The Biden Administration is desperate. In order to win re-election in November, the President critically needs to turn around support in much-needed swing states including Michigan and Wisconsin, which he won in 2020. The Real Clear Politics polling average has him behind former President Trump in those states by 1.6% and 1.8% respectively. Remember the Democratic Michigan primary had over 100,000 votes for “uncommitted” in February - a stunning rebuke of the sitting President. Both states have significant immigrant populations which are extremely unhappy with the President’s policies in Israel/Palestine and the broader Middle East, going so far as to name him, “Genocide Joe.”

At the same time, pro-Hamas protests continue to escalate across the nation at college campuses, most famously at Columbia University, where both Democratic and Republican Congresspeople have showed up to condemn the protests. Pictures and video of riot police firing tear gas, pepper spray and engaging in hand-to-hand combat to enforce University policy are proliferating, reminding many of the Civil Rights riots of 1968. The Democratic National Convention that year was plagued with race riots and brutal scenes of protesters being beaten by police, and helped to ensure the victory of law and order candidate Richard Nixon.

Surely, the Biden Administration realizes that if the conflict in Gaza and the subsequent protests in America continue it likely spells doom for their chances to remain in office. With three other center to progressive candidates in the race (RFK Jr, Cornel West, and Jill Stein), protest votes on this issue alone have the possibility of spoiling Biden’s candidacy. RFK Jr’s support is growing with a broad coalition of voters across party lines and two recent national polls showing his support at 16% - enough to be on the debate stage in the fall. The most recent CNN poll was devastating, showing a 5-way race with Trump +9 and Biden only +10 over the total of the 3 other candidates.

And so, the team that did much to foment the current Middle East crisis through ill-constructed policies of detente with Iran is now scrambling to end the violence that ensued. As we have reported previously, the Biden Administration and the Obama-Biden Administration:

…reversed the Trump Administration policy, and restarted aid to Palestine, which no one believes goes anywhere but to Hamas in Gaza. The Obama-Biden Administration lifted sanctions and sent perhaps $50B to Iran in 2015 without addressing Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism at all, in essence allowing Iran’s sponsorship of terror to continue unabated. More recently, Biden clandestinely opened up talks with Iran to restart such a deal and infamously sent Iran $6B in other frozen assets (in essence, lifting previous sanctions).

Since that was written, Biden has continued to not enforce sanctions aimed at Iranian oil exports, presumably to keep the price of oil from skyrocketing past its already inflated price. But the net effect is estimated to have sent Iran a further $32B to $35B since Biden took office and reversed the sanctions, enabling Iran to once again expand its terror campaigns through Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels and others. Once again proving that bad policy leads to worse choices.

Today, Iran has successfully propagandized a significant portion of the global left - the furthest progressives across the globe stand arm in arm with Hamas and their brutal tactics of rape, kidnapping and murder. President Biden has been strategized into a corner by his betters, who have forced the question: will his Administration continue to support Israel and increasingly alienate a significant part of his base, or cut the legs out from under Netanyahu by forcing an end to hostilities. That would leave Hamas in charge in Gaza and Iran emboldened to do more damage across the region, but more importantly for President Biden, it would likewise alienate a different and significant portion of his base, including the warmongers in Congress who profit from war and Jewish Americans.

And so we’ve seen a full court press trying to get a permanent ceasefire agreement with Hamas and Israel. Politico reports in their daily “Playbook” briefing that Biden has been “working the phones” with Prime Mininster of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, Qatar’s Amir Sheikh Tami Bin Hamas Al-Thani and Egypt’s Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi, urging them, “to exert all efforts to secure the release of hostages held by Iran.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Riyadh (again from the Playbook) is touring the region to stump for the latest offer to Hamas, calling it “extraordinarily generous.” One perhaps insurmountable obstacle is Netanyahu himself, who today made it clear he does not support the US deal and will attack Raffah (the last major Hamas territory) with or without such an agreement.

And thus the trap has been set and closed. Iran, Hamas and others know that Joe Biden is desperate to get this issue out of the Presidential race. And they know the clock is ticking, with the DNC’s convention scheduled for mid-August in Chicago - the same place the 1968 convention took place in a fantastic irony. Joe Biden’s campaign, struggling and behind in the polls despite Trump’s inability to campaign due to his many court proceedings, must see this threat as existential. President must solve this crisis if he has any hope of being re-elected. All of the players in this conflict know it.

Therefore, we should expect a terrible deal for Israel - that gives Iran and Hamas everything they want - to be force fed by the Biden Administration . And the long term implications will be disastrous - Hamas’ tactics of hiding in civilian centers like hospitals and schools will have shown to deliver the propaganda they need to extract concessions from a paralyzed Administration.

Worse still, with millions of unknown aliens roaming the United States, is it crazy to believe we won’t see similar tactics by Hamas elements in the homeland soon?

In August, Newsweek declared, “Biden’s economy is booming, here’s why you’re not feeling it.” In November, The Washington Post complained, “Biden’s economy is booming, but voters are unhappy,” and Salon fawned, “Biden’s economy is honestly pretty amazing: How come he doesn’t get credit?” Just ten days ago, Bloomberg proclaimed, “Biden’s Hot Economy Stokes Currency Fears for the Rest of World.”

But after months of hearing the Biden Administration and their fans in the media proclaim a booming economy, the jig is up.

GDP

After a hot quarter in Q3 last year of 4.9% growth, growth has slowed to less that one third of that figure in the latest GDP report to 1.6% - missing even lackluster expectations of a 2.5% consensus. This lines up with the trend as Q4 had slowed to 3.4%. If that trend continues, we will be in recession later this year.

Inflation

Inflation is rising again as the economy has not and perhaps can not absorb the huge growth of the money supply due to the continued trillion dollar deficits produced by Congress and the White House. After the peak of 9.1% in June of 2022, and a subsequent fall to 3.0% a year later in June 2023, inflation is rising again with the latest figure at 3.5% - still 150% higher than the Fed target of 2.0%. Inflation was 1.4% when Joe Biden took office and it has never been at or below the 2.0% mark since February 2021. This sustained level of inflation and high prices is creating major shifts for the worse.

Real Estate

Shelter costs have had a huge spike for maximal negative impact on most Americans. Redfin reports buying a home costs more than ever. 78% of aspiring homeowners say they can’t afford the current prices. Half of renters report they can not afford their rent. Auto and homeowners’ insurance costs are skyrocketing. In many areas, there are not enough homes available even if they were affordable. Residential real estate is generally high priced, not readily available, more difficult to buy and maintain than ever and loans are relatively expensive due to the current high interest rate environment.

On the commercial side, especially in office space, the problem is precisely the opposite. Since COVID, the rules of onsite work have changed and it does not appear the pre-pandemic office needs are coming back. When coupled with the credit crunch caused by the lack of demand and changes in interest rates, banks are frantically trying to dump commercial real estate debt that is upside down on the balance sheet. Fortune reported back in October that $80B in commercial real estate debt is in distress, and it’s likely much worse now. Commercial real estate foreclosures jumped 117% in March according to Fox Business, and many believe the coming collapse of this market will spell trouble for the broader economy as banks may fail or need bailouts to cover their bad real estate loans.

Food

Food costs are ridiculously high. This has been reported so many times in so many places, I don’t think any one needs to be convinced. Food costs rose in 2022 faster than any time since the stagflation of the 1970s and they remain high as prices continue to rise, albeit at a slower rate. Wages have not caught up causing more trouble on the family checkbook.

Employment

While employment reports generally have been positive, the numbers are not to be trusted. They have significant error rates, and the BLS’ method of describing unemployment leaves a lot to be desired - a large chunk of the new jobs counted in the past year have been part time jobs and mostly filled by foreign-born workers. Native-born workers’ jobs have not recovered since the recession and the gig economy is squeezing people’s ability to earn a living. An important measure of employment - the US Labor participation rate - has not recovered from COVID:

If these trends continue, there will be a recession this year that may trap the Fed. What will they do when GDP goes negative and inflation is still high and rising?

