Tesla laid off a large portion of a key team in its electric vehicle (EV) charger division on Monday, a move that could pose problems for President Joe Biden’s broad EV agenda.
The company reportedly laid off nearly all of its employees working on the company’s “Superchargers,” which charge EVs quicker than other Tesla products and figured to play a major role in the nationwide public EV charging system envisioned by the Biden administration, according to E&E News. Tesla — which has benefitted from generous government subsidies for years — appears to be pivoting away from that aspect of its business; the layoffs could spell trouble for the already-struggling industry at a pivotal moment.
The Supercharger is considered one of the best chargers available because it can recharge EVs quickly and reliably, which cannot always be said of competitors’ products, according to E&E News. Other automobile companies, including Ford, saw the promise of Tesla’s Supercharger and made deals to have their EVs be able to access Tesla’s Supercharger infrastructure.
Electric Vehicle Makers Whiff On Expectations In Troubling Sign For Industry https://t.co/TK1h0nqc4J
“There’s no buttons to push, there’s no screens, there’s no credit card swiper all of that is done through processing through software inside of your car,” Matt Teske, CEO of Chargeway, an EV-charging software platform, told the DCNF regarding Tesla’s Supercharger network. “And so they just really made the transition from driving a gas car to driving an electric car very simple for anyone to use and operate.”
Other charging networks and auto manufacturers now have an opportunity to grow after relying heavily on Tesla’s innovations and the Supercharger “gold standard,” Teske added. While the layoffs threaten to introduce uncertainty into the EV market, those growth opportunities and the existence of other charging networks do not mean that the layoffs will impact the Biden administration’s distribution of funds to build a national network.
These advantages and superior engineering contributed to the Supercharger fueling the fastest-growing charging network in the U.S., as Tesla’s 6,200 charging plazas nationwide are the most of any of its competitors, according to E&E News.
The Biden administration is spending billions of dollars to subsidize the creation of a national network for EV charging infrastructure, which remains concentrated mostly in densely-populated, coastal regions of the U.S., according to the Department of Energy (DOE). However, these efforts have yet to yield significant results, as only a small number of charging stations have been built with those funds since Biden enacted the bipartisan infrastructure package in 2021.
Concerns about charger availability and reliability continue to spook consumers. Accordingly, building out the national network will be a crucial part of bringing the American auto industry into compliance with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) recently-finalized tailpipe emissions regulations — which some have characterized as a de facto “EV mandate” — over the next decade or so.
REPORTER: “The first quarter of this year, Ford lost $700 million on their EV program…Is that what we can expect from Bidenomics?”
However, the fresh uncertainty in the EV charging space figures to complicate things for the state government agencies that are ultimately responsible for distributing the Biden subsidies to developers, according to E&E News.
Tesla has already accessed federal subsidies for EV chargers, with more expected, according to E&E News. Other automakers could still use the Tesla charging technology in the future, but they will likely have to do so without the advantage of Tesla’s intimate knowledge about how to maintain the infrastructure.
Tesla, the DOE and the White House did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-05-02 18:51:292024-05-02 18:51:29Elon Musk May Have Just Dealt A Blow To Biden’s EV Agenda
Good news for the Jew-hating, Soros-funded, Hamas supporters wreaking havoc on the campuses of prestigious universities all over our country: Biden’s planning to bring in the real thing: actual Jew-hating, Christian-hating, America-hating, Hamas-supporting “refugees” from…wait for it…Gaza!
You know, the terrorist-prone “Palestinians” no Arab country wants within their borders because they’ve proven so dangerous—those “refugees.”
As CBS reports: “White House considers welcoming some Palestinians from Gaza as refugees.” Nice trick to say “some,” as if they mean maybe five or six…
Leave it to Obama, I mean Biden—OK, I was right the first time—to fan the flames of antisemitism while endangering all Americans by directly importing would-be terrorists and their supporters.
Gosh, what could possibly go wrong?
Get ready to pay for their housing, healthcare, “resettlement benefits”, etc., because that’s O’Biden’s plan as well, courtesy of Cloward and Piven—Obama’s mentors.
And about these potential refugees—before we ask why they’d want to come to the “Great Satan” in the first place, it might interest people to learn what investigative journalist Daniel Greenfield revealed in an article entitled: “There Are No Innocent Civilians in Gaza”. Well, I’m sure there are some, but as we’ll see from the statistics below, they make up a tiny percentage.
In fact, hundreds of Gazan civilians gleefully participated with Hamas in the raping, torturing, burning alive, beheading and dismembering of Israeli civilians on October 7th. And many took part in the kidnappings as well.
Here are some statistics Greenfield quotes in his article:
98% of the Arab Muslim settlers in the West Bank hate America as do 96.8% of those in Gaza. That’s still better than the UK which is hated by 100% of Arab Muslim colonists in the West Bank and Gaza. They actually hate America and the UK more than Israel which is only at 97.3%.
But don’t feel too bad, Americans, Israelis and Brits, because they hate everyone.
Not a single country, and that includes Iran, gets even a 5% ‘very positive’ rating….
The ‘Palestinians’ have their own dedicated UN agency (UNRWA) and have billions of dollars lavished on them. Their needs are taken care of by the people they hate, America, Israel, Egypt and the UAE, not to mention the UN and the Red Cross, whom they repay by hating them.
And from a JNS article by Akiva van Koningsveld: “Three in four Palestinians support Hamas’ massacre”. And this: Ninety-eight percent of respondents said the Oct. 7 slaughter made them feel “prouder of their identity as Palestinians.”
The Biden administration’s latest scheme seems like a playbook for national suicide. From flinging open our borders to entertaining the WHO surrender to killing energy independence and now entertaining the idea of welcoming Palestinian “refugees” from Gaza? It’s like they’re throwing a party for America’s demise!
Let’s face the facts: the overwhelming majority of Arab Muslim settlers in the West Bank and Gaza harbor deep-seated animosity towards America. Yet here we are, discussing plans to roll out the welcome mat for them, courtesy of Uncle Sam, courtesy of taxpayers.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-05-02 18:51:282024-05-02 18:51:28Biden’s Latest Brilliant Idea: Inundate the U.S. with Hamas-Supporting Arabs from Gaza
Brigitte Gabriel knows firsthand the brutality of radical “Palestinian” Arabs. She lived through it and survived.
From age 10 to 17, Brigitte lived in a bomb shelter, hiding from the Muslims who were torturing and murdering Christians in Lebanon. Taught to hate and fear the Jews, she is so loyal to Israel today that she buried her parents there and founded AmericanCongressforTruth.com. Her book Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America is now available.
Will the World Listen to Brigitte Gabriel?
Brigitte Gabriel has tried to warn the world. She isn’t afraid to say out loud that radical Islamic “Palestinian” Arabs destroy countries and people. The is just a fact. They don’t value life. It’s a terrifying reality that the world refuses to admit. Gabriel experienced the barbarism of these evil people. She knows. And the world is still going to try to claim that these people can be peaceful? That they can live in peace alongside Jewish neighbors and really alongside anyone? No! They cannot.
And so here we are today with a Middle East where even those in the Western world who claim to have the same values as Israel say that Israel should let radical “Palestinian” Arabs create a state right next to them. It’s as if they don’t know any history. It’s as if they are completely blind to the truth.
Please, listen to Brigitte Gabriel. Listen to her plea and her warning. The evil we are fighting against is not just a threat to Jews. It is a threat to all peace-loving people. As she said, “Because what starts in the Middle East doesn’t end in the Middle East.
What starts in Israel doesn’t end in Israel…This is a war between goodness and evil. We either win or they win.” Wake up and stand with Israel! There is no other choice.
ABOUT BRIGITTE GABRIEL
Brigitte Gabriel is a leading commentator on politics, culture, and national security. As a legal immigrant to America born in Lebanon, Ms. Gabriel survived war in the Middle East living in an 8×10 underground bomb shelter from the age of 10 until 17 years old. She lectures nationally and internationally, and her expertise is sought after by world and business leaders.
Ms. Gabriel moved to Israel in 1984 and became a news anchor for “World News,” an evening Arabic news broadcast for Middle East Television seen throughout Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. Her work is of international scope has brought her in contact with world figures such as Margaret Thatcher, George H. Bush, Queen Nour El Hussein, Itzhak Rabine, and Shimon Perez.
Ms. Gabriel immigrated to the United States in 1989 and founded a television production and advertising company. Her clients included ABC, NBC, CBS, Discovery, TLC, History Channel, CNN, the Oprah Winfrey show, 20/20, World NewsTonight, and Good Morning America just to name a few.
She has addressed the United Nations, Australian Prime Minister, members of The British Parliament/House of Commons, members of the United States Congress, The Pentagon, The Joint Forces Staff College, The US Special Operations Command, The US Asymmetric Warfare group, the FBI, and many others.
In addition, Gabriel is a regular guest analyst on Fox News Channel, Newsmax, OAN, and many American and international media outlets worldwide.
Ms. Gabriel is the Founder and Chairman of ACT for America, the largest national security grassroots organization in the U.S. with over two million members. She is a NYT best-selling author of three books, the latest being “RISE” In Defense of Judeo-Christian Values and Freedom.
Ms. Gabriel was knighted in Europe in 2016 and became “Dame Brigitte Gabriel”. She is named one of the top 50 most prominent speakers in America. She speaks Arabic, French, English, and Hebrew.
Here it is! The full speech I gave at #CPACHungary that the establishment is losing its absolute mind about.
I spoke the forbidden truth: The Great Replacement is no longer a theory – it’s reality. White Europeans are being replaced in their own countries at an ever… pic.twitter.com/L33UE3P6tv
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-05-02 07:51:222024-05-02 07:51:22WATCH: Brigitte Gabriel shares her horrifying story of living under the radical Islamic ‘Palestinians’
In September 2022, 16-year-old Nika Shakarami attended a Woman, Life, Freedom protest in Tehran.
That day, pictures taken of her burning her hijab made her an icon in the eyes of Iran’s protestors, and a target in the eyes of the Iranian government. Nika never went home. Iran’s government claimed she jumped from a building, but her mother never accepted it.
Now #BBCEye investigates a shocking new document, purportedly written by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which reveals what happened after they hunted her down.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-05-02 07:51:212024-05-02 07:51:21BBC Documentary ‘Nika’s Last Breath’ about 16-year old Nika Shakarami’s last moments before being raped and murdered in Iran
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which broke out following the deadly attack perpetrated in Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023, the Houthi Ansar Allah movement has carried out dozens of attacks targeting Israel and Israeli interests as well as American and other Western marine vessels in the Red Sea, the Bab El-Mandeb Strait, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. Severely disrupting global trade, these attacks have drawn the world’s attention to the Houthi movement, which is a proxy of Iran. The Houthis, for their part, are using this attention in a bid to shed their image as an Iranian proxy. They seek to elevate their international stature and position themselves as an influential regional power in their own right, part of the anti-American global axis that comprises Russia, China and the BRICS[1] countries.
