of being a victim one chance in 188. And it’s been run by Democrats for years. The current mayor, Bill DeBlasio, is a self-avowed Marxist and his replacement, mayor-elect Eric Adams, is also a Democrat.

In fact, according to a study completed last year by Neighborhood Scout, 18 of the 20 highest-crime cities in the country are run by Democrats. Two have mayors that ran in nonpartisan races. The highest-crime city in the country is Detroit, followed by Memphis, Birmingham, Baltimore, Flint, St. Louis, Danville (Illinois), Saginaw, Wilmington (Delaware), Camden (New Jersey), Pine Bluff (Arkansas), Kansas City, San Bernardino, Alexandria (Louisiana), Little Rock, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Stockton (California), Monroe (Louisiana), and Chester (Pennsylvania).

New York City, Chicago, and Seattle run close behind, according to Neighborhood Scout. And these three are run by Democrats.

This is no coincidence or statistical anomaly. Democrats traditionally take a dim view of law enforcement, have pushed to defund their police departments, and have installed radical DAs favoring no-cash bail thus allowing thugs to return to the streets after being arrested.

The obvious solution is to replacing these irresponsible officials. In the meantime, another solution is working its way through the court system in New York: New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

The Supreme Court is hearing the appeal that challenges New York’s “may issue” law that has virtually disarmed every citizen. At issue is the question of “whether [New York] State’s denial of petitioners’ applications for concealed-carry licenses for self-defense violated the Second Amendment.”

If the high court agrees, then New York, and citizens in other high-crime cities and states, will have a chance to defend themselves against being mugged (or worse) on their way home from work. Jacob Hornberger, founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation (FFF), has described the potential disaster for a young woman returning home from work, defenseless:

Let’s assume that a woman goes into the New York City subway system late at night. No one else is around. She’s 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighs about 120 pounds. She encounters a guy who is 6 foot 2 inches tall and weighs 190 pounds. The guy grabs her and attempts to rape her.

 

What is that woman supposed to do? Fight back? That’s a joke. Unless she is a black belt in karate, she will have no chance of resisting that man’s assault.

 

However, let’s suppose she has a Glock 9mm pistol in her purse, which she quickly pulls out when the man grabs her. Now things have suddenly become equalized. It doesn’t matter how small she is or how large he is. A bullet fired into his abdomen is going to stop him from raping her.

It wouldn’t likely come to that. Wrote Hornberger:

In the absence of New York City’s gun-control law, there would be a certain percentage of people carrying concealed weapons. Murderers and rapists would not know which people are carrying and which ones are not. Therefore, the fact that some people will be carrying would serve as a deterrent to [all] would-be murderers and rapists.

A favorable ruling from the Supreme Court would reverse the situation extant in New York City and other high-crime, anti-gun cities. As Hornberger explained:

[New York State’s] gun-control law actually makes the situation more dangerous for peaceful and law-abiding people. That’s because the law converts the entire city into a gun-free zone. Rapists and murderers love gun-free zones because they can act with the reasonable assurance that their victims lack the means to fight back.

Citizens living in the most violent cities in the country are suffering the consequences of Democrat decisions and policies. A favorable ruling in Bruen would give the average citizen in those cities an even chance against the mounting wave of violence inundating them as a result of those policies.

Former School-board President Survives First Investigation into His “Dossier”; Two Remain open

Friday, 03 December 2021 10:42
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, December 3, 2021: 

The Scottsdale (Arizona) Police Department (SPD) closed its investigation into whether former school-board president Jann-Michael Greenburg broke the law over a Google drive on his computer containing sensitive personal data on 47 parents who have protested the board’s policies on masking and CRT.

The SPD’s release said “It was determined that the drive contained opensource and/or public documents. Therefore, it has been determined that no criminal conduct has been committed at this time that would be under the jurisdiction of the Scottsdale Police Department.”

The carefully worded statement implied that Greenburg could still suffer legal consequences from other quarters. The FBI has been asked to open an investigation into the matter, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office has been made aware of the contentious Google drive residing on Greenberg’s computer, and the Arizona Attorney General’s office is looking into it as well.

And the Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) claims that it is also conducting its own investigation into the matter.

Greenburg is accused, along with his father, Michael, of creating and maintaining a Google drive on their joint computer containing the names, addresses, phone numbers, pictures, and other sensitive information (such as professional licensing, divorce, and details on mortgages) on 47 parents with children attending schools in the district. Most of them are parents who have at one time or another either spoken at board meetings or otherwise publicly expressed their unhappiness over the board’s policies concerning masking and the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT).