If Congress and the White House do not get serious about cutting spending and the money supply soon, we may all be in for a difficult decade.

With much fanfare (see members of Congress shamefully waving the Ukrainian flag on the floor of the House of Representatives) the march away from liberal democracy toward a Soviet-style totalitarianism increased in speed over the weekend. As Senator Amidala sadly relates in Revenge of the Sith, “so this is how Liberty dies: with thunderous applause.”

Senators voted Saturday to further invalidate the Fourth Amendment, as the FISA 702 program of warrantless spying on Americans was expanded and reauthorized. In order to justify NSA, CIA, FBI and DHS abilities to conduct searches on citizens without probable cause nor a warrant, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) declared multiple times on Fox News Sunday that, “WE ARE AT WAR!” He failed to mention with whom we are at war and when Congress declared such a thing, which is Congress’ Constitutional duty. The Imperial Senator continued, making an emotional plea that he was threatened by some unnamed actor and that FISA 702 must be employed to protect his carnival-barking charlatanage, as if he were some Imperial Caesar whose life was more important than the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the American people. It was something to see.

While some patriots on both sides of the aisle attempted to thwart these actions, none of their efforts mattered. The people’s resistance to overwhelming state power in Washington was defeated once again. Worse still, at the last minute new language was inserted to radically expand FISA - making every cable and internet service provider a soldier in the war against the American people.

Even Democratic Senators decried the expanded FISA 702 legislation. From NBC:

It’s important that people understand how sweeping this bill is,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Intelligence Committee and outspoken proponent of privacy protections. “Something was inserted at the last minute, which would basically compel somebody like a cable guy to spy for the government. They would force the person to do it and there would be no appeal.”

…and…

In a rare break with Schumer and Biden, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the president pro tempore, opposed the bill, saying: “I have strong concerns that this expansion of FISA Section 702 authorities would allow for increased abuse and misuse of the law — infringing on the rights of Americans here at home.”

It is shameful how little evidence the Deep State is required to justify the endless expansion of their tyrannical power, and how little Americans notice. Just twenty years ago, Colin Powell was required to go the UN and make the case for the second invasion of Iraq. We now know most of the intelligence he used in that pleading was false (and likely falsified by an eager warmongering element in the White House, the CIA and the Defense Department) so perhaps that’s why there’s no longer even a phony attempt - they’ll just lie to us anyway. In today’s TikTok world, it’s become easy to fake justifications to a mindlessly unaware populace. That lines up with the illegal seizure of TikTok from its owners (which was also passed this weekend) - if somebody is going to spread propaganda on TikTok, it should certainly be the good ol’ American CIA and not the CCP.

But these injustices can not stand in a free society. Rather than curtail the current FISA 702 program (which was the aim of Conservative Republicans and Liberal Democrats which both still love liberty and justice) Congress passed precisely the opposite - an advancing of Big Brother-style surveillance.

In the House, two dubious proxy wars in Ukraine and Israel - attributable to the disastrous foreign policy of the United States - were reinvigorated as the House gave the President all of his borrowed $95B to enrich DC Military Defense Contractors (and their government cronies) to prolong these winless wars. Despite six months of negotiation amid promises that Congress and the Administration would take action on the Southern Border first, Speaker Johnson and the House delivered none of that, in one of the most stunning flip-flops in recent memory. In order to cover his obvious derelictions, CNN made sure to call the Speaker Churchill. The state-run network can be counted on to reward obedience.

We were presented with such blatant propaganda to support these terrible acts it defies belief. Representative Gerald Connolly (D-Virginia) took to the podium in the House to declare that the reason this Administration continues to ignore the crisis at the Southern Border is that, “the Ukraine-Russia border IS OUR BORDER.”

What on earth is he talking about? Our leaders will say or do anything to delude us into swallowing their destructive policies that deliver more war, more deaths and more instability across the globe.

To justify the largest foreign aid package in the history of the United States, was there any mention of what Ukraine will accomplish with their new-found wealth? Will they now defeat Russia? Will they force Putin’s troops back out of the Donbas and Crimea? On what time table? We heard no answers to these fundamental questions.

Further, since we’ve furnished Ukraine with $174B in two years and the European Union just authorized another $50B of their own aid in February, can we be sure we are done financing this border dispute?

Since 1999, it has been the policy of the United States to expand NATO eastward toward the Russian border, despite having made assurances otherwise. Just look at the original NATO countries and its recent expansion:

Here is how President Putin of the Russian Federation reacted to these security risks at his famous Munich speech in 2007:

"I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernisation of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended?"

Ukraine has had a tremendous amount of political upheaval in the 21st century, and the American CIA has been active there for decades. The history of the CIA’s coups and clandestine warmongering through propaganda and false flag operations is well established.

Their policies are reckless, not in the American people’s interests and will serve to cause more violence, more uncertainty and most importantly a lot more fear.

Fear is the necessary condition for the state to expand its own power in the 21st century. Unfortunately, the American people have demonstrated to date that they will foolishly trade their liberty for security. The Deep State’s propaganda therefore functions to foment violence, strife and political upheavals to usher in the age of Big Brother.

Will President Biden be the first Totalitarian President of the United States?

If so, future generations will never know it, as the history of freedom in this country will be erased.

OJ Freed Permanently

Just like my parent’s generation knew where they were when JFK was killed or Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, we GenXers remember where we were when the Challenger broke up in its ascent to the heavens and when the Juice was loose - the famous white Ford Bronco chased down the highways of LA . My best friends and I had secured our first apartment off campus, and we were having a move-in party. Somebody had heard about it on the radio on the way and we tuned in on a 15-inch TV to watch, through the static of over-the-air broadcasts and rabbit ears.

The saga of OJ and his acquittal will always be a waypost in the national discussion about black men and police. OJ was the great retribution for African Americans (especially in LA) after the Rodney King beating and a long history of racist abuse. At the time, I didn’t understand why my fellow Americans who happened to be black paraded the streets when OJ was found not guilty - he clearly was. But sometimes a corrupt system needs correction, and in extreme cases it is good to get the facts wrong but the truth right.

It’s not appropriate to celebrate a murderer who avoided accountability, but the OJ saga will long have a place in the history of civil rights in this country. As OJ himself famously said:

Semi-National Public Radio - All the News That’s Fit to Elect Democrats

In a stunning expose published in the Free Press, a 25-year veteran and senior business editor of National Public Radio, Uri Berliner, describes the transition of NPR from, “an open-minded, curious culture...nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding,” to, “the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.”

In the piece, Mr. Berliner goes on to describe a radical change in content, which drove a radical change in the listenership. In 2011, he says listeners were 26% conservative, 23% independent and 37% liberal. Not quite even, but a good cross section of America.

By 2023, the picture was completely different: only 11 percent described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal.

He then decries the outfit’s blind swallowing of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax (they had serial liar Adam Schiff on 25 times to tell them about the fantastic evidence only he had seen) but after the Mueller report was released and there was no collusion, there was also absolutely zero mea culpa. No corrections, no apologies, nothing. The newsroom just moved on to the next thing as if they hadn’t led the country down a destructive rabbit hole of a conspiracy theory for more than two years.

He then reports NPR’s ridiculous response to the New York Post reporting about Hunter Biden and his laptop. Quoted from the piece is the NPR managing editor for news at the time:

Mr. Urliner goes on to say that “one of NPR’s best and most fair-minded journalist” said it was good they killed the extremely newsworthy story because it would have helped Trump.

And then, of course, he recalls all of the COVID misinformation spread by the CDC, the NIH and Anthony Fauci, especially regarding the lab leak theory. NPR censored any story that did not accept the state’s dictates and never responded when it became clear: the COVID virus escaped from the Wuhan lab that was creating gain-of-function corona viruses with funding from the US government.

