Leadership in a time of crisis: Israel and America thumbnail

Leadership in a time of crisis: Israel and America

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By Howard Rotberg

Israel is facing some potentially catastrophic challenges that require supporters of Israel to speak out as never before in support of the Jewish State. Its government is in crisis as well.

NOTE: This is part one of a two-part series, with the second one being entitled On Leaders and War: Ideological Transformation in the West After Ukraine.

Perhaps we have all been so focused on Covid 19 and then on the Russian war against Ukraine, that we have given insufficient attention to other important geopolitical events affecting America and Israel. Surely, the Western world is in a crisis and in times of crisis, good leadership is more important than ever.

One aspect of the crisis is inattention to critical matters. As Covid wanes, hopefully, there is the possibility that on an individual level we shall get preoccupied with all the activities we have missed during the lockdowns – attending movies and concerts, synagogue and public lectures, sporting events, and education. In the case of Israel, we see that Israel is facing some potentially catastrophic challenges that require supporters of Israel to speak out as never before in support of the Jewish State.

The seven most important problems facing Israel:

1. The Iran nuclear deal, otherwise known as the JCPOA-2, in which the major world powers believe it is appropriate that the world’s worst rogue state – that pledges destruction of Israel (and America) – should be awarded sanctions relief and enough money that it can finance more terrorism, even a war, against Israel. And how sad that the world powers think that it is not an issue of whether Iran gets nuclear weapons but when. It is sad that what appears to be delaying the deal is not the needed moral vision of America, but a Russian demand that its trade with Iran be exempted from sanctions.

2. The United Nations which seems to consider its main duty as criticizing every action by Israel to protect its rights under international law dating back to the San Remo declaration, has now gone even further than usual – its creation of an open-ended and permanent international investigation into Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, after Israel’s 11-day self-defense to Hamas firing missiles. The fraudulently named UN Human Rights Council voted to create the “Commission of Inquiry”investigation after the UN rights chief said Israeli forces may have committed war crimes. The resolution called for the creation of a permanent “Commission of Inquiry” to monitor and report on rights violations in Israel, the Gaza Strip and the ‘West Bank’. It would be the first such commission of inquiry with an “ongoing” mandate.

Israel’s representative at the meeting said the commission was “yet another example of a grossly discriminatory and fraudulent body that this distinguished forum should be working to abolish.”

I agree with calling the commission “fraudulent” but not with terming the Human Rights Council a “distinguished forum”. The Israeli representative said experts involved in the commission had made statements revealing a bias against Israel, and that the commission “pre-assumes Israeli violations of international law rather than presuming innocence as is required.” Israel’s UN envoy Gilad Erdan said in a statement: “The UN fell to a new low and approved a budget for a despicable and biased commission that has no right to exist.” He said the commission of inquiry ignores Hamas war crimes, including the 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilians.

Besides the Israel-Hamas conflict, the commission is also to investigate “all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability, and protraction of conflict” including discrimination and repression.

The commission will no doubt ignore that the 11-day war last May, began with Hamas firing rockets at Jerusalem, followed by towns in south of Israel and the Tel Aviv area. Israeli airstrikes in response against targets in the Strip killed some 250 people, including minors, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between terror group members and civilians. Twelve people were killed in Israel, all but one of them civilians, including a 5-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl. Israel has said the majority of those killed were terror operatives and insists it did everything to avoid civilian casualties while fighting armed groups deliberately embedded in populated areas.

3. The increasing anti-Israelism of the Biden administration, and its new ambassador to Israel, Thomas Nides. In fact, I believe that Nides’ opinions are so anti-Israel that his appointment should be viewed as a hostile act. Nides, a banker and former deputy Secretary of State under Obama, is Jewish but neither his wife nor children are. His wife will not join him in Israel as she is a Vice-President of CNN, hardly a pro-Israel media.

His anti-Israelism is most apparent when he is in the presence of others who he perceives correctly to be anti-Israel. Daniel Greenfield, writing in INN and also JNS, notes that Nides was featured in a webinar with the anti-Israel group, Americans for Peace Now, whose CEO has described Israel as an “oppressive regime”.