Michael is alleged to have invested heavily into obtaining the information from various information sources, compiling the information under folders titled “Press Conference Psychos,” “Anti-Mask Lunatics,” and “SUSD Wackos.”

When the Google drive was accidentally revealed by Jann-Michael while responding to a parent who apparently had made some derogatory comments about George Soros with which he disagreed, parents whose information had been collected were outraged. One parent, Amanda Wray, when she saw what Jann-Michael and his father had collected on her and her family, went ballistic:

 

What I first saw the contents of the Google Drive and I saw my 8- and 10-year-olds’ photos, that was terrifying. I’m like, what is he doing?

 

He has pictures of my vacation home, property records. I’m not a political opponent [but] I’m an involved parent and that is threatening to me and makes me wonder why and what he was planning to do with those photos.

Another parent, Amy Carney, a mother of six and a candidate for the board, told Fox News that the collection of personal data was retaliation for her objections to the board’s policies: “I’d call this retaliation.… The list of parents targeted in the drive appears to be anyone who has spoken out about anything against our district publicly or otherwise.”

At first Jann-Michael denied knowing anything about the drive on his computer: “I categorically deny having anything to do with any of this,” he told Arizona’s Independent Newsmedia (IN). This brought an immediate reaction from Wray: “Jann sent the screenshot [to me]. He has access to this drive, so I’m really interested to understand how he’s going to say he doesn’t know about it because he had the drive open on his computer.”

Greenburg changed his story once the local police got involved. He told the board, “I am reassured [that] the Scottsdale Police Department is investigating the matter. There appear to be bad actors involved and I am confident our law enforcement will quickly resolve these issues.”

This is the classic deflection device used often by politicians whose shenanigans behind the scenes have been exposed: blame a third party for their crimes.

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said in an e-mail to the board:

It has been reported that the … external drive was available or could be accessed by other board members, which may circumvent Arizona open meeting laws. Whether any public monies were improperly used in the creation and/or maintenance of this dossier is also of serious concern.”

He added:

Parents have a First Amendment right to assemble and speak in order to question the decisions public officials are making, especially when it involves the well-being of their children.

Local attorney Alexander Kolodin weighed in on the potential for legal action against Greenburg:

Both Arizona and the federal government have laws prohibiting both intimidation generally and voter intimidation in particular….

 

If these allegations are true Mr. Greenburg and his father might be liable for violating one or more of these laws.

Parents have begun a petition to remove Greenburg from the board after the board replaced him as president. At last count, more than 1,500 signatures have been garnered in their quest.

So far, Greenburg has refused to resign from the board. The New American will continue to follow this case as the other investigations run their course.

Democrat Pollster Tells New York Times: “We Have a Problem”

Thursday, 02 December 2021 16:50
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, December 2, 2021:

A center-left think tank, Third Way, asked Democrat pollster Brian Stryker to explore the reasons why Glenn Youngkin beat Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe in a surprise upset on November 2. He invited Virginia voters to attend focus groups to find out. He discovered, based on his findings, that “We [Democrats] have a problem.”

There are many problems facing the Democrats in the upcoming midterms, but Stryker exposed the primary one. In an interview with the New York Times he said, “We’ve got a national branding problem that is probably deeper than a lot of people suspect. Our party thinks maybe some things we’re saying aren’t getting through, but I think it’s much deeper than that.”

The “national branding problem,” according to Stryker, is that Democrats are focusing on issues they care about, not on issues that voters care about. They are not talking to the voters, but only to themselves. Said Stryker, “We’re more focused on social issues than the economy, and the economy is the No. 1 issue right now.”

He expanded:

The No. 1 issue for women right now is the economy, and the No. 1 issue for Black voters is the economy, and the No. 1 issue for Latino voters is the economy.

 

I’m not advocating for us ignoring social issues, but when we think broadly about voters, they actually all want us talking about the economy and doing things to help them out economically.

The problem is simple, according to Stryker: “[Voters] just see costs going up and don’t feel like there’s any progress being made yet.”

That problem was deliberately and intentionally created on the very first day of the Biden administration. On that day, Biden signed two executive orders: one, shutting down the Keystone XL Pipeline and curtailing fracking and offshore oil and gas exploration; two, halting the construction of the wall on the nation’s southern border.

The consequences of each were easy to predict: higher gas prices along with higher grocery prices, thanks to higher shipping costs and the impact higher oil and shipping prices have on more than 6,000 common-use products (from golf balls to bicycle tires, from refrigerators to clothing, from shoes to electric blankets). 