Perhaps most damning, when Mr. Urliner looked into it, he found every news editor - 87 of them - were registered Democrats. Not one Republican. And when he attempted to bring this issue to the forefront, he was ignored. The CEO of NPR agreed to meet and then ghosted him.

And of course, NPR’s response to this bombshell reporting that should force existential changes at the radio network was a milquetoast non-denial denial.

NPR Chief News Executive:

"We're proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories," she wrote. "We believe that inclusion — among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage — is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world."

She added, "None of our work is above scrutiny or critique. We must have vigorous discussions in the newsroom about how we serve the public as a whole."

I used to love NPR. I haven’t really listened in years for all of the reasons described by Mr. Berliner. It does not sound like there will be any change.

Feds Want to Keep Spying on Americans

Here we go again. The FISA authorization is up for renewal again (after having kicked the can down the road last fall). At issue is Section 702, which allows the NSA to collect Americans data, furnish it to the FBI, the CIA and many other agencies, who promise not to use the data except when narrow conditions are met.

Except they don’t do that. The FISA court itself, and independent agencies have reviewed the program and found these government agencies ignore the law as a practice. You can read all about the gross abuses of the Fourth Amendment taking place every day in America here. And here’s why this program should be shut down today, from the Brennan Institute for Justice:

“Although ostensibly targeted at foreigners, Section 702 surveillance inevitably sweeps in massive amounts of Americans’ communications. Recognizing the impact on Americans’ privacy, Congress required the NSA to “minimize” the sharing, retention, and use of this “incidentally” collected U.S. person data. But the government and the FISA Court have embraced an interpretation of “minimize” that is remarkably… maximal. The NSA shares raw data with multiple other agencies — including the FBI and the CIA — and all of them retain the data for a functional minimum of five years. Moreover, the FBI routinely combs through it looking for Americans’ communications to use in purely domestic cases, even in situations where the FBI lacks a factual predicate to open a full investigation.”

A vote on the rules stalled the renewal of FISA this week, with both Democrats and members of the Republican Freedom Caucus joining together to slow down its reauthorization. Today, the Majority Whip Tom Emmers and Speaker Johnson are attempting again to get the provisions passed.

Quite frankly the whole program is an abomination. It is my hope that the liberty-minded members of both caucuses can continue to join forces to defeat it. The great issues of our time are do not pit liberals vs. conservatives, but authoritarians vs. libertarians.

The Bill of Rights was written to prevent PRECISELY this type of state abuse of power. FISA data is the tool of tyrants. It must be ended, immediately.

Excuse Me! There’s a Politician and a CIA Agent in my News Department

Catherine Herridge and Sharyl Attkisson, among others, testified in a House Judiciary Committee Meeting yesterday.

Ms. Herridge - who was without notice summarily fired by CBS News, which also seized her files, as she was reporting on the Hunter Biden story - accused the network of “journalistic rape.” What has not been made clear is why CBS took these actions and whether they were prompted to do so by a government actor.

It stinks to high heaven of corruption, a fascist alliance of the Deep State and a supposed “news” network in order to cover up more damaging facts about the President and his family’s influence peddling business. Ms. Herridge said in her testimony:

When the network of Walter Cronkite seizes your reporting files, including confidential source information, that is an attack on investigative journalism. CBS News’ decision to seize my reporting records crossed a red line that I believe should never be crossed by any media organization. Multiple sources said they were concerned that by working with me to expose government corruption and misconduct they would be identified and exposed.”

Ms Attkisson confirmed that many of her stories were squashed due to phone calls made from interested parties to the leaders at her network - and not for editorial nor factual reasons. It has been known for a decade that CBS killed stories that were unfavorable to then-President Obama, and Ms. Attkisson believes that practice continues to this day.

President Empty Podium

The President of the United States very quietly (and with little coverage by the mainstream networks) began to lay the groundwork for skipping the Presidential Debates in the fall. While I am not surprised - his handlers know that he can’t successfully stand for 90 minutes and speak without note cards, teleprompters and help from those around him - it signals the end of any pretense that this person is capable of the office.

Donald Trump and RFK, Jr. should organize a healthy debate schedule and make sure to have three podiums on stage with the Presidential Seal over the empty podium where the leader of the free world should be.

There can be no greater symbol for the President’s administration than such an image. I do feel bad for the President’s handlers (who presumably run the country for him) in the sense that they will be damned if he shows and damned if he doesn’t.

The Masters Is This Weekend

This old guy will be rooting for Tiger and Phil.

Have a great weekend!!

In the British American colonies before the Revolution, the King’s judges enforced his peace unilaterally. There was no real recourse for a British “citizen” in America to appeal a decision he believed was unjust, as the ultimate judiciary authority was the King and his Privy Council. Likewise, the local legislatures could make law, but they were subject to veto by the Parliament or the King in London without recourse.

In the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress declared the following about George III:

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Power.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, and the Amount and Payment of their Salaries.

…[in regard to British troops in the colonies] For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of this State

…For depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury

…For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences (sic)

Indeed, the political power wielded by the King over the judiciary was a major factor of his ability to tyrannize the people, and thus a major cause of the break up.

In Brazil today, a similar story is playing out. The Chief of the Supreme Court there is issuing secret rulings to social media sites to take down posts he claims to be fake news, in violation of the country’s own laws, according to Bloomberg. Elon Musk is in a public fight with the Court, and X/Twitter may end up having to exit Brazil. Musk claims: “This judge has brazenly and repeatedly betrayed the constitution and people of Brazil. He should resign or be impeached.”

Glenn Greenwald, an independent American journalist that broke the Edward Snowden case and lives in Brazil due to his fear of the backlash, wrote this about the Justice in question:

“The only time in my entire career as a journalist that I have ever wondered if I should really be questioning, challenging, or critiquing a political official is this person, who has gone so far as to order people to be imprisoned without a trial for criticizing him. […] If you criticize Alexandre De Moraes, you get banned or perhaps imprisoned, which is why I spent every second up until this show started on the phone with my lawyers.”

Indeed, there is nothing like God on Earth more than a Judge in his courtroom, as the saying goes.

And so, in America, for most of our existence we have made the effort to depoliticize our judiciary system and come to respect and defer to the Constitution and its tenets where Supreme Court Justices are involved. As recently as the 1980s and into the 1990s, Antonin Scalia was confirmed with a 98-0 vote; Kennedy 97-0; Souter 90-9; Ginsberg 96-3; Breyer 87-9. Robert Bork was rejected and Thomas barely passed with 52 votes but these were outliers.

Everything has changed. Now Justices confirmations receive votes on party lines and the confirmation processes are quite contentious.

Both parties are at fault - the Republicans slow walked Obama appointments. The Democrats eliminated the filibuster for all appointments except the Supremes. The Republicans responded by ending the filibuster for Supreme Court Justices and chose not to hold a confirmation vote on Merrick Garland. The Democrats ran Justice Kavanaugh through a dirty process to besmirch his character, when his CV clearly indicated he was well qualified.

The net effect has been that the two major parties have abandoned precedent, decorum and fairness to play a raw, open game of political power when it comes to the Supreme Court. A big part of the problem is Congress, which prefers to allow issues like abortion to fester so that Congresspeople and Senators can wedge constituents and get donations and votes rather than solve it, once and for all. It is likewise too tempting for the Court’s Justices (and they are their own worst enemy when they decide) to step in and change law in what should be a political process, further politicizing the Court.

The political parties continue to advance the game to the detriment of us all. Recently, Democrats in many circles have gone to panic mode as they believe that Donald Trump may win the next election. They are scared to death that one of the remaining liberal Justices, Sonia Sotomayor who is 70 and reportedly has type I diabetes may pass away during the next administration. And so they’ve decided she must resign now and be replaced.