Virulent hatred for the U.S., Israel, and the Jews, to the extent of blatant antisemitism, is an integral part of the Houthi identity and is used by the Houthi leadership to gain sympathy and support among the Yemeni population. The most obvious expression of this hatred is the movement’s motto: “Allahu akbar, death to America, death to Israel, cursed be the Jews, victory to Islam.” The U.S., Israel and the Jews are presented as the enemies of Islam and of mankind in speeches and sermons by Houthis leaders and clerics, at mass rallies and in activities for children. Over the years MEMRI has translated dozens of these speeches, sermons and statements from Houthi officials and reported on military parades and rallies in areas under Houthi control.
The following is a review of reports and videos published by MEMRI in this context.
The Houthis Seek To Position Themselves As A Regional Power Opposing The U.S. And The West
On March 16, 2024, Ali Al-Qahoum, a member of Ansar Allah’s political bureau, published a post on X praising the Houthi role in the struggle against the “hegemony” of the U.S., Britain and the West. The post reads: “There is a continuous development in the international relations between Yemen, Russia, China, and the BRICS countries, and an exchange of experience and expertise in various fields. This is due to a common interest in drowning America, Britain, and the West in the swamp of the Red Sea and the high seas. [Our] goal is to make it [the U.S.] sink and disappear, and weaken its unipolarity.
“This is not only an analysis, but rather a clear and present reality. Yemen… entered the equation of supporting Palestine and ably strengthened the equation of the Red Sea, which constitutes a major and strategic equation with major effects and implications on the balance of the military, security, political and economic results. Yemen achieved this with unparalleled vigour and pride thanks to Allah, our brave, wise, and beloved leader, and proud nation, to such an extent that the superpowers began knocking on its [Yemen’s] doors, coordinating and building mutual relations with it, making arrangements for the foreseeable future, and preparing for the historic defeat of America, Britain, and the West, and the collapse of the colonial project and Western hegemony in the region and the world.”
Houthi Shura Council Member: Everyone Hostile To America Is Our Friend, We Will Welcome Exchange Of Military Expertise
On March 17, 2024, Abdulsalam Jahhaf, a member of the Houthi Shura Council, shared a post on X defending the group’s “right” to establish international relations with countries hostile to the U.S. The post reads: “We have the right to establish relations with Russia, China, Iran, the BRICS countries, Cuba, and [North] Korea. Everyone hostile to America is our friend. We will widely accept alliances and exchange of military expertise and information. This is a natural result of the West’s aggression against us and against our people in Gaza, under the leadership of America.”
Strengthening Relations With Palestinian Factions; Coordination With Hamas Regarding Crew Of Highjacked “Galaxy Leader” Ship
On March 15 and 16, 2024, it was reported that representatives of the Houthi Ansar Allah movement and senior officials from three Palestinian factions – Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestinian (DFLP) – had held a meeting in Lebanon to discuss coordination between them in the context of the war against Israel in the Gaza Strip. The Houthis stressed their willingness to continue with “assistance operations” in the Red Sea, the Bab El-Mandeb Strait, and the Indian Ocean for the next two years.
On March 7, 2024, the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera website published an article about the collaboration between the Houthis and Hamas, against the backdrop of the war in the Gaza Strip. The article quoted senior Houthi and Hamas officials who claimed that the two movements had also coordinated the decisions regarding the crew members from the Galaxy Leader commercial vessel that was hijacked by the Houthis on November 19, 2023.
The following are seven compilations of videos which present the Houthi threats to the U.S., the Gulf States and Israel, and include displays of Houthi military capabilities. They also reveal the antisemitic aspects of the Houthi ideology, as expressed in statements by Houthi political and military leaders, in sermons delivered by preachers and in speeches at military parades.
Senior Houthi Officials: U.S. Responsible For War In Ukraine, Militarization In Red Sea
The following video compilation includes statements by officials such as Houthi leader ‘Abd Al-Malik Badr Al-Din; Ansar Allah Political Bureau members Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti, Abdullah Al-Na’ami and Abd Al-Wahhab Al-Mahbashi; Supreme Political Council members Mohammed Ali Al-Houthi and sheikh Sultan Al-Samie; Information Minister Dayfallah Al-Shami and his deputy Nasr Al-Din Amer, Health Minister Dr. Taha Al-Mutawakkil; Tourism Minister Ahmad Al-Aly; Supreme Revolutionary Council member Khaled Al-Madani; TV host and undersecretary for girls’ education at the Houthi education ministry Boshra Al-Mahtouri, and Ali Al-Halili, spokesman for the Future of Justice organization. These Houthi officials incite against the U.S. and threaten to attack its vessels at sea, while some of the videos were filmed onboard the hijacked Galaxy Leader. Others include antisemitic statements and threats against the UAE.
Houthi Military Personnel: We Have Developed Missiles With A Range Exceeding 2,500 Kilometers
The videos presented below present statements by Houthi military personnel detailing Houthi military capabilities; Houthi claims of responsibility for attacks against Israeli targets since October 7, 2023, claims of responsibility for attacks on the UAE. and threats to attack American forces in the Red Sea.
The following senior Houthi officials appear in this compilation: Brigadier General Abdul Ghani Al-Zubaidi; military expert Muhammad Hussein Al-Mansour; Naval Staff Brigadier General Yahya Saree’; spokesman for the military forces Colonel Mujib Shamsan; military expert and strategic analyst, Brigadier General Abdallah Al-Jafari; and military expert Sharaf Luqman, spokesman for the Houthi forces.
This compilation also includes a report about corporal punishment and executions carried out by the Houthis; a student rally in Hajjah where threats were made to attack Israel and New York; and footage of a rally of Houthi women in Al-Jawf at which they demonstrated against Israel and the West.
Houthi Preachers And Clerics
The following clips present sermons and interviews with Houthi clerics, such as Muhammad Miftah; Shams Al-Din Sharaf Al-Din, the mufti of Yemen; Hamdi Ziad; Ibrahim Al-Ubeidi; Ahmad Al-Shami; and Abdallah Al-Lahji. They threaten and incite against the U.S., the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel and UN agencies, make antisemitic statements, express support for the Houthi military industry and repeat conspiracy theories regarding the September 11, 2001 attacks and the COVID pandemic.
Military Parades And Displays
The clips in the compilation below document military parades organized by the Houthis, displays of Zilzal missiles, simulated attacks against Israeli and American targets, and demonstrations of armed women who support the Houthis.
Reports In Houthi Media: U.S. Is Behind September 11 Attacks
This compilation includes articles that appeared in the Houthi media which claim that the American government planned the September 11 attacks, and an animated film screened in the Houthi media which contends that the U.S. and the Jews deceive and harm Arabs.
Indoctrination Of Children
The videos below present the values and concepts taught to the younger generation in areas controlled by the Houthis, and includes footage of a show of support for the residents of Gaza in which children are seen bearing arms and shouting slogans against the U.S. and Israel. Also presented are conspiracy theories regarding the September 11 attacks and material glorifying martyrdom.
Expressions Of Support From Houthi Allies
The following videos present expressions of affinity and support from members of the resistance axis led by Iran and Hizbullah: from Iran, Iraq and Gaza, as well as Houthi support for the Lebanese Hizbullah. The videos include footage of Iraqi Hizbullah Brigades launching a campaign to fund Houthi drones; a rally in Gaza in support of the Houthis; statements from Iranian General Gholmani Rashid, commander of Khatam Al-Anbiya central headquarters; a Houthi donation drive for Hizbullah, and statements from Iranian cleric Mehdi Taeb, advisor to Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei.
SOURCE:
[1] BRICS is an intergovernmental organization comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-05-02 06:51:262024-05-02 06:51:26VIDEOS: The Houthi Ansar Allah Movement In Its Own Words
Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced on Wednesday that she will call for a vote to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson next week.
Greene initially filed a motion to vacate in late March over disagreements with Johnson’s latest appropriations plan. The Georgia Republican detailed her plan to advance her efforts to remove Johnson during a press conference following the House’s passage of Ukraine aid.
“I think every member of Congress needs to take that vote and let the chips fall where they may. And so next week, I am going to be calling this motion to vacate,” Green said. “We are not going to have a House majority if we keep Mike Johnson.”
Johnson released a statement following Greene’s announcement, arguing that “this motion is wrong for the Republican Conference, wrong for the institution, and wrong for the country.”
Politico reported Wednesday that Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Whatley had attempted to dissuade Greene from going through with the vote.
“He said, one, this is not helpful, and two, we want to expand and grow the majority in the House,” said a person familiar with Whatley’s message to Greene, per Politico. “He was clear that any disruption to the conference on these efforts — including filing this [motion to vacate], does not help the case for party unity.”
House Democratic leadership announced on Tuesday they’d help save Johnson if Greene moved forward with her motion to vacate after he helped advance the national security supplemental.
“At this moment, upon completion of our national security work, the time has come to turn the page on this chapter of Pro-Putin Republican obstruction,” the Democrats said. “We will vote to table Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Motion to Vacate the Chair. If she invokes the motion, it will not succeed.”
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-05-02 06:51:252024-05-02 06:51:25Marjorie Taylor Greene Reveals Plan To Oust Speaker Mike Johnson
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said, while he respects those who have “absolute moral clarity” on the issue, he believes the decision to abort a child in the eighth month of pregnancy is morally “nuanced and complex.”
In an interview with Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro, RFK Jr. disagreed that a child has an independent right to life even in the third trimester.
Shapiro opened by saying that arguments justifying abortion based on “bodily autonomy” are “completely missing the point: We’re not talking about the woman’s bodily autonomy; we’re talking about the baby’s bodily autonomy.” As such, abortion is “not just a tragedy; it’s a crime against the child, because the child has an independent interest. What do you say to that?”
“I say that I understand that position, and I don’t agree with it,” replied RFK Jr. “The solution of having the state come in and dictate choices that the woman is making is not — that’s not a good solution to me.”
Seeking to clarify the Independent presidential candidate’s position, Shapiro asked, “You don’t believe that the child has an independent right to life, for example, at any point during the pregnancy?”
“There is no woman who gets pregnant, carries that baby for eight months, and then decides to have an abortion for some frivolous reason,” Kennedy answered. “Nobody in their right mind would do that.”