The open-borders policy launched by the administration has allowed a mass inflow of illegal immigrants, many of them dangerous criminals and others simply incapable of contributing usefully to the American economy. Instead, they will be a drag and a dead weight, raising law-enforcement and education costs. This is increasingly annoying to those immigrants who got into the country the right way: legally.

 

The disconnect between the Democratic Party’s messaging and those it needs to stay in power continues to widen, and it’s showing up in the polls. According to the Cook Political Report, independent voters are turning away from the party in droves.

As Cook noted:

According to Gallup polling, for example, Biden’s overall job approval rating has dropped from 57 percent in February to 42 percent today, a slide of 15-points. That drop-off has been driven almost entirely by independent voters….

 

The most recent polls from Marist, Quinnipiac, Washington Post/ABC, Fox and Monmouth, show Biden’s job approval ratings among independents in a similar place; from 29 percent to 44 percent approval.

 

More ominously for Biden, the strong disapproval ratings among independent voters have also increased over these past few months.

 

For example, back in April, 27 percent of independent voters in the Quinnipiac poll said they strongly approved of the job Biden was doing, compared to 38 percent who strongly disapproved.

 

In the November polling, just 12 percent of independents strongly approved to 46 percent who strongly disapproved; a swing of 23 points more strongly negative.

According to Cook, Biden’s job-approval ratings among independent voters are lower than Barack Obama’s at the same point in their administrations.

The problem, said Cook, is this: “Once the honeymoon ends for many of these voters, it’s over.” Whatever political capital Biden had on inauguration day has long since been spent.

The latest poll from Trafalgar Group released on Wednesday provides additional proof that the honeymoon is over. While Biden’s job-approval rating dropped further among all voters, with a negative spread of 23 points (36 percent approving, 59 percent disapproving), it’s even worse among independents: a 33-percent negative spread (29 percent approving, 62 percent disapproving).

The Times’ interview with Stryker followed a Times’ in-house analysis of the Democratic Party’s woes that it published last Saturday. It lamented that “the president’s central promise of healing divisions and lowering the political temperature has failed to be fruitful.” It noted that “among some of his core constituencies … [there are] double-digit declines among Black, Latino, female and young voters,” precisely the group the party needs to retain its grip on Congress.

As Cook wrote:

Independent voters are like the “check engine” light in American politics: when that light goes on, you are in trouble.

 

Right now, that light is blinking red.

 

That’s a terrible sign not just for Biden but for Democrats [as well].

Survey: Majority of Americans See China as “Greatest Threat”

Wednesday, 01 December 2021 12:35
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, December 1, 2021:  

The results from the latest survey conducted by Beacon Research for the Ronald Reagan Foundation, which were released last week, confirmed the “momentous shift” by Americans toward China first uncovered by the Brookings Institution in March.

Three years ago, just 21 percent of those polled — one out of five Americans — considered China “the greatest threat to the U.S.,” according to Beacon. That percentage moved to 28 percent a year later, to 37 percent in February of this year, and now stands at 52 percent.

In other words, more than half of American citizens now, finally, recognize China as the nation’s greatest threat.

It’s been a long time coming. When former CFR member Michael Pillsbury wrote The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower in March 2016, it was still largely a secret. His thesis began to gain traction when his book became part of the 2017 U.S. Special Operations Commanders’ Reading List. It became a best-seller at the Washington Post while The New York Times called it a “lodestar … for those pushing for a more forceful response to the threat that China’s rise poses to the United States.”

The awakening was first announced by the Brookings Institution, part of the liberal establishment that has for years promoted the canard that if America treats China with respect, China will reciprocate. If the United States “plays nice” with the communists running that country, they will “play nice” back.

That lie has been exposed, and Americans are catching on.

As Gallup noted in March, “The share of Americans who see China as our greatest enemy has doubled in the past year, from 22% to 45%.” Pew Research Center reported at the same time that 67 percent of Americans “now have negative views toward China, up from 46% in 2018.”

After reviewing the various polls back in March, Brookings concluded:

It is evident that the past five years represent a hinge-moment in U.S. perceptions of Beijing. At the public as well as elite levels, the optimistic assumptions that guided our China policy for more than two decades have lost credibility.

One could argue that the lie was deliberate, but that is now beside the point. Beacon reports that more Americans consider the greatest threats come from within the country as a result of the infiltration of Chinese communists into American culture. 