What a sick, cynical, game. Predicting Justice’s deaths and encouraging them to resign to prematurely end their life’s work, all in furtherance of a raw thirst for political power. As Yoda knows, the singular quest for raw power leads to the dark side. Both parties play it; it must end.

Mitch McConnell was dead wrong to not allow a vote on Merrick Garland. It is dead wrong to play games with resignations and nominations based upon wild speculation of who will be President the next four years and how long a Justice will live. Have we no decency left?

Finally, the entire scheme is half-cocked. There are no guarantees as to how a Judge will end up ruling on the Court. Anthony Kennedy was nominated as a Conservative by Reagan but was the swing vote for decades. David Souter was nominated by George HW Bush and ended up a regular liberal vote. John Roberts and Neil Gorsuch have voted with the liberal wing of the Court much more often than conservatives may have wished.

Democrats who rue the day Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away before resigning, forget that Justice Ginsburg was no fan of Roe.

Ms. Ginsburg on Roe at her confirmation hearing in 1993:

Would there have been the twenty-year controversy we have witnessed, reflected most recently in the Supreme Court's splintered decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey? A less encompassing Roe, one that merely struck down the extreme Texas law and went no further on that day, I believe and will summarize why, might have served to reduce rather than to fuel controversy.

She argued for States Rights on abortion. Imagine that.

Editor’s Note: What follows are subjective cases against each of the two major party candidates. Some of the claims are accurate, some may not be entirely accurate, and a few may be completely false, but all are nonetheless repeated by politicians and pundits alike across the politisphere.

Trump

If Donald Trump is elected, it will be the end of democracy. He is an authoritarian fascist who has promised to be a dictator, ban all muslims and fire hundreds of thousands of federal civil servants to replace them with his loyalists.

President Trump will shut down the border, end immigration and send all of the undocumented people in America to prison or exile. He is hell-bent on maintaining white supremacy by reversing the imaginary and deeply racist Great Replacement Theory.

He is backed by a cabal of secret, “Christian White Nationalists,” who want to bring in the age of The Handmade’s Tale controlling women’s bodies and choices. They want to lead a revolution in the United States which will remake the country into a Christian nation with Christian values at its core.

Former President Trump is a puppet of Vladimir Putin, intent on doing Putin’s bidding and allowing him to ravage Europe. If Donald Trump is elected, your children will be fighting Putin in France one day, like their great grandparents fought Hitler.

That is if Trump doesn’t start World War 3 first with his brash, naive policies regarding China and the rest of the world. You know, most of the career politicians in Washington and certainly his peers in other countries think he’s a threat to democracy and unfit to be President, don’t you? He is too dangerous, too selfish and too extreme to ever lead our country again.

Just look no further than what happened after the last election in November 2020. President Trump organized and led an armed insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th, leading a crowd that wanted to hang Mike Pence and that stormed Congress to prevent the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in our history. He subsequently left office in shame with one of the worst approval ratings in history. He continues to claim he won the 2020 election, despite any evidence.

Trump can not be trusted in a crisis. He bungled COVID, wanted to have Americans swallow bleach and pushed an experimental therapy as a vaccine that did little to stop the spread of COVID. He entrusted lifelong bureaucrats like Dr. Anthony Fauci with our national policies, showing weakness and disinterest.

Donald Trump is not fit to be President. His behavior is beneath the office and his record on COVID is disqualifying.

Biden

If Joe Biden is elected, it will be a bloodbath for America. The economy will tank, China will flood America with cars, tariff free, to ruin our automobile industry. Because Biden is a bought and paid for agent of the Chinese Communist Party and oligarchic interests in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. His reversal of Trump’s policies in Eastern Europe and the Middle East led directly to two new shooting wars in those regions.

Biden orchestrated the cowardly withdrawal from Afghanistan, leaving hundreds of Americans, thousands of Afghan allies and the entire region to fend for themselves. This emboldened our enemies and will continue under his weak hand.

The Biden Administration reversed policies on Iran, secretly restarting talks and releasing billions of dollars back to Iran, which in combination with Biden’s weakness in Afghanistan, spurred the Mullahs to embark on new terrorist activities in Gaza, Yemen and elsewhere. Yemeni forces now threaten world commerce at the Red Sea, just as Chinese forces threaten the Taiwan Strait. Our enemies continue to advance across the globe as Biden retreats.

The Biden foreign policy machine blundered in its arrogance regarding Ukraine, leaving Russia no choice to invade rather than accept another NATO front on its border. One wonders if this Administration is too stupid to know what was happening or was in on the warmongering tactics used by the CIA to cause it. The Ukrainian people continue to suffer a World War I style stalemate while the President attempts to prolong the war by selling $60B more bombs. Despite the continued carnage (500,000 dead) he has no plan to exit nor prevail. Four more years of Biden will bring four more years of war, perhaps escalating to a nuclear exchange with the Russian Federation.

And it is obvious why President Biden is doing this - he and his crime family extracted tens of millions of dollars from Ukraine in exchange for influence over US policy in that region. The President of the United States is a captured asset of the Ukrainians, and he is forced to continue to support their reckless policies through blackmail.

At home, the President’s policies have been a disaster. During the first half of his term, his administration and the Democratic Congress continued to pump newly printed dollars into the economy, spending trillions on extremely progressive policies (like shoving EVs down our throat) that caused rampant inflation. Food is up 40%; Energy 30%. Gas is still more than double what it was when Biden took office, inflation remains 55% higher than the target at 3.1% - still more than double the 1.4% inflation rate he inherited after more than three years. Families are having a hard time putting food on the table, while the Biden elites celebrate the Unemployment Rate and the Consumer Price Index which to every day Americans have no relation to reality. If we re-elect Joe Biden, there will be four more years of pain at the grocery store and the gas pump while our leaders tell us the sky is red.

Joe Biden has ignored the border crisis since he took office. In an attempt to undo everything President Trump did, whether it was the correct policy or not, the Biden Administration opened the border and allowed mass illegal immigration for years. The number of people that have arrived constitute 10 Congressional Districts; non-citizens are counted for House Representation. He plans to continue these lawless, failed policies until he codifies a much larger migration than current law allows. All of the new jobs he touts have gone to foreign-born workers; native born Americans continue to lose jobs.

Finally, as we all know too well, Joe Biden is in serious cognitive decline. He will not last another four years, and it is very concerning how disconnected from the world he is. We have no idea who is actually running things, and so we can’t vote for that.

Joe Biden is not fit to be President. His maladministration and his failing mental faculties are disqualifying.

This morning, another positive jobs report came out from the BLS. They’ve reported 303,000 new jobs created in March, the highest initial report since September. Unemployment also went down a tick to 3.8%. The CNBC crowd is doing cartwheels this morning and every one is touting a great economy.

For a while, I’ve been flummoxed by the reports and the seemingly consistent revisions downward as the BLS adjusts their reports, issuing a first and then second revision for each month subsequently. In other words, in this March report they also revise the figures from February and January and do so each time.

This morning I decided to get to the bottom of the change in jobs numbers from those revisions. I went to the BLS site and searched each month to find the initial figures reported and the subsequent second revision for each month from February 2023 to January 2024 (the last month for which we have the second revision numbers currently). The results are shocking:

The BLS revises its own figures to the tune of anywhere from an 8.5% to 50% error rate within two months. And almost always downward.

There is therefore very little value to the initial reporting of new jobs created, nor the expectations set by Wall Street before the report. Yet invariably the new report and its comparison to expectations become breathless headlines. For example, Business Insider writes this morning, “the latest jobs report is the Fed's holy grail: strong job market with non-inflationary growth."