“There are very, very rare cases where that happens. There’s always some kind of extenuating circumstances that I don’t feel prepared to turn that over to the government. You and I will differ on that,” Kennedy told Shapiro.
“I understand your position. I have tremendous respect for you for having that kind of absolute moral clarity on that position. But I think it’s more nuanced and complex than that,” Kennedy stated.
Yet research conducted by pro-abortion sources contradict years of assertions from the abortion industry that late-term abortions do not happen, or only happen in cases of severe fetal anomaly.
A study of late-term abortions, published in the Guttmacher Institute’s journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health and conducted by two researchers associated with the abortion advocacy group Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), found that “data suggest that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.” More than one-third (37%) of “women reported that the process of deciding whether to have an abortion slowed them down” and “faced difficulty covering the costs associated with their abortion.” They concluded, “We did not find that changing personal circumstances contributed to delays in seeking abortion.”
One of the authors of the study, Diana Greene Foster, was quoted in a 2018 report that “abortions for fetal anomaly ‘make up a small minority of later abortion.’” The other, Katrina Kimport, noted the “similarities between respondents’ experiences and that of people seeking abortion at other gestations” in a 2022 study.
“Each year, over 50,000 abortions are performed after 15 weeks of gestation, when unborn babies can feel pain,” representing a little more than 1% of all abortions reported nationwide, reports the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, analyzing data collected from the Guttmacher Institute and the federal government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
RFK Jr.’s running mate shares his commitment to abortion-on-demand. Nicole Shanahan, the ex-wife of Google founder Sergey Brin, shares his commitment to abortion-on-demand. As “a person with a womb,” wrote Shanahan in a post on the social media platform X on April 9, “I don’t like the feeling of anyone having control over my body. It is coercive. It is wrong.” She added that, personally, she “would not feel right terminating a viable life living inside of me, especially if I am both healthy and that baby is healthy.”
“I can hold both beliefs, as someone who believes in the sacredness of life, simultaneously,” Shanahan asserted.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. created a short boom of interest late last summer, when he seemed to imply he would sign a law protecting babies from abortion after the first trimester. “I believe that the decision to abort a child should be up to the woman during the first three months of life,” declared the then-Democratic primary candidate last August.
“So, you would cap it at 15 weeks? Or 21 weeks?” asked NBC News reporter Ali Vitali.
“Yes. Three months,” Kennedy replied.
“So, three months — you would sign a federal cap on that?” Vitali clarified a second time.
“Yes, I would,” Kennedy continued. “Once a child is viable outside the womb, I think then the state has an interest in protecting that child.”
Within hours, his campaign produced an unsigned statement reversing the candidate’s stated position. “Mr. Kennedy misunderstood a question posed to him by [an] NBC reporter in a crowded, noisy exhibit hall at the Iowa State Fair,” it read.
No pro-life Democrat has been named to a national ticket, as president or vice president, since Robert F. Kennedy’s uncle, Sargent Shriver, in 1972. The last pro-life Democrat to mount a serious presidential candidacy was former Florida Governor Reubin Askew in 1984.
Both major party candidates have worried about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in recent weeks. President Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee have built a large operation designed to undercut RFK Jr.’s left-leaning independent presidential run, according to Axios. Earlier this month, Biden received the endorsement of many members of the Kennedy family. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump personally lashed out at Kennedy on Truth Social, saying he would endorse Joe Biden before he would vote for RFK Jr.
Kennedy returned fire at Trump in the Shapiro interview, saying the 45th president broke his promise to “Drain the Swamp” and “got rolled by his bureaucrats.” He highlighted Trump’s appointments of Scott Gotlieb, who ping-ponged between pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and the FDA, and Alex Azar, who signed off on a sweetheart deal for Jeffrey Epstein. RFK Jr. also complained about Trump’s National Security Advisor, “swamp creature” John Bolton to Shapiro, who aligns more closely with Bolton’s neoconservative foreign policy than Kennedy’s noninterventionism.
In a separate interview, Kennedy told EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo that the Trump campaign had approached him about being Trump’s vice presidential running mate “on multiple occasions.”
Kennedy, who only recently backed away from a threat to prosecute oil companies for exercising their free-speech rights to deny climate change, is courting the Libertarian Party.
In Michigan, RFK Jr. will serve as the presidential candidate of the Natural Law Party — a minor party founded by followers of the late Hindu teacher Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and whose candidates have said many social problems, from stress to the economy, can be cured through transcendental meditation.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-05-02 06:51:242024-05-02 06:51:24RFK Jr.: 8th Month Abortion Is Morally ‘Nuanced and Complex’
With tent cities springing up across American campuses, filled with anti-Semitic activists who are openly supporting U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations, you could be forgiven for suspecting that this activism was not wholly organic. And you would be right.
Fingerprints of Further Funding
Take the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Columbia University, where “students sleep in tents apparently ordered from Amazon and enjoy delivery pizza, coffee from Dunkin’, free sandwiches worth $12.50 from Pret a Manger, organic tortilla chips and $10 rotisserie chickens,” according to the New York Post. That is not the sort of event a campus student association organizes on its semesterly stipend — certainly not the sort of event a student association could sustain for now more than a week.
It’s not just Columbia University. These tent encampments — with an odd near-uniformity to their pup tents — have popped up at dozens of campuses all across the country. Dozens, scores, and hundreds of students have walked out of classes only weeks before finals, and they are glamping on the lawn instead of cramming in the library. Who is behind all this?
Paid Activists
The Post discovered that at least some encampments appear to be coordinated by paid activists. A left-wing activist coalition called the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) sponsors a “Youth Organizing Fellowship” that offers college students an unheard-of $24-$28/hour wage to organize supposedly “local campaigns,” which are really backed by the training, mentorship, and ongoing support of this extremely well-funded activist network. In 2023, USCPR hired eight youth fellows, three of which have recently appeared at pro-Hamas encampments at UC Berkeley, Yale, and UT Austin, according to photographs sleuthed out by the Post.
Those who visit the USCPR website today will not find any youth fellows listed. The activist group “has just begun a new class of 2024 youth fellows,” they conveniently claim. Instead, they suggest repeatedly, “Check back for more information,” which innocently suggests to viewers they haven’t had time to update their website yet. However, according to their advertisement, applications for the position closed on April 3, just over two weeks before the recent mayhem on university campuses began.
On one hand, this could be mere coincidence. On the other hand, it could be that USCPR youth fellows (nothing said they had to only hire eight this year) have played a major role in organizing these campus encampments, at least the more influential ones. If that is the case, then USCPR deliberately timed its hiring so that its website would reveal no information about its youth fellows until after their encampment campaign — perhaps even after the semester. Given the presence of former USCPR youth fellows — who, presumably, are no longer on their payroll — at these protests, it seems likely that their current youth fellows would also be involved, simply due to running in the same circles of protest culture.
The USCPR Network
The USCPR coalition includes Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP), CODEPINK, National Lawyers Guild (NLG), and the Westchester Peace Action Committee (WESPAC), among many other groups. In 2021, USCPR had a total income of $1.5 million total expenses of $1 million.
USCPR’s official name is Education for Just Peace in the Middle East. Under that name, USCPR received $355,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund between 2018-2023, and it received $700,000 from the Soros family’s Open Society Foundation between 2018-2022 (the most recent years for which data is available).
In 2018, Tablet Magazine reported that USCPR was “the fiscal sponsor of a group called the Palestinian BDS [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions] National Committee (BNC),” which in turn was linked to Palestinian terrorist groups. One of BNC’s members, listed on its website, is the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine (PNIF). Five members of PNIF are U.S.-designated terrorist organizations: Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad the Palestine Liberation Front, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Popular Front — General Command (PFLP-GC).
For those like me who have never run across the term before, fiscal sponsorship is where one nonprofit receives and administers donations intended for another organization that lacks nonprofit status. (The National Council of Nonprofits argues that the practice does have a place in helping new charities get started, but to the uninitiated outsider this arrangement also looks like a legal way to launder money.) Remember this term, because it will reoccur below.
Local chapters of USCPR affiliate SJP organized many of the Gaza encampments, including those at Columbia, Harvard, Yale, UC Berkeley, Ohio State, and Emory. Also involved in the Columbia occupation is JVP, another USCPR affiliate that co-organized an October 2023 protest in which demonstrators illegally entered a House office building and were arrested.
However, USCPR is not the only source of funding for organizations within its orbit organizing campus occupations. From 2017-2022, Soros’s Open Society contributed $775,000 directly to JVP, while the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave the group $490,000 from 2019-2023.
Financial information on SJP is harder to obtain because the organization is not registered as a nonprofit. Another USCPR member, WESPAC, serves as SJP’s fiscal sponsor. It makes sense that SJP, which declared Hamas’s October 7 terror attack to be “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance,” would wish to conceal its funding streams. It also makes sense that SJP would not wish to register as a nonprofit organization, since that designation might be justly removed based on its activities and statements. Hence, it’s secretive funding mechanisms.
Headquartered in White Plains, N.Y. in Westchester County, the Westchester Peace Action Committee seems like a small, local nonprofit — at first. Nevertheless, WESPAC plays an inconspicuous but important role in supporting the national anti-Israel movement. It does this by allowing itself to be used as a fiscal sponsor to fringe extremist groups that might otherwise lose their tax-exempt status. According to the left-leaning Anti-Defamation League, WESPAC has fiscally sponsored 22 organizations since 2000, but 15 of those organizations were anti-Israel or pro-Palestine, with no more than one organization in any other category
Due to the lack of reporting requirements, it is unknown how much money WESPAC has funneled to SJP. What is known is that the organization’s revenue nearly quadrupled over four years, from $636,000 in 2021 to nearly $2.4 million in 2023. The sources of most of that revenue are not known.
Tip of the Iceberg
The organization of pro-Hamas campus encampments suggest they are being bankrolled by someone with deep pockets. The lavish supplies expended on the encampments suggest they are being bankrolled by someone with deep pockets. The high compensation paid activists receive to coordinate these encampments suggest they are being bankrolled by someone with deep pockets.
According to open-source data gathering, at least two left-wing grant-making organizations with deep pockets — the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and George Soros’s Open Society Foundations — are known to have made significant past donations to several of the groups involved in these protests.
However, the activist groups already mentioned are not the only members of the left-wing coalition organizing anti-Semitic direct action on and off university campuses, nor are they the only ones rolling in left-wing donations. Other radical groups have cooperated in staging anti-Semitic demonstrations:
If Not Now (INN) received $400,000 from Open Society in 2019-2021;
Adalah Justice Project received $550,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (passed through the left-wing Tides Center) in 2020-2023;
The Arab American Association of New York received $60,000 from Open Society in 2018;
Desis Rising Up and Moving received $30,000 from Open Society in 2020.