It reports that Americans, in the next five years, fear

 

• Thermonuclear war (61 percent);

• Conventional military attack (55 percent);

• Cyber-attacks (88 percent);

• An attack on our space assets, such as satellites (61 percent);

• Terrorist attacks on the homeland (82 percent);

• Biological attacks on the homeland (78 percent); and

• Global pandemics (81 percent).

Nearly three out of four Americans (71 percent) fear a “war between the U.S. and China” in the next five years.

Most Americans think they know exactly where the present pandemic started, according to Beacon: 72 percent say it’s likely that “the coronavirus was developed by scientists working at a lab in Wuhan (China), but accidentally leaked, and that the Chinese government then hid and lied about the lead to international health public officials.”

Even Democrats aren’t immune to the revelations. In February, 20 percent of Democrats named China as a threat to the United States. Today, 44 percent of them do.

As Sun Tzu, the Chinese general and military strategist, wrote five centuries before the birth of Christ:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Americans are finally coming to know the enemy. And they want something to be done about it. As Brookings noted back in March, Americans want to place sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for human-rights violations, they want to strengthen relations with allies in the region, they want the U.S. government to prohibit the sale of high-tech equipment to China, and they want to prohibit Chinese involvement in building U.S. communications networks.

This reflects the “momentous shift” in Americans’ attitudes towards China first discovered by Brookings back in March and confirmed by Beacon Research last week.

Backlash Forces Salvation Army to Withdraw “Let’s Talk About Racism” Guide

Monday, 29 November 2021 15:11
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 29, 2021:

The Salvation Army issued its “clarification” over its intentions for publishing and making public its “Let’s Talk About Racism” guide on Saturday. It was a non-apology:

Some individuals and groups have recently attempted to mislabel our organization to serve their own agendas. They have claimed that we believe our donors should apologize for their skin color, that The Salvation Army believes America is an inherently racist society, and that we have abandoned our Christian faith for one ideology or another.

 

Those claims are simply false, and they distort the very goal of our work.

There was no apology. No “upon careful reflection” we have summarily rejected any suggestion that the Salvation Army or its donors and supporters are racists. No “rejection” of the Marxist philosophy oozing from the guide that demands apologies from everyone who, by birth, is guilty of racism.

No. Instead, thanks to reviewers such as this writer at TheNewAmerican.com, “it has since become a focus of controversy.”

If there is any note of sorrow or error, it appears here in the Army’s non-apology:

We have done our best to provide accurate information, but unfortunately, some have chosen to ignore those efforts.

Nevertheless:

At the same time, International Headquarters realized that certain aspects of the guide may need to be clarified.

 

Consequently, for both reasons, the International Social Justice Commission has now withdrawn the guide for appropriate review.

The Army “remains undeterred in our mission … [that we and our] supporters know that ours is a message of love, even for those who disagree or attack us. That is the model set by Christ, and we strive to follow it every day.”

There was no attack. There was merely exposure. From the Army’s guidebook that is being withdrawn for “review,” one finds this:

 

The Salvation Army acknowledges with regret, that Salvationists have sometime shared in the sins of racism and conformed to the economic, organizational, and social pressures that perpetuate racism.

And so, rooting out latent racism in the Army has now been expanded to include rooting out that latent racism in everyone who was being born with a certain skin color:

The Salvation Army is a holiness movement … [which] includes embracing diversity … and rooting out racism, bias, and discrimination from our lives.

Part of that “rooting out” demands that Salvationists must “lament, repent, and apologize for biases or racist ideologies held and actions committed,” according to the guide.

The Army is now suffering from an increasing awareness among its members and donors about its adoption of the Critical Race Theory and the bullying that goes along with it. As Christian radio show host Greg Koukl noted:

There is a massive number of academics — black and white, Christian and non-Christian, atheist and theist — who have raised the alarm against the aggressive indoctrination and, frankly, bullying of CRT — not to mention that racial essentialism inherent in that view, the false witness it bears against virtuous people, and the general destruction it continues to wreak on race relations in this country.

Those “certain aspects of the guide” that “may need to be clarified” by the Salvation Army’s International Social Justice Commission, which issued the guide, should include identifying the underlying purposes of CRT: division, hatred, and the resulting need to recreate the culture into that of perfect communism: everyone is equal, by force.

New York Times Declares Democrats Are in Trouble

Monday, 29 November 2021 15:08
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 29, 2021:  

The New York Times assigned four of its political journalists to see just how much trouble the Democratic Party is in, going into the midterms. On Saturday their verdict came in: serious, bordering on disastrous.