But here’s what the error rate for Wall St’s expectations look like:

So, the expectations from Wall Street for the monthly jobs report are almost always lower that the report and have an error rate as high as 100%; likewise, the BLS’ own initial new jobs report has an error rate as high as 50%.

And yet, each month all major news outlets and political types flail wildly back and forth with their predictions, analyses and reactions to wildly inaccurate data that has little relation to reality. It’s the silliest game going. Don’t believe a word of it.

In New York City, Tammany Hall dominated Democratic politics for more than 100 years. Born as a political society shortly after the Revolution, by 1850 the Hall ran New York politics. Everything that happened politically in New York was controlled by the outfit. Boss Tweed famously stole tens of millions of dollars from the city’s treasury, and local elections were fixed by the racket. They did favors for the poor in exchange for votes, but often just paid directly to ensure their candidate’s victory. The Hall is where the phrase, “vote early and often,” originated - they did just that to fix elections.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy won Illinois by less that 9,000 votes and many believe there was an effort by the Chicago mayor/boss Richard Daley and perhaps even Sam Giancana’s mob Outfit to stuff ballots for Kennedy to ensure his election. An LA Times review of Seymour Hersh’s book The Dark Side of Camelot put it this way:

Robert G. Blakey, a former Justice Department special prosecutor, told Hersh that FBI wiretaps confirmed that the Mafia had been active in Kennedy’s Illinois campaign, providing financial backing and stuffing ballot boxes. “Can you say that mob money made a difference?” Blakey asks rhetorically. “My judgment is yes.”

In more recent elections, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has been accused more than once of fixing debates, primary calendars and rules for preferred candidates Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Likewise, billionaire Mark Zuckerberg has been accused of spending hundreds of millions of dollars (Zuckbucks) to take over the operation of local voting in predominantly heavily Democratic districts to improve turnout and secure victory for the DNC.

In the 2024 election cycle, the DNC locked out any candidates not named Biden from debating the incumbent, and eventually forced Robert Kennedy, Jr. (RFK) to leave the party and run as an independent. According to RFK, quoted by the Hill:

“It’s pretty clear that the DNC does not want a primary … Essentially, they are fixing the process so that it makes it almost impossible to have democracy function. They’re effectively disenfranchising the Democratic voters from having any choice in who becomes president, the Democrat nominee.”

As the author relates in that piece, Mr. Kennedy seems to be playing out the Capra film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in which an idealistic and naive populist goes to Congress and is quickly smeared and ostracized as he attempts to root our corruption to deliver for the people of the United States.

In an ironic twist, the party that forced RFK out of their primary is now decrying his candidacy as an independent and doing every thing in their power to thwart his bid.

The DNC has reportedly dedicated an entire department to freeze out RFK a second time. They’ve built a machine around attacking him, and according to Politico the DNC has funded: a billboard truck to follow him around, protesters to attend his rallies, attacks on his campaign site with false event information and propaganda machines like MoveOn.org to hire more people to smear his candidacy. Further, the DNC is fighting to deny RFK ballot access in every state.

In sum, the Democratic Party bosses have been fixing elections for centuries, and old habits die hard. The most insulting part of their dirtying of our political process is that their elected officials spend an inordinate amount of time talking about “threats to our Democracy” on the one hand while the DNC is perpetrating major threats to it on the other.

The end result is we hear too much second hand analysis that seeks to discredit RFK; we don’t hear enough directly from the man. Can Joe Biden or Donald Trump clearly articulate their reason for wanting to serve as President over the next four years better than this? Watch:

HIs answers are clear and well thought out, articulating the cause and solutions to the major issues facing America that neither Democrats nor Republicans, and neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump have shown any ability to solve.

We need to break the stranglehold that the two party system has on our Republic. That is the largest existential threat we face. Do your Republic a great favor and seek out RFK’s own words and statements; the propaganda you’ve been fed about him is wrong.

As we gear up for the fall campaign, we prepare for an endless spin about the candidates’ records. In one recent example Seth McFarlane - creator of the Family Guy and other juvenile romps - posted on X Sunday that Biden had signed, “groundbreaking climate legislation contained in the Inflation Reduction Act,” (IRA for short). We hear this a lot - the IRA was the “largest action on climate change ever,” according to many including the Guardian.

The Inflation Act was born of the Green New Deal, a phrase which has been used for decades to combine FDR’s “New Deal” - which implemented social supports during the depression including government-created jobs for public works, farmer supports and Social Security - with the far-left Green agenda. Versions of the Green New Deal were introduced twice in 2019 and 2021 by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey. Both resolutions were non-binding but nonetheless died in Committees. Sen. Bernie Sanders is also a major proponent.

According to the Aspen Institute, the Green New Deal provisions include, “(1) a Low-Carbon Electricity Grid, (2) a Net Zero Emissions Transportation System, (3) Guaranteed Jobs, (4) Universal Health Care, (5) Guaranteed Green Housing, and (6) Food Security,” at a total cost somewhere between $52T and $93T to accomplish. However, much of the total projected cost is driven by the social programs in the package - not climate.

So, when then-former Vice President Biden began his campaign for President in 2020, he introduced his “Build Back Better Plan,” which included three different initiatives to accomplish some of the Green New Deal’s goals. Two were passed and became law in some form or another as part of the American Rescue Plan Act of March, 2021 and the Infrastructure and Jobs Act of November, 2021 through the Democratic House and Senate.

When the third portion of the Build Back Better Plan - called the Build Back Better Act - came to the Senate (after passing the Democratic House in 2022) it stalled. In a last minute secret negotiation between Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer, a deal was struck that became the “Inflation Reduction Act,” so named because inflation had skyrocketed to 7% in 2021. Major backlash over the deep deficit spending of Biden’s plans were creating big problems for Democrats, but they were nonetheless able to sell this bill by naming it something else. This despite the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s clear scoring that the, “proposal’s effect on inflation is negligible at best.”

Only in Washington does the Green New Deal become the Build Back Better Act only to become the Inflation Reduction Act that doesn’t reduce inflation. When the pitch has nothing to do with the product, you’re probably being screwed.

So let’s see what’s in the bill and how it has performed. Here how the White House described the IRA’s benefits on the first anniversary of its passage, with reflections:

In the 12 months since the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law:

• The private sector has announced more than $110 billion in new clean energy manufacturing investments, including more than $70 billion in the electric vehicle (EV) supply chain and more than $10 billion in solar manufacturing. Since the President was elected, the private sector has announced approximately $240 billion in new clean energy manufacturing investments.

The White House is touting announcements of investments - not actual spending - which may or may not have been a result of the IRA, and may or may not come to fruition. This statement also ignores the serious trouble traditional American car manufacturers are having selling their new EV cars under the IRA regime, saying they can’t sell the EVs.

• Investments in clean energy and climate since the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law have created more than 170,000 jobs, and the law is projected to create more than 1.5 million additional jobs over the next decade according to estimates by outside groups.

The jobs picture is very murky; the new jobs in 2023 are predominantly part time (full time workers decreased by more than 280,000) and predominantly go to foreign born workers (native born workers are still net 0 since COVID).

• Public and private sector investments driven by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law are expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 1 billion tons in 2030.

From the Congressional Research Service: The models indicate that under baseline conditions (i.e., without IRA), U.S. GHG emissions would decrease by 24% to 35% by 2030 compared with 2005 levels. The models estimate that with the addition of IRA, U.S. GHG emissions would decrease by 30% to 43% by 2030 compared with 2005 levels.

Ergo, these projections indicate the US will not hit its 50% reduction target. The IRA, despite it’s huge cost, only decreases our emissions by an additional 6% to 8% by 2030 if the projections are accurate (projections on a predicted baseline are crude measures often used to manipulate the story).

• The Administration has already awarded over a billion dollars to help communities become more resilient and protect them from the disastrous impacts of climate change, including drought, heat, and extreme weather.