All these groups have participated in anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protests.
For those keeping track, the organizations sponsoring campus encampments and other anti-Semitic protests have received at least $3.36 million since 2016 from just two left-wing organizations. Meanwhile, the funding sources for other groups, such as the hyper-active SJP and Within Our Lifetime, are not known. This is based upon previously reported data that does not even account for funding these organizations may have received since Hamas’s October 7 terror attack — when the lawlessness began in earnest.
Campus protestors like to romanticize their misbehavior by comparing it to the protests of the late-1960s. But today’s protestors have access to more funding than their comrades of another era — perhaps “professors” would be a more efficient word — could have dreamed of. There are likely many deluded campuses today who deeply believe in their confused and perverted vision of the world.
Yet the amount of money involved suggests the campus occupation movement may not be as widespread a grassroots-uprising as the left-wing media is laboring to make it appear. Millions, even hundreds of thousands of dollars, can buy significant cooperation from one of the most notoriously penniless segments of society. This is perhaps especially true when the money enables agitators to utter college students’ two favorite words: “free food.”
The Left seems to believe rowdy, disruptive chanting can drive any policy change — so long as the rioters yell loud enough and long enough — and powerful progressive organizations have pulled out their pocketbooks to put that theory to the most rigorous test.
🚨Trump comments on the protests that occured across the nation and specifically at Columbia University last night:
“New York was under siege last night. The police came in exactly two hours. Everything was over. It was a beautiful thing to watch. New York’s finest!” pic.twitter.com/GHSiwgijBq
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-05-02 06:51:232024-05-02 06:51:23Left-Wing Donors Gave More than $3.3 Million to Pro-Hamas Activities since 2016
The Republican In Name Only (RINO) worms living underground to avoid the light still think they can pop up every now and then to try and disrupt the balance of nature.
Worms like Republican in Name Only (RINO) Kevin McCarthy the fired do nothing former Speaker of the House. His head has appeared in District 1 Florida via his hand picked primary challenger to congressman Matt Gaetz.
Comrade McCarthy has now recruited his pal Aaron Dimmock a liberal left wing Republican In Name Only (RINO) Diversity cheerleader to challenge Congressman “MAGA” Matt Gaetz in the August primary election.
Aaron Dimmock was a Naval P3 pilot who found safety and comfort in surveillance aircraft vice the challenge of being a MAGA supporting Naval Top Gun fighter pilot.
Top Gun pilots return to home base on Aircraft Carriers deployed in rough seas not to safe and secure fixed airfields. Dimick apparently failed to qualify for Top Gun or chickened out. Just my opinion from my experience in officer programs recruiting.
In my 20 year military career in the United States Navy my three years providing military combat support to P3 pilots in Sicily Italy was my worst nightmare.
One P3 pilot got an airman pregnant which I had to deal with as a Senior Chief and instead of combat readiness their main concern was ensuring their assigned aircraft needed extra maintenance on airfields like in Rota Spain within close proximity to cheap beer.
Of course aircraft parts were always needed for the planes and three days was usually the minimum turn around time to get the missing widgets. Enough time to party on full per diem.
The mindset of the Top Gun pilot compared to the P3 pilot is night and day. Much like comparing conservative republicans to socialist democrats. Not all but most P3 pilots.
Top Gun pilots maintained conservative discipline and had Ronald Reagan photos hanging in their lockers while the P3 pilots I knew were the closet democrats that loved Clinton. Just my opinion from my up close and personal perspective.
Aaron Dimick is no different and he clearly identifies himself as a liberal with his close association and political connections with RINO loser Kevin McCarthy.
I have no doubt I crossed paths with Dimick while I was stationed at Naval Air Station Sicily, Italy. Perhaps during one of my night operations as the Command Duty Officer (CDO) in Sicily I made sure he and or his colleagues were given wake up calls like his momma used to do.
This primary challenger to Matt Gaetz is nothing more than a Kevin McCarthy blow up plastic artificial intelligence artifact a woke BLM supporting DEI instructor.
So now he’s running against the indestructible Matt Gaetz (R-FL) a phenomenal leader in the Republican Party here in district 1. My back yard.
McCarthy needs to spend his time more wisely vice setting up woke liberals like Aaron Dimick for failure in this part of Florida.
This is MAGA Matt Gaetz country and woke liberals like Dimick are doomed for failure.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-05-02 06:51:222024-05-02 06:51:22FLORIDA: Aaron Dimick Diversity cheerleader to challenge Congressman ‘MAGA’ Matt Gaetz in the August primary election
In September 2022, 16-year-old Nika Shakarami attended a Woman, Life, Freedom protest in Tehran.
That day, pictures taken of her burning her hijab made her an icon in the eyes of Iran’s protestors, and a target in the eyes of the Iranian government. Nika never went home. Iran’s government claimed she jumped from a building, but her mother never accepted it.
Now #BBCEye investigates a shocking new document, purportedly written by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which reveals what happened after they hunted her down.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-05-01 18:51:342024-05-01 18:51:34BBC Documentary ‘Nika’s Last Breath’ about 16-year old Nika Shakarami’s last moments before her death in Iran
In 2020, Americans took the streets to protest the death of George Floyd. The phrase “Black lives matter” was born. This chant and slogan is now recognized throughout the world to represent a stance against Black intolerance. When some tried to counter it with “all lives matter” they were perceived as dismissive of the unique struggles of the Black community. One of the better arguments is that universalizing a concept when a specific group of people are harmed, is tantamount to an empty platitude or even a bigoted retort.
Following October 7th Hamas massacre of more than 1,200 Israelis, injuring 7,000 more, the Jewish community is asking the same: condemn antisemitism. Condemn it without caveat and without universal language of “standing against all forms of hate”. Yet, time and time again, “Islamophobia” is evoked as a counterpart of antisemitism. This is misguided. It’s unproductive. And it’s unfair.Let me be clear.Bigotry, prejudice, and violence must be called out and combatted forcefully – whether it is directed at Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, or anyone else. Anyone who traffics in hatred must be condemned, and when necessary, prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.That said, by definition, antisemitism and Islamophobia refer to two very different phenomena that have no connections to one another. When lumped together, the message is muddled at best and offensive at worst.
The term Islamophobia does not mean hate against Muslims
First, it’s important to define that despite common misconception, the term Islamophobia doesn’t represent hate against Muslims but rather irrational fear of Muslims. “Islamophobia” as a term has existed since the nineteenth century, but became prominent in 1989 when Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie following his publication of The Satanic Verses. The fatwa not only imposed a death penalty on Rushdie, but also criminalized all the publishers and translators of the book. When Rushdie was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2007 for his services to literature, Iran accused Britain of “Islamophobia”.
Since then, the Islamophobic label has been used increasingly to deter and ultimately criminalize any scrutiny of the behavior any groups or individuals who happen to be Muslim, even when those are committing atrocities like Hamas, or advancing radical or harmful ideas, like Iran’s Mullahs.
Hatred toward Muslim is real, but it doesn’t equal Islamophobia. The Australian man who killed 51 Muslims in 2019 in Christchurch, New Zealand was an extremist bigot who hated Muslims. He did not irrationally fear them.
Thus, the better term to use is Muslim-hate and not Islamophobia.
Muslims are often the perpetrators of Antisemitism
Second, the threat to the Muslim community has one clear culprit – far right white supremacism. While these same supremacists often include antisemitism in their ideology, Jews also face threats from every ideological and political direction, including Muslims who harbor antisemitic views more than any other religious community. Therefore, the treatment of hate against Muslims is not and cannot be similar to the treatment of antisemitism.
Since October 7th, anti-Israel and antisemitic rallies led by Muslims have been held around the world. Calls to kill Jews and eliminate the Jewish state spread widely across the Muslim world. Many featured explicit support for Hamas’ atrocious actions. Pro-Hamas imagery was displayed in Tunisia and antisemitic chants rained from Cairo to Italy. These demonstrations are no surprise, given that:
And Nigeria, while 28% of Christians have an unfavorable view of Jews, 60% of Muslims view Jews unfavorably
The simple truth is, many Muslims hold bigoted views towards Jews. Stating this truth is not Islamophobic nor rooted in Muslim hate. Ignoring this truth appeases antisemites.
Therefore, lumping antisemitism and Islamophobia together creates a bizarre and ironic situation where the victims and perpetrators are treated the same and looked at from the same lens.
Islamophobia is used as a weapon against those who call out anti-Semitism
Third, accusations of Islamophobia are often used by extremists to whitewash, obfuscate, and distract from dangerous and growing radical movements in the Muslim world.
Few stand up publicly today against radical Islam and those who do risk being silenced under the label of Islamophobes. The sword of Islamophobia is wielded to deliberately chill discourse and narrow the public marketplace of ideas.
We cannot let accusations of Islamophobia silence us when we confront and defend ourselves against the radical ideologies that exist in the Muslim communities and are now growing in Europe and America. Ideologies that undermine our values and seek to target the Jewish people in Israel and worldwide.
The Muslim Brotherhood, its Palestinian wing—Hamas, and its American wing— CAIR, are designated as terrorist organizations by many countries around the world. Confronting CAIR, whose director said he was “happy to see” Palestinians break out of Gaza on October 7th, is not Islamophobic. Luckily, the White House now agrees.
Confronting Mehdi Hasan, the former MSNBC and Al Jazeera journalist, who pushes conspiracy theories about Israel and defended Rep, Ilhan Omar’s antisemitic comments, is not Islamophobic.
Confronting Rep. Tlaib, who called the 10/7 attack “resistance”, lies about Israel regularly, and invokes “from the river to the sea”, is not Islamophobic.
And most importantly, calling out the heinous crimes committed by Hamas against Jews is not Islamophobic. As a matter of fact, standing against Hamas – an organization with complete disregard to Christian, Jewish and Muslim lives and freedoms – is neither Islamophobic nor Muslim hate.
These individuals and organizations deserve to be publicly criticized and discredited not because they are Muslim, but because they are guilty of antisemitism and hate.
In the wake of October 7th, it’s time for our leaders and community to recognize that antisemitism and Islamophobia don’t go hand in hand, have nothing in common, and lumping them together leads to more divisiveness and misunderstanding of both communities.
I stand in solidarity with everyone who faces prejudice and discrimination because of their ethnicity or beliefs. Any decent person ought to. That’s why I will continue speaking out against radical Islam and other extremist movements. That’s why I will not stay silent in the face of phony accusations of Islamophobia.
Here it is! The full speech I gave at #CPACHungary that the establishment is losing its absolute mind about.