The party is not only losing the support of many of the its most loyal supporters, but it’s also losing the support of the critical independent voter who has traditionally supported the party.

The Times journalists reported that “Democrats across the party are raising alarms about sinking support among some of their most loyal voters … [because Biden and the Democrat Party] are falling short on campaign promises and leaving their base unsatisfied and unmotivated ahead of next year’s midterm elections.”

This, despite the expectation that passage of the massive trillion-dollar infrastructure bill and the House’s passage of the even larger “Build Back Better” bill would galvanize their support. Instead, reported the Times, “The president’s central promise of healing divisions and lowering the political temperature has failed to be fruitful.”

While RealClear Politics continues to chronicle the collapse in support for Biden, the damage he is doing to the vital independent voter support is staggering: “Among some of his core constituencies … [there are] double-digit declines among Black, Latino, female and young voters.”

Those voters are unimpressed with Biden’s so-called legislative “victories” and are instead dealing with everyday challenges such as rising inflation at the grocery store and the gas station and the controversy over who has the right to determine who will educate their children (and how).

The Times has a poll to prove their point:

According to a survey conducted by Global Strategy Group, a Democratic polling firm, only about a third of white battleground voters think that either the infrastructure or the broader spending bill will help them personally.

The reporters’ conclusion was dismal:

The national environment looks difficult for Democrats, who [in addition] may lose seats in redistricting [as well as facing] the historical trend of a president’s party losing seats during his first term in office.

On the other hand, Republicans see what’s happening and are seizing the opportunity to turn out House Democrats next year. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) reported last Friday that, as of that date, nearly 1,000 Republicans have filed candidacy papers in 379 of the 435 House districts across the country, up significantly from the same time in 2019.

That number includes 196 women, 179 veterans, and 177 who are minorities. As Representative Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), chairman of the NRCC, exuded:

In this environment, no Democrat’s seat is safe, and vulnerable Democrats have a choice to make: retire, or lose.

As of this writing, 17 Democrats have done just that, raising further alarm bells for Miles Coleman, the associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball published by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. Said Coleman, “Swing district members like Ron Kind (D-Wisc.) [and] Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.) leaving … [is] a potential warning sign for Democrats.”

This was echoed by Michael McAdams, a spokesman for the NRCC: “The writing is on the wall: Democrats’ majority is doomed, and smart Democrats are calling it quits while they still can.” 

The history of midterms doesn’t treat the president’s party kindly, especially one whose job approval ratings continue to decline. The party of a president with an approval rating under 50 percent loses an average of 37 House seats in the midterms, according to Gallup. Biden’s approval is anywhere from 36 to 45 percent, report the most recent polls. RealClear Politics reports its average is under 42 percent for Biden, versus 53 percent disapproving, an 11-point negative spread.

 

As Biden goes, so goes the Democrat Party. When Rasmussen quizzed 1,200 likely voters over whether they think Biden should run for reelection in 2024, less than a third agreed. They said that in a rematch with Trump, Biden would lose by double-digits, 45 to 32 percent. Among independents — the key Democrat demographic — Biden would lose, 47-20 percent.

The polling firm Fabrizio, Lee & Associates conducted a poll in five key “swing” states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — asking voters how they would vote in 2024. Trump won in a walk, by 12 points in Michigan, 10 points in Wisconsin, eight points in Arizona, six points in Pennsylvania, and three points in Georgia. This, it seems, would be more than enough to overcome even the most egregious voter manipulations conducted by the Democrat Party in those states. As Tony Fabrizio said, “This new data clearly shows that today the voters in these five key states would be happy to return Trump to the White House and send Biden packing.”

Even the poll from Redfield & Wilton Strategies showed Trump leading Biden in their rematch in 2024, the first time Trump has led Biden in their polling.

It’s no wonder that the New York Times can find no good news for Democrats in the midterms. There just isn’t any.

Salvation Army Goes Woke; Demands Members, Donors Repent of Inherent Racism

Saturday, 27 November 2021 13:10
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Saturday, November 27, 2021:  

Following the death of George Floyd in May 2020, the Salvation Army’s International Social Justice Commission shifted its attention to Critical Race Theory. In February this year, Brian Peddle, CEO and the 21st General of the Salvation Army, announced the shift in a video that he claimed would help “overcome the damage [that] racism has inflicted upon the world, and yes, The Salvation Army.”