Greenfield asserts that Nides’s main qualification for the job had been yelling “You don’t want to f***ing defund UNESCO” at a former Israeli ambassador. He had also vocally opposed efforts to defund UNRWA and stop subsidizing the terror refugee industry. Early on, Nides announced that he wanted to open an occupation (!) consulate to the terrorists in Jerusalem, over the opposition of the Israeli government, and that he would not visit those parts of Israel wrongly described as “settlements” – because they’re claimed by Islamic terrorists. Many American Jews who made Aliyah live in Judea and Samari and you can imagine how they and their families who may still reside in America feel about the ambassador shunning them.

At the infamous APN webinar, Nides felt he was with the like-minded. APN opposes Jews living in Jerusalem, opposes anti-BDS legislation and opposes Jews defending themselves against Islamic terrorism. And so, Nides’ true feelings were expressed this way: “You have a clear agenda. I think your agenda is where my heart is,” Nides told APN.

Nides also told the webinar that he and Biden wanted to divide Jerusalem and that “my job is to knock down things that make that possibility impossible.” He also admitted that “the idea of settlement growth … infuriates me”. Nides wants to reverse Israel’s success in the 1967 war – he says that his priority is fighting to prevent Jews from living in those parts of Jerusalem that had been captured by invading Muslim armies in 1948 and liberated from their occupiers in 1967 during the Six-Day War.

“We can’t have the Israelis doing settlement growth, both in East Jerusalem or the West Bank.”

Finally, we note that rather than vocally condemning the PLO for subsidizing the murder of Americans and Jews, as they pay pensions to family members of dead terrorists, Nides only appears to be concerned that the terror payments were an “excuse” for Jewish “haters” to cut off funding to the terrorists.

Nides’ positions encourage more Israel hatred among American Jews and non-Jews.

4. The virtue signaling of admitting immigrants to Israel, who are Ukrainian non-Jews who practice Christianity (to a greater extent than most Christian countries) thus jeopardizing the role of Israel as a Jewish state.

5. The continuation in the world’s universities of hate speech and fraudulent antisemitic nonsense such as the so-called Israel Apartheid Week.

6.The practice by Biden of overturning almost everything good, domestically or in foreign policy, done by President Trump. If that practice extends to Trump’s Abraham Accords, this might destroy the best plan for Middle East peace in history. The adoption of the Oslo Accord, after the Six Day War, set Israel on a path that resulted in terrorism and naivete that a terrorist organization seeking ejection of Jews from all of our historic homeland could be a partner in a so-called “two-state” solution.

7. Perhaps most serious of all the problems facing Israel is the fading loyalty of its Arab Muslim citizens to the sovereignty and peacefulness of the nation of Israel. Israel is now facing a growing sector of people who not only do not contribute to the defense of Israel but are involved in terrorism and other violence in the “mixed” cities like Lod, Ramle, Jaffa, and Nazareth.

In recent days, at the end of March and the beginning of April, terrorist murders of Jewish Israelis occured in Hadera, Gush Etzion, and Bnai Brak. But the turning point happened some ten months’ earlier, during Operation Guardian of the Walls.:

On May 10, 2021, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), two Gaza-based Palestinian U.S.-designated terrorist organizations, with the excuse that they were “defending Al-Aqsa,” and citing a dispute over some disputed ownership of homes in East Jerusalem (where the courts ruled in favor of Jewish ownership, began launching rockets and missiles into Israel. For eleven days, over 4,300 rockets and missiles were fired from Gaza towards Israeli civilian centers, throughout the south and central parts of the country, including Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Millions of Israelis were forced to take cover in bomb shelters. This was especially true in the south, including in cities such as Ashkelon, Ashdod and Beer Sheva, which were severely impacted by the rocket attacks.

In response, the Israeli military launched what it called “Operation Guardian of the Walls” targeting Hamas and PIJ sites and operatives throughout Gaza via airstrikes and artillery fire.

The shocking development was that during this war against Israel by Hamas, there was an alarming outbreak of Arab violence in a number of Israeli cities which have significant populations of both Jewish and Arab citizens. Arabs engaged in arson, looting and rioting. Jewish and Arab-owned businesses and vehicles were targeted and damaged. Synagogues came under attack and were burned and vandalized as well. There were also a number of incidents in which individuals were targeted.

These seven most important problems require great leadership and great policies to meet and overcome them. How are both America and Israel and their leaders poised to meet them?