I spoke the forbidden truth: The Great Replacement is no longer a theory – it’s reality. White Europeans are being replaced in their own countries at an ever… pic.twitter.com/L33UE3P6tv
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-05-01 18:51:332024-05-01 18:51:33Milstein: Condemn Anti-Semitism Without Equivocation to Islamophobia
H.W. Crocker III: Catholics know that faith and reason support each other because faith asks us to conform ourselves to the truth, not to our own whims, material or sensual interests, or pride.
You know you’ve married well when you ask your wife what she thinks about the “archaic” 1864 Arizona abortion law and she says, “Most excellent.” (She’s from California.) To the law’s critics, the U.S. Constitution must be even more archaic, and the Ten Commandments positively primeval (or, as they might say, “handed down by a mythological ‘flying spaghetti monster’ even decades before”).
All of which raises a familiar question, evident to any observer of American politics today. Why is it that Christian people of faith are so much more rational and reasonable than the faithless. The faithful don’t deny biology (when it comes to sex). They don’t deny the laws of grammar (when it comes to gender). And they have a misguided but charming desire to reason with their opponents. Why is that?
Actually, let’s raise the stakes of the question. Why does God desire our assent through faith?
Consider: no religion is more firmly grounded in history – in documented historical events – or steeped in reason than Christianity, where the word, logos, is the beginning of everything. No religion has a deeper library of philosophy than the Catholic Church, the home of Saint Augustine, Saint Anselm, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Cardinal Newman, and countless others.
So, given its historical, reasonable, and philosophical proofs, why does Christianity insist on the importance of faith, which the Letter to the Hebrews (11:1) famously defined as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Well, maybe because it is our faith that determines our goodwill to assess evidence and assign hope as we should – instead of letting pride, or another deadly sin, guide us.
Pride, for many people, is a starting point. “My life is my own,” they say, which is only a partial truth. As a matter of biological fact, our lives are gifts from our parents. Hence, the Biblical commandment to honor one’s mother and father. In some traditional cultures, honoring one’s mother and father is not just a matter of gratitude, but of reverence, of ancestor worship, a recognition that “no man is an island, entire of himself.”
John Donne, the poet who wrote those lines, was an Anglican priest. He would have understood that ultimately his life was a gift from God. A person who believes that will almost certainly have a broader vision, higher aspirations, worthier ambitions, and deeper virtues than the person who believes his life is solely his own. He will more likely recognize the wisdom of the beatitudes; he will be much more willing to take up his cross and follow the path of duty; he will, in short, be a person of goodwill.
What we might call “liberalism,” however, works the other way, reducing the individual to himself (“my life is my own”), his wants and desires (his presumed “happiness”), and his transactions and interests (his material gain and comforts).
Such liberalism has, of course, brought us the “Nones” – the rising tide of young people who profess no religion because they accept no reference points outside themselves. To them, faith and reason, history and philosophy, tradition and gratitude, are all irrelevant. All that matters is “me.” The idea of an eternal soul (especially one facing a judgment outside oneself), of morality that goes beyond self-satisfaction (and self-congratulation: “I am a good person”) is summarily rejected.
The Church teaches that we honor God’s gift of life through seven capital virtues, which are the fruits of faith: humility, charity, chastity, gratitude, temperance, patience, and diligence. These are what distinguish men of goodwill. To the Nones, however, the seven capital virtues are nonsensical.
If our life is our own, why do we need humility, chastity, or gratitude? Charity, temperance, patience, and diligence sound suspiciously like shackles on ourselves. Truth be told, the Nones prefer the seven deadly sins – pride, sloth, greed, lust, gluttony, envy, and wrath – which they transform into positive goods.
Pride, to them – if it is not a flag – is simply self-esteem and self-affirmation, perhaps the highest virtues in their pantheon. Likewise, sloth (the computer gamer in the basement) can be a lifestyle choice. Greed is not a sin, if you’re a materialist. No one can call someone a glutton (that’s fat-shaming). Most of all, lust is not a sin (that’s outdated Christian morality). Lust is freedom to fornicate as one desires. And if our desires – any desires – are denied, we are perfectly justified in expressing envy (perhaps against white privilege) and wrath (against the patriarchy, conservatives, Christians, or anyone who would restrict, say, our desire for an abortion).
Actually, the entire decline and fall of Western Civilization can be seen in this simple shift from “Life is a gift from God” to “My life is my own”; from Christian faithfulness to nihilistic faithlessness; from belief in the Gospel to disbelief in anything but oneself and one’s presumed right to “define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life,” as one robed figure once put it.
Catholics know that faith and reason support each other because it is faith that asks us to conform ourselves to the truth (natural law) and not to our own whims, material or sensual interests, or pride. It is faith that helps us to fully, and objectively, understand reality.
G.K. Chesterton, “in answer to the historical query of why [Christianity] was accepted, and is accepted,” said, “I answer for millions of others in my reply; because it fits the lock; because it is like life.” In faith, we live in accord with reason (and are willing to reason with others). In faith, we live with hope (and thus charity). In faith, we celebrate what is objectively good, and true, and beautiful. It is in faith, then, that we become not just men of goodwill, but men in full, the men God meant us to be.
And it is faith that we realize the value of human life and why “archaic” laws like the Ten Commandments and Arizona’s 1864 abortion law are indeed most excellent.
The First Crusade, 15 August 1096 – 12 August 1099, was the first of a series of religious wars, or Crusades, initiated, supported and at times directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The objective was the recovery of the Holy Land from Islamic rule. — Wikipedia
We have been writing about the Middle East for decades. It appears we are now at a tipping point where Jews, Christians, Muslims and the state of Israel are under siege. What we are facing is a global war against those who do not follow the teachings of Mohammed.
On August 10th, 2022 The Daily Caller’sShelby Talcott reported,
Iranian operative Shahram Poursafi has been charged in an alleged plot to kill former National Security Adviser John Bolton, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Wednesday.
The DOJ noted in a press release that Poursafi was a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and an Iranian national. The 45-year-old is accused of attempting “to arrange the murder of” Bolton, “likely in retaliation for the January 2020 death of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — Qods Force … commander Qasem Soleimani,” according to the department.
In March 10th, 2022 related Daily Caller article Michael Ginsberg reported,
The Biden administration has forged ahead in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program despite reports that the country’s top leaders have ordered the assassinations of John Bolton and Mike Pompeo.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khameni considers former national security adviser Bolton and ex-Secretary of State Pompeo responsible for the assassination of Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani, the Washington Examiner first reported. As a result, he reportedly ordered Soleimani’s successor, Esmail Qaani, to avenge the dead general.
Both Pompeo and Bolton have had their Secret Service protections extended by Congress over the threats, despite their returns to private life. Agents in marked vehicles were seen by neighbors outside of Bolton’s suburban Maryland home in late January. Prosecutors reportedly have enough evidence to bring charges against conspirators, but no arrests have been made.
The Center for Security Policy (CFSP) believes Biden and Iran may be close to sealing new nuclear deal. On August 10th, 2022 CFSP’s Senior Editor Dalia Al-Aqidi wrote:
The escalation of global tensions as a result of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, China-Taiwan stand-off, the medical and economic crises, and the exchanges between the Israeli state and the militant Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement has overshadowed the Iran nuclear deal talks.
Is reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action still on the table? Maybe it is no longer a breaking news story, but the Iranian regime and the US administration are definitely still trying to resurrect the 2015 agreement. On Thursday, a sudden call was made to all the international negotiating parties to resume the nuclear talks with Iran.
In fact, the indirect Vienna talks between Tehran and Washington had already begun, with a meeting between Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani and the EU’s European External Action Service Deputy Secretary-General Enrique Mora. The latter returned to his shuttling between Bagheri Kani and US special envoy to Iran Robert Malley.
In an op-ed published by the Financial Times late last month, EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell revealed that he had presented a new framework to relaunch the JCPOA.
It may indeed be the happy ending that the leaders of Iran and the US wish for if what the BBC published is proven true. It reported that an anonymous European official stated that Tehran’s demand for Washington to remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from its official blacklist of “foreign terrorist organizations” had been dropped from the discussions and would instead be dealt with “in the future.” The source also revealed to the BBC that Washington would guarantee that no future US president could withdraw from the new deal.
However, the government in Tehran must realize that the US is a democratic country whose president is elected by its citizens. Therefore, no law obliges any future president not to cancel any agreement reached by a former leader.
The Iranians are clever enough to be well aware of this fact, but it does not matter what happens in the future, as long as it receives billions of dollars once the sanctions against this rogue state are lifted. As long as the Democrats are in power, nothing terrible will ever happen to them.
In the meantime, Tehran would be able to equip the IRGC to become the most significant force in the region, which would destabilize the already fragile security of some of Washington’s major allies.
During a meeting in Tehran on Saturday, IRGC head Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami told Ziad Nakhaleh, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s general-secretary, that his country was committed to supporting the movement until the end. Salami said that “all the anti-Zionist” capabilities “are on the scene in a united formation working to liberate Jerusalem and uphold the rights of the Palestinian people.”
It is time that the United States and its allies recognize the global red-green alliance threats and take proper action.
It is time for yet another Crusade to liberate the oppressed in the Middle Eastern dictatorships starting with Iran, free Europe of the Islamic scourge and stop the Islamization of America?
In 2024 many believe it is! Including 80% of Americans who stand with Israel.
Here it is! The full speech I gave at #CPACHungary that the establishment is losing its absolute mind about.
I spoke the forbidden truth: The Great Replacement is no longer a theory – it’s reality. White Europeans are being replaced in their own countries at an ever… pic.twitter.com/L33UE3P6tv
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-05-01 17:51:532024-05-01 17:51:53August 15th, 2024: 928th Anniversary of the 1st Crusade to protect the Holy Land from Islamic rule — Time to do it Again?
President Trump is right, this is the final battle against the deep state that stretches from the schoolhouse to the White House and from the school board to corporate boards across America.
Israel expects the leaders of the free world to stand firmly against the ICC outrageous assault on Israel’s inherent right of self-defense. We expect them to use all the means at their disposal to stop this dangerous move. pic.twitter.com/mZB85XbnSd
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) May 1, 2024
This is when we take back our justice system.
HAPPENING NOW:
A group of MAGA supporters gathered in front of the courthouse in Manhattan during Trump’s trial, chanting “We Want Trump!” pic.twitter.com/KKESVNAYIY
— (Jason) Stands For Truth (@TrueJMitchell) April 25, 2024
November 5, 2024 is the date that will go down in history as the day we the people take back control of our lives, our liberty, our families and our freedom.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-05-01 17:51:522024-05-01 17:51:52President Donald J. Trump: ‘This Is The Final Battle’
Against almost unimaginable odds – the Democrat Jew hating media, Jew hating academia, massive dark money funding anti-Israel terrorism in the information battle-space, , Soros, et al — over 80% of American’s support Israel. Righteous. Divine.