In a guidebook titled Let’s Talk About Racism, the group claims that the new resource is designed “to fight the evil of racism and create a more just and equitable society.”

From the guidebook:

The Salvation Army acknowledges with regret, that Salvationists have sometime shared in the sins of racism and conformed to the economic, organizational and social pressures that perpetuate racism….

 

The Salvation Army is a holiness movement … [which] includes embracing diversity … and rooting out racism, bias and discrimination from our lives.

It declares that differences in “equity” prove that racism exists in the United States:

Many have come to believe that we live in a post-racial [colorblind] society, but racism is very real for our brothers and sisters who are refused jobs and housing, denied basic rights, and brutalized and oppressed simply because of the color of their skin.

Therefore, says the guide published by the Salvation Army, Salvationists must “lament, repent and apologize for biases or racist ideologies held and actions committed.”

That’s because “the subtle nature of racism is such that people who are not consciously racist easily function with the privileges, empowerment and benefits of the dominant ethnicity [white], thus unintentionally perpetuating injustice.”

Example:

For instance, devout Christians who naively use racial epithets or a well-intentioned Sunday School curriculum that only uses white photography and imagery [are guilty of racism].

The initiative claims that differences in living standards and income are not attributable to individual effort and other circumstances, but to discrimination. Therefore, repentance is required even if not deserved, according to the Army’s new marching orders.

The organization, founded in 1865, received almost 60 percent of its $3.3 billion in donations from “direct public support,” including volunteers ringing bells and hosting stands holding those familiar red buckets. The group says it helps financially some 23 million American families every year and claims a worldwide membership of nearly two million supporters.

Longtime supporters recognize the insidious and divisive nature of Critical Race Theory that has been adopted by the Salvation Army, including Christian talk-show host Greg Koukl. In an open letter to the group, he wrote:

I recently became aware of your International Social Justice Commission material, “Let’s Talk about Racism.” I read virtually every word of the material in every session and surveyed your bibliography. It rapidly became clear to me that TSA has fallen for critical race theory lock, stock, and barrel….

 

To see that TSA has been taken in by the likes of Ibram X. Kendi (“How to Be an Anti-Racist”), Robin DiAngelo (the author of the thoroughly discredited “White Fragility”), and the (also thoroughly discredited) NYT “1619 Project” has my head spinning.

 

Your material’s baseless claim that “our foundations were built on racism” is beyond belief….

 

CRT is a Trojan horse taking in well-intentioned Christian enterprises that — because they care about justice and oppose oppression — naively promote the most serious threat to biblical Christianity I have seen in 50 years….

 

There is a massive number of academics — black and white, Christian and non-Christian, atheist and theist — who have raised the alarm against the aggressive indoctrination and, frankly, bullying of CRT — not to mention the racial essentialism inherent in the view, the false witness it bears against virtuous people, and the general destruction it continues to wreak on race relations in this country.

 

CRT has set us back 50 years.

As a result, Koukl, who has been a public advocate for the Army for years, is pulling his support:

I spoke at length about this on my radio show this week, inviting my audience to read your material for themselves and make their own judgments.

 

I told them, though, that as for me, I was redirecting my giving elsewhere. I am not “cancelling” you, as many in the CRT movement would gladly do to me. Rather, I am carefully investing my resources in organizations that I fully trust will serve Christ in truth and only in truth, and I no longer trust The Salvation Army to do that.

Five Democrats Sink Biden’s Comptroller Nomination

Saturday, 27 November 2021 06:38
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, November 26, 2021: 

Just one Senate Democrat would have sunk the confirmation of Saule Omarova, Joe Biden’s nominee to be comptroller of the currency. Instead, she got five — Senators Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.). This, wrote Axios on Wednesday, “effectively kills her nomination.”

Every senator should have opposed her nomination. All Republicans would likely have voted against her if the Senate Banking Committee had moved her nomination to the floor. And every Democrat should have. In fact, the White House should never have offered her nomination in the first place.

But no. The powers that be want so desperately to change the United States into a carbon copy of the old Soviet Union, or Venezuela, that they continued to support her nomination even as it was sinking.

When three of the five senators — Tester, Warner and Sinema — told the committee’s chairman, Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), that they were bailing, he informed the White House that her nomination was, for all intents and purposes, dead in the water. The White House, fully under the control of leftists who are working to change America into a socialist state, continued to back Omarova: “The White House continues to strongly support her historic nomination. Saule Omarova is eminently qualified for this position.”