That sounds good, but seems a small amount based upon the size of the bill (estimates range the bill will cost between $783B and $1T). The rebuild of the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore alone will likely cost more.

• American families are projected to save $27-38 billion on their electricity bills from 2022-2030 relative to a scenario without the Inflation Reduction Act, according to new data released by the Department of Energy today.

Really?

• Nearly 15 million people are saving an average of $800 per year on their health insurance premiums, the nation’s uninsured rate has reached an historic low, and millions of seniors on Medicare are paying less in out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs—including insulin, which is capped at $35 per month.

The health insurance and Medicare prescription cost “savings” are increased subsidies the government is paying to insurance and pharmaceutical companies as part of the IRA. The bill did nothing to reduce these costs, they are just transferred from the individual to the government.

• The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is strengthening enforcement against wealthy tax cheats and increasing recoveries from delinquent millionaires—while improving customer service for law-abiding taxpayers, including cutting phone wait times from 28 minutes last tax season to 3 minutes this year.

While this may increase tax receipts, the IRS hired 87,000 new agents to chase tax cheats has nothing to do with inflation reduction nor climate change. Almost ALL of the projected spending on climate change in the IRA is actually tax credits buried in the new tax codes based upon the legislation - an estimated $663B. This is a terrible way to run government programs, but a great way to add union government jobs and reward the tax accountant’s lobby.

Finally, The White House statement does not mention the new taxes enacted as part of the IRA, including a 15% minimum corporate tax rate, a 1% tax on stock buybacks and the aforementioned “savings” through additional IRS enforcement.

Suffice it to say, the IRA is full of gimmicks. It enables the Democrats to pat themselves on the back, and now campaign with the catchphrase, “largest climate action in history.” We are expected to ignore that results are much less clear, that they are based upon dubious projections which depend on subsidies for cars Americans don’t want.

That is governing in today’s America: bait and switch tactics to sell legislation, wildly speculative projections of benefits, dozens of unmentioned provisions that grow the size, scope and power of the federal government with more taxes and regulations, and no real reflection on the actual results of the provisions.

HL Mencken described it best:

Let’s face it, watching the 24/7 news cycle is depressing. It makes one believe the world has gone mad, that there’s no hope for the future. There is, after all, no profit in good news. And our ancient brains are hard-wired to evaluate new stimuli as prey - it is always potentially harmful, even fatal.

But, every now and again we are inspired by the majesty of nature. There are few universal moments which engender these feelings more than Spring - the rebirth of the natural world. Our early ancestors watched in magical awe as the trees which were dead were reborn. As the seasonal plants and flowers that had laid dormant for so long were suddenly alive and blooming. The sun returned from its near death to the North, and warmed the land and the people that depended on it for survival.

Perhaps the greatest myth of modern life is that we’ve somehow escaped this miracle because we are so disconnected from nature. But our rituals and religions have been based on the turning of the seasons since their beginnings as far as any one can tell. Ancient religions worshipped nature and the seasons, and modern religions have cleverly disguised that practice.

Christians are now celebrating Easter, which tells the story of Jesus’ rebirth on the Sunday after the Spring Equinox, a message of transformation and healing:

John 3:3

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

Psalms 1:3

And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

Psalms 85: 11-13

Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven. The Lord will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest. Righteousness goes before him and prepares the way for his steps.

Psalms is of course from the Torah/Old Testament, and while the Hebrew calendar puts Passover into late April this year, it has some historical relation to the Canaanite festival of Spring:

Deuteronomy 11:14

…then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil. See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone.

Song of Solomon 2:12-13

Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land.

The fig tree forms its early fruit; the blossoming vines spread their fragrance. Arise, come, my darling; my beautiful one, come with me.

Muslims celebrate Eid al-Fitr at the end of Ramadan. A beautiful poem by Hafiz (excerpt):

Spring and all its flowers
     now joyously break their vow of silence.
It is time for celebration, not for lying low;
You too -- weed out those roots of sadness from your heart.

The Sabaa wind arrives;
     and in deep resonance, the flower
     passionately rips open its garments,
     thrusting itself from itself.

The Way of Truth, learn from the clarity of water,
Learn freedom from the spreading grass.

For more secular types, today is Opening Day in America. The nation’s oldest pastime returns the Boys of Summer to celebrate a beautiful day at the park.

Perhaps the greatest words about the old game (from Field of Dreams):

Ray, people will come, Ray.

They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway, not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past.

"Of course, we won't mind if you look around," you'll say. "It's only twenty dollars per person." They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it. For it is money they have and peace they lack.

And they'll walk out to the bleachers, and sit in shirt-sleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game, and it'll be as if they'd dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick, they'll have to brush them away from their faces.

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.

America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.

This field, this game -- it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.

Oh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.

This weekend, may we all reflect on the past and let it go. May we all wash away our sins and seek the Lord’s peace. May we remember what it was like to be a kid at the ballpark, and to run through a field of freshly bloomed flowers. May we be a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth fruit in our season. May our winters pass and may we be dipped again in magic waters. May we be reminded of all that once was good, and could be again.

God bless us all, and these United States.

Yesterday was another great day for former President Donald Trump. The parent company of Truth Social will be merged with a SPAC to become a public company - Trump Media and Technology Group (NASDAQ: DJT). Reportedly, the former President owns an over $3B stake in the enterprise, which traded up 50% yesterday, and settled about 40% higher in anticipation of the merger completing today. This should go a long way to fix his short term cash flow issues presumably caused by the multiple legal judgements he faces.

Speaking of which, the former President’s legal team scored a major victory by winning a reduction of the bond required in his “fraud” case in Manhattan. A bail appeals court reduced the punishing requirement of a $454M bond from Judge Engeron, to $175M - a 61% reduction - and gave the former President ten more days to arrange its payment/posting. This will enable the former President’s legal team to continue their appeal of the ruling without the President having any of his assets seized in the process.

This win comes on the heels of the victory they scored a few weeks ago in the Georgia RICO case, in which embattled DA Fani Willis was forced to fire her ex-boyfriend from his role as the main prosecutor and had six of the counts against Trump and his co-defendents dropped. The Trump team is poised to appeal the decision to allow DA Willis to continue, while she also faces other legal challenges based upon her unprofessional conduct.

Meanwhile, President Trump was attending a hearing in a third case, about money paid to Stormy Daniels in 2016 - two Presidential elections and three different inquiries that led to no charges ago. In his statement to the press celebrating these victories outside that hearing President Trump identified a potential villain in all of this lawfare converging on the President in the middle of this election year - Matthew Colangelo.

According to reports, Mr. Colangelo worked as the #3 at Biden’s Department of Justice under Merrick Garland. Prior to that he worked at the New York Attorney General’s office, where he led the case against the Trump Foundation. He reportedly also led the NYAG's opposition to the Trump administration's efforts to add a citizenship question to the U.S. census. Then, after serving for about a year in the Biden DoJ, he was hired by Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney bringing the Stormy Daniels case. Strange as this came after Bragg initially decided against charges in the case but somehow completely reversed course after hiring Colangelo.

So, Colangelo is presumably working on his third case against the former President, and may have participated in the work up of the fourth case brought by NYAG James, which is the real estate “fraud” case mentioned above.

While these facts may be circumstantial, it certainly creates the appearance that Colangelo is a hired gun for Democratic operatives at DoJ, the New York Attorney General’s office and the Manhattan DA who want to “get Trump” - both James and Bragg campaigned to do just that. And the former President was quick to identify Mr. Colangelo as the new villain in the saga, calling Mr. Colangelo one of, “Biden’s thugs.”

Certainly, as the many charges across multiple jurisdictions began to pile up, the “91 counts” seemed to add up to a justice system bent on destroying the man. Of course Trump’s most ardent supporters believe this wholeheartedly, but even disinterested voters have begun to suspect the same. Now as the meat of the cases start to become public, and Trump begins to win small victories, skepticism regarding their veracity has continued to rise.