Most Americans support Israel over the terrorist organization Hamas in a poll released on Monday, with 80% of respondents saying they support Israel more in the conflict.
An overwhelming majority of Americans support Israel in its war against Hamas over the militant group running the Gaza Strip, according to a new poll.
The Harvard CAPS-Harris survey shared with The Hill showed 80 percent of registered voters said they support Israel more in the war, while 20 percent said they support Hamas more. That is about in line with the poll’s findings from last month, when 79 percent indicated they support Israel more.
In this month’s poll, older age groups were much more likely to be supportive of Israel than younger respondents, though a clear majority of each age group supported Israel more than Hamas. More than 90 percent of those 65 years old and older and of those 55 to 64 said they support Israel more, while 85 percent of those 45 to 54 and three-quarters of those 35 to 44 said the same.
Support for Israel was the lowest among the youngest age groups. Pollsters found 64 percent of those 25 to 34 and 57 percent of those 18 to 24 said they support Israel more, while the rest of those age groups said they support Hamas more.
The poll’s results come as numerous pro-Palestinian protests have popped up on college campuses throughout the country. Students have set up encampments to protest for days at schools including Columbia and New York University.
Universities have responded to the protests with a range of tactics including negotiations, suspensions and arrests to try to end the encampments taking place on school property. Protesters have called for their universities to end their business relationships with companies that they say are contributing to Israel’s war, which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Palestinians.
Mark Penn, the co-director of the poll, said support for Israel “has not budged” despite the “campus unrest.” He said the student protests appear out of step with broader public attitudes on Israel and noted that the poll showed Americans largely want a cease-fire in the war but only after Hamas is removed from power and the hostages they seized during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel are returned.
The poll found 61 percent of respondents support a cease-fire only after those conditions are met, while 39 percent support an unconditional cease-fire. A stark divide exists based on age group in responses to this question.
An overwhelming majority of those 55 to 64 and those 65 and older support a cease-fire only after Hamas is gone and the hostages are returned. More narrow majorities of those 35 to 44 and those 45 to 54 also support that, while 59 percent of 25-to-34-year-olds and 67 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds support an unconditional ceasefire.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-05-01 17:51:512024-05-01 17:51:51POLL: Vast Majority of Americans Back Israel over Hamas
Dr. John A. Gentry served as an intelligence analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Dr. Gentry is currently an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.
Dr. Gentry received his Ph.D. in political science from the George Washington University.
About John A. Gentry
Dr. John A. Gentry is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, where teaches an undergraduate course on the U.S. intelligence community. He writes regularly on intelligence topics and security issues more generally.
He was for 12 years an intelligence analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he mainly worked economic issues associated with the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries. For two of those years, he was senior analyst on the staff of the National Intelligence Officer for Warning. He is a retired U.S. Army Reserve officer, with most assignments in special operations and intelligence arenas. He was mobilized in 1996 and spent much of 1996 as a civil affairs officer in Bosnia. Dr. Gentry formerly taught at the College of International Security Affairs, National Defense University, George Mason University, the National Intelligence University, and Columbia University. He is a member of the Editorial Committee of the International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, a prominent academic journal that focuses on intelligence studies.
Dr. Gentry has an economics background and received a Ph.D. in political science from the George Washington University. His most recently published book is Neutering the CIA: Why US Intelligence Versus Trump Has Long-Term Consequences (Armin Lear Press, 2023). He co-authored (with Joseph S. Gordon) Strategic Warning Intelligence: History, Challenges, and Prospects (Georgetown University Press, 2019). And, he has published about 35 articles on intelligence topics. He can be reached at jag411@georgetown.edu.
About
Neutering the CIA is an insider look at how political bias at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has undermined its effectiveness both domestically and internationally. The central case study is the impact of the bias on the interaction between the CIA and the Trump Administration, although the origins of the problem link to Robert Gates becoming head of CIA’s analysis directorate in 1982, and then later, director of the CIA.
Holman Jenkins, Jr. praised the book in The Wall Street Journal: “A new book from Georgetown University scholar and former CIA analyst John Gentry, Neutering the CIA, is worth your time. His academic detachment makes all the more eye-opening his chapter on how James Clapper and John Brennan used diversity as a screen to fill the intelligence community with partisan Obama allies. Only a psychiatrist, though, can explain the media’s silence on the biggest resulting disaster, the fake Russian intelligence supplied by the CIA and used by the FBI to justify its unorthodox actions in the Hillary Clinton email case, now widely understood to have inadvertently delivered Mr. Trump to the White House in 2016.” Beginning in 2016, former and currently serving US intelligence officers, mainly from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), conducted a major political campaign featuring public commentary and leaks designed to thwart the presidential candidacy, and then the presidency, of Donald Trump.
This “politicization” of intelligence, which traditionally is defined as the injection of personal or organizational perspectives into intelligence products to serve personal, ideological, or organizational interests of intelligence officers, reflected a remarkable change from the once-strong CIA ethos of apolitical public service. This book describes the startling political activism of intelligence officers in recent years, identifies its causes, and evaluates its many negative consequences. Most importantly, the activists damaged the credibility of US intelligence in the eyes of Trump Administration officials and undoubtedly many future senior national leaders, thereby eroding the trust in intelligence that decision-makers must have if they are to use intelligence effectively. Although the overt activism subsided in 2021, the Biden administration has not addressed its causes.
The evident success of activists in helping to defeat Trump in 2020 surely has emboldened some intelligence officers, who remain poised to attack presidential candidates whose political views they dislike. This book also identifies actions needed to address this significant threat to American democracy.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-05-01 17:51:502024-05-01 17:51:50VIDEO: The Politicization of the CIA with John A. Gentry
Incidents of the costliest and most deadly aviation accidents among Army and Marine Corps surged in the past year, data reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation shows, as the Pentagon maintains it is making progress toward minimizing the most serious mishaps.
Both the Army, including Guard and Reserve units, and Marine Corps have experienced historically high rates of so-called “Class A mishaps” and are at risk of enduring the most expensive and fatal aviation year in recent history, the data shows. The military defines Class A mishaps as aviation accidents resulting in loss of airframe, loss of life or at least $2.5 million in damages.
The spike in accidents comes as the force has shrunk overall, putting increased strain on pilots and aircraft maintainers, while the average number of years of experience across the aviation community has also fallen, according to experts and media reports.
Army Accidents Skyrocket
The Army has already seen 11 Class A mishaps resulting in 9 fatalities through the second quarter of fiscal year 2024, which began in October, exceeding the total class A mishap number for all of fiscal year 2023, according to data reported in the April issue of FlightFax, an Army newsletter for aviators. That year, there were 10 Class A mishaps killing 14 aircrew.
Moreover, fiscal year 2023 had a Class A mishap rate of 1.08, significantly higher than the five-year average of 0.85, according to FlightFax. However, that number pales in comparison to the current fiscal year mishap rate of 2.95 per 100,000 flight hours.
“You have the worst record over the past 18 months,” Democratic California Rep. John Garamendi told Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Mingus at a Tuesday hearing in reference to the rash of flight accidents. “What are you doing about it?”
Two fatal Army National Guard AH-64 Apache crashes in February drove leaders to block all helicopter units from flying, a process known as a stand-down, according to a press release. Aviators could resume flight operations once they had completed required training, spokesperson Maj. Jennifer Staton explained to the DCNF.
Then, in March, a UH-72 Lakota helicopter crashed, killing two National Guard soldiers and a U.S. Border Patrol agent, and wounding another soldier.
As of Tuesday, 90% of the units had returned to flight, Gen. Mingus said Tuesday.
More than 12 Army aviators died in helicopter crashes in the first six months of fiscal year 2023, prompting a service-wide aviation stand down that was eventually lifted. But accidents kept happening, and the service ended the fiscal year with 14 dead soldiers in 10 Class A mishaps, more than double the average fatality numbers and the highest since the U.S. withdrew from Iraq in 2011, Defense News reported, citing data from the Army Combat Readiness Center.
A year later, the service is looking at a year with the most frequent Class A mishaps in recent history and quickly approaching the deadliest, according to FlightFax and an Army Combat Readiness Center annual report.
Most of the most serious accidents in 2023 happened with AH-64 Apache helicopters, according to the 2023 review.
Army budget documents show an increased allotment of funds for flying hours between fiscal year 2020 and fiscal year 2023, but the Army Combat Readiness Center’s annual assessment shows total flight hours dropped in 2020. Class A through Class C mishap rates also increased during that period.
The Army requested funds for flight hours in 2024 that are the same as 2021 levels, the documents show. The Army only requested funds to allow crews 8.7 hours of flight time for fiscal year 2025, the lowest in the previous five years.
The lower number probably stems from an overall limited budget forcing the Army to make difficult trade-offs, retired Lt. Gen. Thomas Spoehr, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the DCNF.
“In order to execute flying hours, a lot of things have to come together: aircraft have to be available in sufficient quantities and readiness, crews and pilots have to be trained and available, and sufficient numbers of maintenance personnel must be present. Especially in the case of the National Guard, bringing all those factors together has proven to be hard,” Spoehr said.
Most of the mishaps in fiscal year 2023, just as in previous years, are attributable to “human error,” Army spokesperson Jason Waggoner told the DCNF.
“Human error is typically reduced when pilots and crews are able to fly more hours and get more repetitions in. Increasing the number of hours flown by crews is not as simple as just budgeting more money for operations,” Spoehr said.
“Spatial disorientation,” a condition when a pilot misjudges the distance between the aircraft and the ground or other objects, is the primary human error responsible for aviator fatalities, according to the March issue of FlightFax. Shortfalls in existing spatial disorientation prevention measures sparked an ongoing review of training.
When the Army investigated the cause of increasing aviation accidents during the 2023 stand-down, officials found that pilots and aviation warrant officers were significantly less experienced than they were during the period of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Defense News. Mishaps tend to occur when a lower-ranking non-commissioned officer is in charge, compounded with changes to the training environment that rendered even regular training flights more risky.
Spatial disorientation got worse in 2023, with the major accidents in that year and early 2024 all taking place in the more challenging environments, such as flying at night using night-vision devices, flying in formation and over snow or water, Defense News reported. Pilots are getting fewer hours of practice time as well, the Army found. Units are unable to use up all the flight hours Congress has budgeted for due to other limitations, including not having enough crew members.