And then the White House spokesman told Axios: “She has been treated unfairly since her nomination with unacceptable red-baiting from Republicans like it’s the McCarthy era.”

“Red-baiting” is a disparaging term often used by communist sympathizers to deflect legitimate criticism of an individual harboring communist views in an attempt, often successful, of painting the accuser of being driven by xenophobic or fanatical right-wing ideologies. It’s an attempt at smearing opponents to communism and its forced imposition on America.

So, too, is the phrase the White House spokesman used — “like it’s the McCarthy era” — referring to legitimate attempts in the 1950s to expose communists who were infiltrating sensitive and influential agencies of the federal government. 

The senators were no doubt influenced by the letter they received from 41 state banking associations and the Independent Community Bankers of America. They might not have seen her as part of the plan to turn America into a socialist nightmare but they certainly saw that, if successful, private banking, and their profession, would disappear.

 

“We take this unusual step,” they wrote, “based on the nature of Prof. Omarova’s public positions and the impact they would have on community banks … [her] proposal [to eliminate all private banking in the United States] is anathema to community banks and would undermine the role they play in driving local economic activity and development.… [She] stands well outside of … consensus … and could seek as Comptroller to undermine it and thereby jeopardize American economic growth.”

They failed to mention her ultimate purpose, as exposed by the Wall Street Journal:

She proposed that the Federal Reserve take over consumers’ bank deposits, effectively ending [private] banking as we know it. [Her plan would] become the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources … [just as] Venezuela and China are doing.

Senator Bill Hagarty (R-Tenn.) wasn’t so inhibited. He told Fox News:

President Biden’s choice for banking regulator is a Marxist academic who wants to destroy the American banking and energy sectors and implement socialism in the United States, proving once again that this White House is beholden to the radical left elements of the Democrat party.

Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), in a speech on the floor of the Senate, said:

There’s a lot that’s extraordinary and radical here — but maybe the heart of it is that Ms. Omarova doesn’t just want tightened regulation of banks. What she wants is to, and I quote — this is her words — “effectively end banking as we know it.” Those are words she wrote just last year.

Much has been written about her Marxist positions on banking. Something little known is her 2020 paper, “The Peoples’ Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy,” in which she offers a “blueprint for a comprehensive restructuring of the central bank’s balance sheet as the basis for redesigning the core architecture of modern finance.”

She expanded on that theme in a lecture she gave in January 2021:

There will be no more private bank deposit accounts, and all of the deposit accounts will be held directly at the Fed.

 

And there are very interesting implications from that thought experiment; for example, with the much more direct and proactive tools of monetary policy, like helicopter money, which is, you know, considered radical, primarily because economists really do not know how to manage the issue of what would happen in the inflationary environment when the central bank needs to contract the supply of money.

 

How is it politically feasible for the central bank to effectively take money away from people’s accounts?

Her plan answers that question: The Fed could simply remove a quantity of those heretofore privately held dollars and thus “shrink” the money supply to fight inflation.

At this writing, the White House hasn’t officially announced that they are pulling her nomination, nor has Omarova decided that the battle is lost and officially withdrawn her nomination. But, for all intents and purposes, it’s over.

Moderate Democrats Panicking Over 2022 and 2024

Wednesday, 24 November 2021 15:41
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, November 24, 2021:  

As Joe Biden continues to plummet in the polls, moderate Democrats are panicking about what’s increasingly likely to happen in 2022 and 2024.

First, the polls. Taking RealClear Politics as reliable, Biden is now 11 points underwater (53-42) on his job approval. Some polls are showing him 19 points underwater.

On the economy, he’s 18 points underwater; on immigration, 32 points; on foreign policy, 18 points; and on the 2022 generic congressional vote in 2022 Republicans hold a four-point advantage, with some polls showing more like 13 points favoring a generic Republican over a generic Democrat in the coming midterm elections.

For many Republicans, this is unalloyed good news. For moderate Democrats such as A.B Stoddard, it’s reason for panic, fear, and disbelief. Not that the Democrats’ surrender to the far left isn’t of concern. It’s the consequent rise of the specter of Donald Trump behind the scenes in 2022 and front and center in 2024 that has her worried.

Stoddard has the credentials of a moderate Democrat, having her views acceptable not only at MSNBC and CNN but Fox News as well. Covering the Senate since 1994, she has remained reliably centrist — although vehemently in her dislike for Trump — and now watches with horror at what the progressives are doing to her party.