DA Bragg’s case is eight years old, and relies on a legal theory that renowned legal scholar Jonathan Turley likened to a Slurpee, “it was immediately satisfying for many with virtually no legal substance.”

Next, Letitia James brought her case, in which the judge summarily ruled in her favor without trial and delivered a ludicrous verdict for a “crime” with no victim and no rationale. An $18M valuation for Mar-a-Lago is a clown’s ruling at a show trial. It will be reversed on appeal.

The coverage of DA Fani Willis’ case has thus far focused not on Trump, but her own clear violations of professionalism and the public trust. She faces reprimand, dismissal and disbarment. Not a great way to take down a President.

Finally, Jack Smith’s two federal cases face some major challenges. In the first case regarding classified documents, President Biden just escaped charges for essentially the exact same behavior, with a much larger cache of documents, stored in many more locations, for decades longer, without having been the President who has the ultimate authority to declassify as Commander-In-Chief.

In Special Counsel Jack Smith’s second case against Trump regarding January Sixth, Mr. Smith attempted to fast track his case to the Supreme Court in an obvious move to get Trump before the next election. While I understand the partisan need to have Trump convicted to create smooth sailing for Biden’s re-election, this obviously does not supersede the need to have due process, including a fair and open trial that follows the process of the law. The Defendant has rights under the Constitution that far supersede any political benefit imagined by the verdict. Ignoring those rights is tantamount to destroying the Republic the enemies of Trump claim to want to save.

So, it is entirely possible that President Trump will run the gauntlet and escape any meaningful judgements before November. It is possible all of these cases are without real merit. There is a justifiable suspicion the goal of these prosecutions has never been blind justice, but a clear-eyed legal lynching of the current front runner for the Presidency of the United States.

In the blockbuster movie scene that is NBC News’ attempts to remain a news organization, the hero just lost his last, dying grasp of the cliff’s edge and fell to his death. The gloves are off, and no one there is pretending to embrace objectivity, fairness or the necessity of opposing views on their “news” networks.

You see, over the weekend, the alleged “journalists’ that work at NBC and MSNBC staged a country club style revolt as Ronna McDaniel, the recently ousted Chair of one of our two political parties was hired as a contributor to that network. The outrage was palpable around the Corposhere. Kirsten Welker (who was lambasted by Vivek Ramaswamy in a primary debate for pushing the “Trump-Russia collusion” hoax for years) was forced to disclose before her interview with McDaniel that the booking was made weeks ago and was intended to be a “news” interview, whatever that means.

Next, Chuck “Big Lie” Todd, who shows no shame in appearing on the program from which he was fired, delivered a long soliloquy about how wronged Welker had been to be forced to conduct such an interview.

"You got put into an impossible situation, booking this interview.

And then all of a sudden the rug was pulled out from under you, and you find out she's being paid to show up? It is unfortunate for this program, but I am glad you did the best that you could."

Indeed. For the host of an alleged news program to have to speak to a major news maker of the past ten years - whose only crime was being Republican - was too much for these two to bear. Tim Russert or Roger Mudd, they are not.

Not to be outdone, MSNBC put out a statement saying that McDaniel would never appear on any MSNBC shows, and of course the sad clown Joe Scarborough & team conducted another boring straw man diatribe about the whole thing. He seems to think his argument gains more meaning by the decibel. Here was Mika Brzezinski, Joe’s wife and sidekick on the program:

“But it should be conservative Republicans, not a person who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier and we hope NBC will reconsider its decision.

It goes without saying that she will not be a guest on ‘Morning Joe’ in her capacity as a paid contributor.”

Meanwhile, back in Reality, it is clear that these ridiculously partisan people continue to have no issue making reckless fools of themselves by throwing corporate temper tantrums. Their outrage boils down to Trump Derangement Syndrome of the Second Degree: this awful person, the former Chair of the RNC, supported the RNC’s candidate for President! That’s it. Stir in some “election denying” rhetoric and they are off to the races.

So, let’s review some of Kristen Welker’s, Chuck Todd’s, Rashida Jones’ (President of MSNBC) Mika Brzezinski’s and Joe Scarborough’s fellow NBC & MSNBC hosts and contributors:

Michael Steele, former RNC Chair just like McDaniel who was ousted from that position for, among other things, numerous gaffes and misstatements about the war in Afghanistan.

Jen Paski, former Biden Press Secretary who threatened “robust anti-trust legislation” for social media companies if they did not censor citizens’ speech when the White House’s flags it for them. She also negotiated her NBC package while still at the White House, creating a huge conflict of interest.

Al Sharpton, former street organizer who said in 1994, “White folks was in the caves while we was building empires," he said. "We built pyramids before Donald Trump even knew what architecture was. We taught philosophy and astrology [sic] and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it."

Lawrence O’Donnell, former aid to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He once said of Ronna McDaniel’s Uncle Mitt Romney, “ Romney comes from a religion that was founded by a criminal who was anti-American, pro-slavery, and a rapist."

All of these people are fine for the NBC types because, like respondents at a Catholic Mass, they will repeat anything they are expected to repeat when told.

We could go on and on about the nefarious people in the Corposphere and still not have gotten to the dozens of spooks, spies and FBI politicos that dominate their “expert” panels and deliver the talking points from the Administration and the CIA.

At the end of the day, NBC and MSNBC can of course employ whomever they chose, and their employees can certainly complain vociferously in public about it. We will continue to note and report the lack of any pretense of fairness or balance. Go to these networks to learn Democratic talking points and Deep State propaganda. But don’t count on these companies for the news of the day; even their employees don’t want to hear that.

Final thoughts on the Impeachment Hearing and subsequent developments, AOC doesn’t think that RICO is a crime, Blasey Ford is back, Hunter might be a CIA stooge, and so much more!

Here we go:

Fallout From This Week’s Impeachment Hearing

Despite some damning testimony from former Biden family business partners, all of whom seem to be some form of shady, BigMedia’s take on the hearing was to focus on the lone Democratic witness, Lev Parnas. He received praise all around the Corposphere (my new term for the large, mostly legacy media who all shill for the Democratic Party) for testifying about the silly things he and Rudy Giuliani were doing in 2019 and 2020, which has nothing to do with the $24M influence-peddling scheme the Bidens appear to have perpetrated. PBS Newshour put it this way:

Lev Parnas, a former associate of Rudy Giuliani who was convicted of fraud and campaign finance crimes in 2021, said Wednesday that former President Donald Trump and his allies had lied about President Joe Biden and his family’s ties to corruption in Ukraine to gain an advantage in the 2020 presidential election.

The statement by Parnas is self-evidently false. Burisma was corrupt; investigations into its money laundering schemes began as early as 2014. Hunter Biden was on the board of the company; the Biden family is therefore undisputedly, “tied to corruption in Ukraine.” The only question for investigators is, “to what extent?” So, Biden’s apologists across the news media’s best argument is to quote a known fraud in a clear lie? Well done.

In other fallout from the testimony, everyone’s favorite former bartender Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) made sure to beclown herself with shrill screams at Tony Bobolinkski that, “RICO is not a crime.” She continued to double down on this view throughout the week, which causes one to wonder if she knows that Fani Willis’ entire case in Georgia rests upon RICO statutes. Is AOC arguing for Trump’s acquittal in Georgia? Shall all of the mob bosses and drug kingpins in jail for RICO cases be exonerated? Either way, I think AOC just jumped the shark. I hear she has a primary challenge. Could this be it for her Congressional career? I am sure she’ll have no trouble taking a seat on The View.