“Regular Army, Army National Guard, and Army Reserve aviation formations are suitably manned according to Army manning guidance to meet mission requirements for maintenance and support of Army aircraft,” Waggoner told the DCNF.
In April, the Army rolled out an aviation “stand-up” across the force, Gen. Mingus said Tuesday. The extra training was intended to boost crew member training and awareness without grounding them and further cutting into opportunities to get into the air.
A Bad Year For The Marine Corps
Flight incidents among Marine Corps aviators also appeared to take place at an alarming frequency in recent months.
In fiscal year 2024, Class A mishaps have already struck far above average, Naval Safety Command statistics show. As of April 9, the Marine Corps sustained a sharp increase in Class A mishaps for the first and second quarters of 2024 with a rate of 4.31 per 100,000 flight hours, compared to a 10-year average of 2.24.
Data provided to the DCNF from Naval Safety Command showed the V-22 was involved in 3 Class A mishaps, more than any other manned air platform. However, incidents involving the H-53 Super Stallion helicopter incurred the most fatalities during the same time period — five Marines died in February when a CH-53E went missing in California and was later discovered; the data was still inconclusive as to what went wrong to produce the accident.
In August 2023, three Marines died and 20 more were injured when an Osprey crashed during a multinational training exercise in Australia. Another pilot died after his FA/18 Hornet crashed amid a training flight near Air Station Miramar, California, that month.
The Marine Corps’ Ospreys have returned to flight again through a tiered approach, with modified procedures intended to prevent the same kind of accidents leading to Marine deaths, Capt. Alyssa Myers, a Marine Corps spokesperson, told the DCNF. After finishing emergency procedures training, pilots and crew members are conducting warm-up flights to regain familiarity with the craft, Myers explained. Then squadrons will work with their experienced instructor pilots and crew and conduct flights with copilots before delving into more mission-specific skills training.
Service leaders grounded MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft — a blend between a helicopter and a fixed-wing aircraft — across multiple services in December after one of the Air Force’s units crashed. The Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps each operate versions of the Osprey.
“Due to the size of the fleet and number of units, the Marine Corps implemented a tiered approach to deliberately return capability to squadrons,” Myers said. “This process ensures the Marine Corps is able to deploy fully capable units in support of all assigned global mission requirements, while simultaneously ensuring non-deploying units can regain currency and conduct the necessary training to overcome training delays incurred by the 90-day grounding.”
Stopping flights is not an option, however.
“The MV-22’s unique capabilities, such as its long-range operational reach and air refueling capabilities, render it an indispensable asset for crisis response and force-projection and sustainment missions,” Myers said.
The Marine Corps was also hundreds of pilots short at the end of 2022, manning a force of less than half of what it needed to operate its F-35s and other aircraft, former Commandant Gen. David Berger told Congress in April 2023.
“The Marine Corps utilizes highly reliable maintainers and aircrew, conducts exhaustive maintenance, extensively trains pilots, and at every step puts in place safeguards and precautions to ensure a high degree of aviation safety. Marine Corps aviation support units are sized and manned at levels equivalent to historical levels with regard to the number of aircraft in each squadron,” Myers told the DCNF.
The Pentagon Says It’s Trying To Turn Things Around
The cycle of deterioration underlying aviation accidents has been ongoing for years.
A 2020 commission organized by Congress found that experience levels among aviators and maintainers had fallen. Pilots were spending too much time on outdated simulators instead of getting in the air, and they were forced to focus on administrative duties amid a relentless speed of operations.
“Junior pilots and maintainers are starting their careers a lap behind, and then never catching up, all while their units buckle under the initial stress of getting them up to speed,” the report stated. Then, the cycle repeats.
The final report contained 25 recommendations on ways to improve flight safety, including giving pilots more flight hours, finding ways to reduce strain on maintenance personnel and creating a Joint Safety Council to synchronize mitigating efforts across the services.
Efforts to implement most of the recommendations are ongoing, a Pentagon spokesperson told the DCNF. A Joint Safety Council first met in August 2022 and ” is already paying dividends in how the Department tracks and collaborates on joint mishaps,” the spokesperson added.
For example, after the Air Force Osprey crash in Japan that killed eight aviators in November 2023 and contributed to the decision to ground all V-22s, the council met to gain perspective, coordinate communication efforts and discuss what the services should do in the short term, the spokesperson told the DCNF.
Mingus, the Army vice chief, said the service plans to increase flight hours from 202,000 to 225,000 in the 2025 budget.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
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So the continent that rid itself of its Jews is going to reward savage terrorists for the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust and give them a terror state to finish the job Hitler started. Nazi bastards….
The Holocaust, while it was a German initiative, was carried out by every nation in Europe, save for the Danes. The New York Times reported the discovery of 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps over 13 years of analysis. That number includes “killing centres,” forced labour camps, prisoner-of-war camps, brothels and “care” centres where pregnant women were forced to have abortions, the New York Times reported. 30,000 slave labour camps; 1,150 Jewish ghettos; 980 concentration camps; 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps; 500 brothels; and thousands of other camps for pregnant women and the elderly.
Europe took all the wrong lessons from World War II while ignoring the only lesson that’s really relevant, which is that you have to choose good and defend good and fight with the intention of defeating evil.
They’ve had a state – Gaza – since Israel pulled out in 2005. There hasn’t been so much as a Jewish toe in Gaza. And look what they did with it, look at the unimaginable evil they wrought. It’s not about a state. It’s about wiping the Jews off the map according to Islamic texts and teachings.
Germany is the power behind the EU, I expect them to put a stop to this devouring.
RIYADH — Several European member states are expected to recognize Palestinian statehood by the end of May, the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell says at the sidelines of a World Economic Forum special meeting in Riyadh.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-04-30 18:51:302024-04-30 18:51:30FOURTH REICH: EU Says It May Recognize Islamic-Terror State Next Month
The Pentagon told Congress it could not provide a required accounting of diversity training to Congress because it didn’t have enough people working in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) positions, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.
Congress mandated the Pentagon compile a report detailing how much the entire military spent on diversity training, salaries for DEI administrators and any impacts on recruiting and retention across the force that was due March 1, according to last year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which sets defense policy for the next fiscal year. But the Pentagon is nearly two months behind the due date for the report after the same defense authorization act for fiscal year 2024 slashed the salaries of DEI personnel, effectively gutting the departments, the DCNF learned.
“This report is delayed due to lack of DEI manning. We do not have an estimated completion date at this time,” a legislative liaison representing the Department of Defense (DOD) to Congress said in correspondence shared with the DCNF.
Republican Indiana Rep. Jim Banks, who chairs the House Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee, told the DCNF the response shows the Pentagon is “simply covering up Joe Biden’s politicization of our military.”
The 2024 NDAA capped annual salaries for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) administrators at $70,000, which means most officials will have to find other jobs or accept difficult pay cuts, according to data the Pentagon’s personnel office provided to Republican Missouri Sen. Eric Schmidt. It also banned the Pentagon from hiring into DEI-focused roles until Congress received the results of an audit of all DOD offices and programming.
🚨FY24 NDAA is focused on ending wokeness in the military.🚨
✅Prohibits funding for CRT ✅Prohibits funding for politically biased counter extremism working group ✅Hiring freeze for DEI bureaucrats ✅Cuts & caps pay for DEI bureaucrats ✅Includes a Parents Bill of Rights pic.twitter.com/5nvvQEN5y2
“The Biden DOD spends over a hundred million dollars a year on DEI, but apparently they don’t have enough DEI staff to provide the House Armed Services Committee with a simple report about how they’re using all their money. It’s ridiculous,” Banks told the DCNF.
The military calculated the total cost in dollars and number of hours spent on the extremism stand down on Feb. 5, 2021 required after the Jan. 6 capitol riots and on training — $1 million and 5.8 million man-hours. Noting that, Congress asked the military to supply the total cost of training in DEI, the amount spent on salaries for civilian personnel working on DEI positions, and “how the objectives of the DEI and extremism training conducted in the last 5 fiscal years were satisfied by the training.”
Congress sought to probe how the DOD’s emphasis on diversity and inclusion influenced recruitment, promotions, discharges and courts-martial for violating the Pentagon’s extremism orders or regulations. Lawmakers asked for a description of the training materials for 2023, the year covered by the bill.
“House Republicans fought hard to gut Biden’s DEI bureaucracy at the Department of Defense,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers told the DCNF at the time. Rogers touted the House GOP’s efforts to restore the military’s focus “on capability and lethality instead of Biden’s far-left political priorities.”
The DOD did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
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“Honesty is of God and dishonesty of the devil; the devil was a liar from the beginning.” — Joseph B. Wirthlin
“When you’re a liar, a person of low moral fortitude, really any explanation you need to be true can be true. Especially if you’re smart enough. You can figure out a way to justify anything.” — Samuel Witwer
“Half a truth is often a great lie.” — Benjamin Franklin
“By a lie, a man… annihilates his dignity as a man.” — Immanuel Kant, philosopher
“America last. America last. That’s all this is. America last, every single day.” – Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene
By now, most Americans have figured out that our new Speaker of the House of Representatives lied to us, and not just once.
In his two-hour interview with Sean Hannity after he was elected, Johnson told host Hannity that, “Someone asked me today in the media, ‘People are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.’”
Better take a look at Ecclesiastes 5:5 Mr. Speaker. You have broken every promise you vowed to keep. Yes, we can look in the Bible to know you and you seem cuddled up with the Stalinist demons of darkness.
What happened to Chip Roy (R-TX) and Byron Donalds (R-FL) working on plans for Continuing Resolutions cutting spending by eight percent and securing the border and protecting our military and veterans? That was your stated promise in the Sean Hannity interview.
You haven’t provided even one dime to protect the southern border from the swarms of people entering the country illegally.
But all three men want to open and change our US Constitution. Birds of a feather.
You, Mr. Speaker, and the Stalinist democrats, approved a nearly $100 billion foreign aid package that provides funding for Israel and Taiwan – but the bulk of the money is going to corrupt Ukraine – some $61 billion.
Promises, promises…all lies.
Tucker Carlson previously interviewed Bret Weinstein who had been to the Darien Gap at the request of Michael Yon. The Weinstein interviews and the latest interview with Michael Yon should be seen by every American.
Who is facilitating the invasion and destruction of our country? Our own government!
Obama’s “fundamental transformation of America” is taking place before our eyes.
Watch the 58 second trailer of this Tucker Carlson interview with Michael Yon.
Johnson’s Personal Life
Normally, I’d consider personal life off target, but similar to former VP Mike Pence, Speaker Johnson lauds the fact that he’s a Christian and carries his Bible out front. It seems apparent that both he and Pence carry a knife behind their backs.