The one overriding concern that I have in the face of such issues is that Israel and America are currently led by individuals who have so little support, in recent polls, that they may now realize that they have little chance of maintaining their governance in future elections. Thus, they may not govern with the usual moderation that is shown by leaders trying to maintain popular support from a large moderate majority; in fact, if such leaders face almost certain defeat in the next election, they may embrace policies espoused by the most radical of their electoral base.

Some six months since the formation of an eight-party ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, and containing everything from Leftists to an Arab party, a poll published by Channel 12 news in December showed that the current government is largely unpopular.

But the survey also showed that new elections would do little except continue the parliamentary deadlock that plagued Israel for some two years and four elections.

The poll showed that nearly twice as many Israelis prefer opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister to Bennett or Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid.

When asked what government they preferred, 43% said they preferred the previous government led by Netanyahu, while 36% preferred the current government led by Bennett and Lapid. Others had no clear answer.

But Netanyahu still lacked a viable path to forming a government if elections were held today, with only 57 seats to his bloc of right-wing and religious parties. Meanwhile the current coalition would lose four seats, sitting at 57 as well.

The Joint List, a smaller coalition of four predominantly Arab parties, would hold the other six.

A poll in February by Direct Polls showed that if elections were held then, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s Yamina party would barely be able to cross the electoral threshold.

The 2021 Israeli legislative election saw Bennett’s Yamina party secure six seats. He partnered with Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, who won 17 seats, to oust them-PM Benjamin Netanyahu. While Likud had won 30 mandates in the election – and was the winning party in the three election campaigns that preceded it – Netanyahu was unable to form a government.

Bennett then managed to forge a power-sharing deal with Lapid that granted him the premiership. As part of the deal, Lapid is slated to become prime minister in August 2023.

The move sparked outrage among right-wing voters, pundits, and politicians, who continuously accuse Bennett of defrauding the public. It is indeed outrageous that Bennett’s government relies for power on the support of Arab Islamists.

Were elections held at this time, the poll found that the Likud would win 36 seats, followed by Yesh Atid (17), Blue and White (9), Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party Shas (9), the Religious Zionist Party (8), Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox party United Torah Judaism (7), Labor (7), Joint Arab List (7), Yisrael Beytenu (6), Meretz (5), the Islamist Ra’am party (5), and Yamina (4).

But with this week’s resignation by coalition whip and Yamina MK Idit Silman, all may change. Without brilliant leadership by Bennett, the coalition that many feared would not last and would lead to yet further elections, looks indeed to be falling apart.

The coalition, based as it is, and led by a party that actually received so few votes, is now facing a crisis. On Monday, Yamina MK and coalition whip Idit Silman decried Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz from Meretz for sending a letter to the heads of hospitals instructing them to abide by a 2020 High Court of Justice decision and let guests bring bread and other leavened products (chametz) into the hospitals during the upcoming Passover holiday.

Silman stated that this was a cardinal issue for her and threatened that it was something she could not tolerate. Accordingly she has quite the coalition and rejoined Lihud.

But the chametz issue may only be the proximate cause of a split that may always have been inevitable for a politician with a religious base, but trying to govern with radical leftists, secularists and Arabs. Bennett has been turning his attention to the possibility of mediating between Russia and Ukraine; meanwhile, he neglected the concerns of his own party, and these concerns may eventually cause an end to his government, if more members follow Silman’s lead.

Thus, one can say that Bennett’s leadership is perhaps too weak to hold together the disparate forces in his coalition.

Turning to the United States, we see a dangerous failure of leadership by President Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris. A sampling of recent polls show Biden with an approval rating between 39% and 45% and a disapproval rate of between 50% and 55%.

Biden has been seen to fumble policies on the economy, inflation, the southern border, crime and drugs, energy independence, China, Ukraine, and corrupt practices with his son Hunter. He often misspeaks and appears to be suffering from age-related mental confusion. His hurried pull out from Afghanistan, abandoning to the Taliban the Bagram Airfields, numerous Afghan interpreters and other American allies and billions of dollars of the most modern military equipment and vehicles, has done incalculable damage to America’s leadership position in the world. What leadership can he offer?

©Howard Rotberg. All rights reserved.

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U.S. Army Doctor Reveals Medics Were Told Not to Report Adverse COVID Jab Reactions

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By Save America Foundation

Todays blog comes from an article in LifeSiteNews.com. It seemed pretty important that you all realize the total disregard this administration has for our military. It disgusts me and I honor this U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who is an Oathkeeper. God bless him.