In what is perhaps the strangest development yet, House Judiciary and Oversight Committees have written a letter to CIA director Burns about claims the IRS and FBI were hamstrung in their investigation of Hunter by the CIA. In a letter sent yesterday, the Committees wish to hear why the CIA told investigators that they could not interview Kevin Morris as part of their investigation. This is the same Kevin Morris that bought Hunter’s paintings and paid off his $5M in taxes owed. We’ve reported on the CIA’s clandestine efforts to build secret bases in Ukraine to spy on Russia, and there are emails from Hunter’s laptop that show his company Seneca Partners was involved in building biolabs in Ukraine. Perhaps the Hunter Biden story has a lot more to do with the CIA’s meddling in Ukraine than we previously knew? It is starting to sound like the case of Jeffrey Epstein, who did not kill himself.

Finally, if you still don’t believe there is evidence of corruption by the Bidens, watch this short video which depicts just one transaction. In it, Representative Donalds shares receipts of the following transactions: 1) CEFC - a huge conglomerate owned by the Chinese Communist Party with close ties to Premier Xi Jinping - sent Hunter Biden’s company $100,000. Hunter transferred that money to Jim Biden’s company. Jim Biden’s wife took out $50,000 in CASH from that company’s account, walked it to another bank and deposited it in another account, from which she then wrote a check to Joe Biden from in the amount of $40,000 with the memo “loan repayment.” Joe Biden’s accountant has stated he has no record nor knowledge of such a loan. Do these actions sound legitimate, or very much like an attempt to wash money in a criminal enterprise? Marty Byrde would be proud.

Christine Blasey Ford Sees Her Shadow

Like a poor Punxsutawney Phil whom, before elections, they trot out to see if there will be 6 more months of sophistry about women’s rights, Christine Blasey Ford has written a memoir. I have no desire to read it, and it sounds like those who have wish they hadn’t. The great Kat Rosenfield, writing in UnHerd, put it this way:

The New York Times, in its dutiful assessment of the book as "important" and "lucid", does little to obscure an overall tone of disdain; the Atlantic's review is headlined, dryly, "Christine Blasey Ford Testifies Again." What little praise Ford's effort has received is delivered with the forced cheerfulness of a person accepting a terrible hand-knitted wool sweater, in July, in a colour she wouldn't be caught dead wearing. How thoughtful of you, I... er, I can see you worked really hard on it.

Ouch.

The Haitians Are Coming!

Apparently the script writers are tired of Governor Abbott of Texas getting all the right wing credit (rightfully so) for his strong response to the invasion on our Southern border. Not to be outdone, Haiti is in a full collapse and Florida is panicked that thousands of Haitian refugees will be flooding our shores soon. Governor DeSantis has already promised to send them on a free vacation to Martha’s Vineyard as the tragedy of another Western hemisphere country’s collapse plays out on live television. Has anyone considered our attention on Europe and the Middle East has been so misguided that we’ve completely neglected our neighbors at home? Where are the Monroe doctrine fans? The United States can not police the world if our own entire neighborhood looks like a post apocalyptic refugee camp. As Dr. Peterson would say, “before you begin to fix the world (in Ukraine, Israel, Yemen, Taiwan, etc.), is your room clean?”

Neuralink

In an amazing video released yesterday on X, Elon Musk’s Neuralink showed a paralyzed man controlling a computer with his mind (and their brain implant) to play online chess. It looks like a SciFi movie. While half the world constantly slags Musk, he just keeps delivering miraculous engineering feats for the benefit of humanity. Did you see the Starship test last week? Let this guy post all the silly trolling stuff he wants. Just let him cook.

Omnibust

Finally, in a move sure to stun no one, our illustrious Congress has once again delivered a secretly negotiated, 1,012 page Omnibus bill that spends $1.2T. As I write this, the vote begins at about 10:50 eastern time. This bill is delivered six months after the appropriations were due for this fiscal year that started October 1, 2023, with just 31 hours for members to review (it was released at 3am yesterday).

This is the exact same playbook Kevin McCarthy, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell have been running for a long time. It is a travesty of the legislative process, and a continuation of an oligarchic structure where only the Speaker, the Majority Leader, the Minority Leaders, and the Office of the President have any input as to what goes in the bill. There’s a litany of useless spending, pork barrel ear marks, and payoffs to donors rampant. Everyone should vote no.

Mr. Speaker, shut down this government.

A boy can dream.

Yesterday, the House Oversight Committee continued its hearings for the Impeachment Inquiry of President Joe Biden. Eighteen members of the House had five minutes to ask questions of two of Hunter Biden’s former business partners, Jason Galanis and Tony Babulinski appearing on behalf of the Republicans, and Lev Parnas, former business associate of Rudy Giuliani appearing for Democrats. It was a tale of two hearings.

On the one hand, the former partners of Hunter Biden discussed shady business deals that included: 1) a Russian oligarch (Yelena Baturina) who wired $3.5 million to Hunter in 2014 after meeting with Joe Biden, 2) at least $3.8M in payments to Hunter from one of China’s largest companies with strong ties to Chinese President Xi Jinping; both confirmed Joe Biden was integral to the relationship and deal, and 3) both testified that Hunter Biden and the President’s brother Jim Biden lied under oath to the committee, and that the President has been lying for years about his close ties to the family business. The two also confirmed that Hunter and Jim’s entire business model was access to Joe, which Hunter called the “Biden lift.”

At the “other” contemporaneous hearing in the same room, most of the Democrats spent time either impugning the background of the Republican witnesses or interviewing Lev Parnas about the keystone cops investigation he “ran” to find dirt on the Bidens in Ukraine. On the first point, it is true that Jason Galanis is in jail for fraud; but it should be clear he is not the first former Biden partner to end up in jail. In addition to Galanis, Devon Archer has been sentenced to jail, and Whitey Bulger’s nephew Jim Bulger (though not in jail as far as we know) was a significant partner of the Bidens. Hm.

Lev Parnas did however score some points to hurt Trump and Giuliani’s brand and attempted to tie them to Russian interests. Parnas testified, “ “My mission for Giuliani and Trump would come to encompass nearly a year of traveling across the globe to find damaging information on the Bidens. This included trips to Ukraine, Poland, Spain, Vienna, London, and other locations…. In my travels, I found precisely zero proof of the Bidens’ criminality.” None of what Parnas had to say was relevant testimony though, as his hits on Trump World have nothing to do with the influence peddling (bribery) scheme cooked up by the Bidens to score at least $24 million in foreign money, and his inability to find evidence does not erase the evidence presented in this hearing and elsewhere. In fact, Representative Matt Gaetz took a shot at impeaching Parnas’ ability to say true things, stating, “The truth for you is taking money from Russians to buy marijuana businesses, then going to jail, and coming in here to lie about Trump!”

So, each side pleased their devotees, got the sound bytes they wanted for the evening news and for posting their sick burns on X. But did the American people receive anything of value from this hearing?

Mostly no. The biggest problem with Congressional testimony - especially publicly held hearings - is the nature and format of the hearings themselves. Opening statements by the majority, minority and the witnesses are fine and often present a good synopsis of the issues at hand. However, the five minute questions period, bouncing back and forth between the parties, is useless. Members take the time to grand stand and perform for the camera. They have no time to dig deeply into the subject, and just as their inquiries start to uncover interesting information, the five minutes are up and the next member begins on a completely different line of inquiry. So we bounce around topics and never really get anywhere. It is just a political game and does not serve to find any truth.

There are a number of ways to fix this problem. The first would be to set up more of a debate-style format. Allow each parties’ side an extended period of time to state their case and interview the witnesses, say an hour. Once both sides have completed their inquiry, give each member two minutes to summarize their views, rebut testimony and get their talking points in for the cameras.

Another method would be to limit the number of members participating and to give the smaller number of members each more time for questions. The committees could work out rotations, etc. so that the members get equal camera time.

In sum, this hearing was interesting but did not make an impact either way. Every member left that hearing thinking exactly what they thought beforehand, as likely did interested citizens watching. That’s simply a waste of time.