Johnson claims Christianity as his faith, but he is 52 and has a 40-year-old “adopted” black son who has a lengthy criminal record, lives in Los Angeles and has fathered four children. Speaker Johnson and his wife took custody of Michael Tirrell James, but never formally adopted him. He is not included in their family pictures, by his own choice.
In 2022, the speaker revealed to media that he had installed “accountability software” between himself and his then 15-year-old biological son. The surveillance software is called Covenant Eyes and is on devices in order to abstain from internet porn and other unsavory websites. It is spyware. Covenant Eyes developed important relationships with Promise Keepers, Focus on the Family, churches and many other organizations. Their founder is Ron DeHaas, an elder in his Calvinist Presbyterian Church.
Mike Johnson and his biological son, who is now 17, receive weekly reports on sites they’ve been to on their phones and computers. One wonders if this includes his father’s political correspondence. And why would anyone use this unless there was a problem?
Promise Keepers has a radical charismatic connection and promotes strong overt ecumenicism of the movement. One variation of the charismatic movement is the Vineyard movement, which has strong links to the Kansas City Prophets — a controversial cult claiming visions and revelations from God. They believe that God is giving new revelation today and that the miraculous signs of the early church should be normative for today. These beliefs have led to much confusion and error.
Treason
Johnson must think surveillance is just fine if he’s doing it with his son and vice versa, as he was the tie breaker to pass the reauthorization of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), without a requirement for warrants for surveillance on American citizens. This was a massive betrayal of the fourth amendment.
In a highly unusual outcome, the amendment from Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) to the reauthorization of the FISA Act tied at 212 — thereby failing. More than 80 Democrats joined with 128 Republicans in backing the measure, while 86 Republicans and 126 Democrats opposed it.
Face it! The betrayal is massive, and it’s not just the Stalinist Democrat Party; it is the majority of Trotskyite Republicans as well. Our own country comes last with the representatives in both houses of Congress. Gaetz got rid of McCarthy, and we ended up with someone equally deceptive.
There is $61 billion more for Ukraine in this bill, bringing the total with armaments to over $250 billion given to the corrupt nation of Ukraine. (Zelensky just purchased the former home of Prince Charles and Diana.) Israel will get $26.4 billion in aid and Taiwan will get $8 billion.
Johnson also buried $9 billion in aid to Gaza – meaning that money will be confiscated by Hamas.
Not a single penny went to secure our southern border.
Instead, Speaker Johnson actually endorsed the open border by making sure that another $4 billion is allocated for “migration and refugee assistance,” which is used by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for the border invasion and migrant freebies.
The divvying up is this: $481 million in the Ukraine bill and $3.5 billion in the Israel bill.
Cindy Dyer is the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons and appears to be highly qualified to lead that State Dept. office. But it’s like pulling teeth to get this woman to talk about the mass human trafficking at our compromised southern border.
Tara Lee Rodas, who worked with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement to place unaccompanied migrant children with sponsors said, “Whether intentional or not, it can be argued that the US Government has become the middleman in a large scale, multi-billion-dollar, child trafficking operation run by bad actors seeking to profit off the lives of children.”
Chinese military, dangerous criminals, terrorists, and Mexican cartels are making tons of money in child trafficking and drugs as they pour across our southern border.
Our new Speaker spoke to Hakeem Jeffries, and said he would pray about the bill and how many Republicans he could deliver. Apparently, Johnson believes the Lord told him to give billions of our tax dollars to Ukraine and Gaza and to ignore the invasion of our nation.
Democrats cheered this recent foreign aid bill and waved Ukrainian flags in the House.
Joe Biden lauded the Speaker and signed the bill.
Senator Schumer heaped praise on Johnson’s bi-partisan efforts.
Speaker Johnson has sided with the Stalinist Democrats who are decimating our country.
“Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, has come under scrutiny following revelations that he received significant campaign contributions from a foreign lobby group, particularly known for its pro-foreign policy stance. According to analysis conducted by The Intercept based on Federal Election Commission records, this lobby group donated approximately $95,000 to Johnson’s campaign in November of last year.” Link
“In a shockingly short period of time, Speaker Johnson went from a MAGA hopeful to a Deep State stooge.” Scott Adams explains in layman terms how the CIA ‘captures’ our lawmakers right under our nose.
Betrayal
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was threatened with a $500 fine for posting evidence of Congressional treason with the betrayal of lawmakers waving Ukrainian flags in celebration of them passing a $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine and Israel.
Dinesh D’Souza reposted it on X after Massie was told by Johnson to take it down.
Johnson had to walk back the fine as there was outrage from the GOP. Instead of securing the border, Johnson caved to the Democrats.
Where in the Constitution is it legal to give tax dollars to foreign countries, and why is it that only Israel ever repays the funds and favors?
Our nation’s elected representatives are selling us down the river. They’re all in on it, other than a small handful, and Matt Rosendale, one of the good guys, is leaving at the end of the year.
Our national debt is at the untenable amount of $35 trillion, yet they’re giving away borrowed money that is losing more value every day. Inflation and shrinkflation are taxing the public into the poor house.
We’re looking at becoming the Weimar Republic in more ways than one, with hyper-inflation, Nazi rise and ultimate collapse.
Leo Hohmann writes, “Included in the package is $300 million to protect Ukraine’s border with Poland. This $300 million will be used to keep Ukrainians from fleeing into Poland to escape the military draft, which sends them into the meatgrinder and certain death at the front with a superior Russian military. No matter how hard they try to serve it up on a pretty platter, it doesn’t get any more evil than this.”
Leo ends his latest article with, “As the Bible says, woe to those who call good evil and evil good. Our politicians are on a mission to crash and burn what’s left of Western civilization.”
Johnson blew any border security leverage we had with his betrayal of the American people.
Johnson’s Advisors
Breitbart reports that Johnson’s top policy adviser is a former lobbyist who has corporate interests in the Ukraine War. Dan Ziegler was previously executive director of the conservative Republican Study Committee that Johnson chaired from 2019 to 2021, and he left the Hill in December to join Williams and Jensen as a principal.
As a lobbyist with Williams and Jensen, Ziegler had a client list prone to support the Ukraine funding. Here is a list of the groups and corporations who have retained them. Ziegler is a Heritage Action and American Energy Alliance alum, who lobbied for a range of health care clients, including Pfizer, Merck, Sanofi (the one Dr. Robert Malone loves), Owens & Minor, Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, PhRMA, Amgen and Elevance Health, in addition to companies like Visa, Vanguard Group, Bloom Energy and W Diamond Corporation. (Heritage Action is a sister organization of controlled-opposition Heritage Foundation.)
According to a recent Breitbart article, Ziegler also represented News Media Alliance which was lobbying congress back when Ziegler worked for Williams and Jensen, to promote a very dangerous proposal that would silence conservative media. The proposal is called the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act (JCPA). It has failed, but keeps coming back.
Johnson has several neo-con backers in his party. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) attacked conservatives who were against this horrendous bill in order to achieve passage. He even launched an “unhinged attack” on Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) over Ukraine aid. McCaul endorsed the bill before even having seen it.
Dan Ziegler and Josh Hodges are the top aides to Johnson and influence how he votes. Hodges is Johnson’s National Security Adviser but reports to Ziegler. Breitbart states, “Hodges is the brain behind many of the most controversial Johnson policy decisions related to funding foreign wars, FISA, foreign affairs, and national security, a source familiar with the Speaker’s office’s inner workings told Breitbart News. According to Legistorm, Hodges handles Johnson’s armed forces and national security portfolios.”
Both Zeigler and Hodges advocate the votes we’ve seen Johnson make. Johnson’s Deputy Chief of Staff for communications, Raj Shah, has refused to answer any questions. After Shah left Trump’s White House, he went to work for Fox News with Paul Ryan. Shah called out Massie and Greene for their threats to oust Johnson. Knowing that Ryan and Mike Pence were good friends in Congress doesn’t make me feel all warm and cuddly about Shah, much less about Ziegler and Hodges.
In Rep. Greene’s (R-GA) interview with Tucker Carlson, she claimed that Mike Johnson often speaks with Biden’s National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan. ABC reported that Sullivan “pushed” Johnson to put a bipartisan foreign aid bill to a vote. He has been an adviser to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden. He clerked for former Associate Justice Stephen Breyer. Sullivan is a Rhodes scholar and earned his law degree at Yale. He was an editor of the Yale Law Journal and the Yale Daily News. He interned at the globalist Council on Foreign Relations, and often writes for their Foreign Affairs Magazine.
Sullivan was a State Department official under then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when in 2012, four Americans were killed in the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. In 2015, he was called to testify before the U.S. House Select Committee on Benghazi. Sullivan’s testimony became part of the Committee’s final report that concluded Clinton and Sullivan may have sent highly classified information using unsecured private emails rather than through secure government servers.
Jake speaks often at the Brookings Institute regarding the Biden administration’s international agenda. Its largest contributors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Hutchins Family Foundation, JPMorgan Chase, the LEGO Foundation, David Rubenstein, State of Qatar, and John L. Thornton.
Edward Snowden says Johnson is a textbook case of Congressional capture. Revolver News explains, “In short, ‘Congressional capture’ is when lawmakers or legislative bodies fall under the heavy influence of outside interests, like big corporations, special interest groups, or US intel. These influences ensure that their agendas take precedence over the public’s needs. In simple terms, this means certain policies or laws that favor these groups are advanced, while criticism or resistance is quietly suppressed. Suddenly, their most ferocious critics become their biggest cheerleaders.”
We’re $35 trillion in debt, but that doesn’t even stop them! These are inflationary dollars they’re printing with no backing.
This is the Weimar Republic’s hyperinflation in America!
There is no accounting for any of the money given to Ukraine.
And no audits of the US funding.
This could be one of the greatest financial frauds in US history – Next to the Biden COVID assistance fraud. Link
The new “Christian Conservative Constitutional Attorney” is fulfilling the dreams of the Democrat Party while making Matt Gaetz’ removal of Kevin McCarthy look downright stupid.
Conclusion
President Trump said, “I stand with the Speaker,” and “Johnson is doing a very good job.”
Sorry President Trump, but Mike Johnson is being controlled by the very people stabbing you in the back.
Giving Biden’s political gestapo a brand-new FBI building bigger than the Pentagon, while not providing a dime to protect the southern border from the swarms of people entering the country illegally, is doing a “good job?
Meanwhile, Chinese military, dangerous criminals, terrorists, and Mexican cartels are making tons of money in child trafficking and drugs as they pour across our southern border.
This administration invited this invasion, and Speaker Johnson is complicit.