She bought the line that Biden, having legitimately won (although by the slimmest of margins) the election in 2020, would “return the United States to a state of normalcy after the disruption, and destruction, of former President Trump.” But nothing is normal:

Voters already believe someone else should replace [Biden] on the ticket in 2024, only 10 months after he was inaugurated….

 

Approval ratings for Biden, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris, are terrible. Throw in a GOP takeover of potentially both chambers of Congress next year … and you have the makings of a full party crack-up.

Biden is mentally unfit, as Stoddard reviews the latest polls. Especially unnerving is that “a new Harvard-Harris poll found 53% of voters doubt his mental fitness and 58% said he is too old to do his job.” (He turned 79 on November 20.)

She laments:

There is nothing reassuring about the oldest president to ever be elected promising three years out that he can handle a second presidential campaign, let alone a second term, when the odds are that he cannot.

And just who would take his place? Kamala Harris? Stoddard quotes former Democrat Senator Chris Dodd, a confidant of Biden, when he was asked about Harris: “I’m hoping the president runs for reelection, but [if] for whatever reason that might not be the case, it’s hard to believe there would be a short list without Kamala’s name on it. She’s the vice president of the United States.” As Stoddard noted, “If you are the vice president this is no small insult.” 

Stoddard warns that party insiders are already building a list of challengers to Harris, including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. But then, she adds, “2022 is currently expected to be wipeout year for the [Democrat] party.”

 

She is already mourning the departure of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, either by choice or by ballot, calling it “an incalculable loss if Democrats are facing minority status with a lame-duck president.”

And she voices fears that, once in control, the Republicans will turn the tables on Biden, bringing charges of impeachment.

She is right to be more than nervous, according to Conrad Black, writing at The Epoch Times. Stoddard “cannot be contemplating the future she envisioned without a sense of revulsion if not terror.”

Any president who could withstand the withering and continuous attacks from the kept media is a force to be reckoned with. Wrote Black:

[Trump] astounded almost everyone by being nominated and elected, and was the subject of an unprecedented sand-bag job from the national political media, the D.C. governmental establishment, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the academy, major league sports, and was falsely accused of being a Kremlin agent by former intelligence directors, dragged through the muck of the Trump-Russia collusion nonsense for most of his term, and subjected to two spurious impeachments, one after he had left office.

 

His reelection was opposed by 95 percent of the media, he was de-platformed by the oligarchic social media cartel, and outspent two to one. Ultimately, a great deal of creative (and constitutionally questionable but never judicially judged) changes in voting and vote-counting in swing states, supposedly to accommodate the COVID pandemic was deployed against him, and with over 40 million harvested votes, he would still have won if only about 55,000 votes had flipped in Pennsylvania and any two of Arizona, Georgia, or Wisconsin.

He is likely to return, according to Black:

Despite the close and questionable election result, it was almost universally assumed by his more fervent detractors like Ms. Stoddard that he was a dreadful aberration who had gone and would not be back.

 

The astounding irony is that, after six years of this colossal political donnybrook, Trump is the likely early favorite for the next election and the winner of this great single warrior combat.

The Democrats are virtually handing control of Congress in 2022 and the White House in 2024 to Republicans:

The new administration has been unprecedentedly incompetent even to those of us who feared the worst — millions of illegal migrants, sky-rocketing crime, inflation, and deficits, a very unresponsive president reduced to insipid pleadings to China and OPEC, a completely unfeasible vice president, a shambles in COVID policy, and in Afghanistan the worst and most humiliating fiasco in the history of the U.S. armed forces since General Hull surrendered Detroit to the Canadians and British in 1812.

 

Sophisticated military hardware worth $85 billion was abandoned to the incoming Taliban terrorist-tainted government.

 

The response of the Democrats and their media allies to this shambles is to construe every disagreement as racist, as in their disgraceful misrepresentation, from Biden down, to acquitted Wisconsin murder defendant Kyle Rittenhouse as a white supremacist vigilante.

In 2022 it will be all Republican, and in 2024 it will be Trump or someone he backs, says Black:

In over-reacting to Trump, a successful president, the Trump-haters largely delivered the great Democratic Party to a riffraff of socialists and are tied to a ludicrously inept regime that has little chance of avoiding Donald Trump’s electoral revenge: himself back again or a candidate he supports.

It’s no wonder that moderate Democrats such as Stoddard are in a state of panic. Barring a political miracle (either real or manufactured), Democrats are headed for destruction in 2022 and obliteration in 2024.

Many of the articles on Light from the Right first appeared on either The New American or the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor.
Copyright © 2021 Bob Adelmann