Here’s the Truth for Health Foundation video, about 1.5 hours long, with U.S. Army LTC/Dr. Peter Chambers’ story.

U.S. Army Doctor Reveals Medics Were Told Not to Report Adverse COVID Jab Reactions

A U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and combat physician has described how fellow medics in the Army were told not to enter records of COVID jab adverse reactions into official databases.

“They either look the other way or they just say, ‘Well, I can’t do that. It doesn’t exist’,” said Dr. Peter Chambers, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, Special Forces Green Beret, and combat physician.

Chambers made the comments as part of the Truth For Health Foundation’s ninth online conference, which saw the announcement of the Foundation’s new global reporting system for COVID jab injuries.

Dr. Chambers’ jab reactions

Discussing the armed forces COVID jab rollout along with Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet, the Foundation’s president and CEO, Chambers shed light on his recent experience as a taskforce surgeon for Operation Lone Star, a border security mission of the Texas military at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Chambers, a veteran of 39 years and a Purple Heart recipient, received Moderna’s COVID jab in January 2021, unaware of the potential side effects. He now counts himself as an advocate for the “vaccine wounded” due to the adverse reactions he experienced afterwards.

He swiftly developed “brain fog” of a kind which he had not experienced even while suffering aftershock from rockets while on active duty, and experienced loss of eyesight.

Following an eventual MRI scan, after bouts of vertigo, dizziness, and nausea which caused him to crash a truck while returning from night patrol, Chambers was diagnosed with demyelination, a disease which affects the nerve tissue.

Army medics ‘told not to enter’ adverse events into database 

He recounted how he had seen “multiple soldiers” also suffering similar side effects from the injections, along with “six soldiers that have been in the ICU,” and one soldier who was forced to take a second jab despite having suffered micro-clotting after her first.

Dr. Chambers took down the details from these service personnel and entered them into the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS). However, he revealed to Dr. Vliet that “surgeons at the military hospitals were not letting them in. They were told not to enter people into VAERS.”

“Doctors told me personally in the active duty system that worked at Fort Sam Houston, that they were not to enter people into the VAERS system,” he added.

Due to the COVID jabs’ collective nature of being experimental vaccines, Chambers noted how “we can’t even enter it [COVID jab injuries] into our own defense, medical, epidemiological database.”

“We can’t even interpret that as a true diagnosis,” he said. “So when you try to speak to other positions, they won’t. They either look the other way or they just say, ‘Well, I can’t do that. It doesn’t exist’.”

Told to ‘pack bags’ over attempt to give informed consent

As taskforce surgeon for Operation Lone Star, Chambers had to fill out informed consent forms, as per Army regulations, for soldiers taking the COVID shots. Chambers noted how he had to “reinforce or confirm” whether soldiers needed the shot, while at the same time, his knowledge of the dangers of the COVID jab was growing.

Of the 3,000 soldiers he briefed, only six took the injection.

Challenged by a senior medical officer over this, Chambers said he was “told that I was to pack my bags and leave the border.”

As LifeSite has reported, Dr. Chambers later testified at a March 10 federal court hearing in Tampa in the Navy SEAL 1 v. Austin case. Chambers said he had been pressured into getting soldiers vaccinated and presented as an exhibit an instruction on religious exemptions that read: “Soldiers will try. Soldiers will fail.”

Praise for new vaccine reporting system

Having faced stern resistance against entering COVID jab reports into VAERS, Dr. Chambers warmly welcomed Truth for Health Foundation’s new vaccine reporting system – the Citizens Vaccine Injury Reporting System (CVIRS)™. “If the system that we have now in the government that they provide for us doesn’t work, then we the people have to provide something, because we still have to treat people,” he said.

Doctors “can’t just quit,” he added. “Not everything is COVID related.”

Chambers was the first person to use and register his vaccine injury on the Foundation’s new system, which is designed to be user-friendly and able to be completed in under 20 minutes. “This system was perfectly created for that, and I am honored to be the first person,” he added.

Help support our brave doctors and medical experts who are putting their livelihoods at risk simply by speaking the truth about COVID-19 here.

©Fred Brownbill. All rights reserved.

New Documents: Democrats Sicced the CIA on their Domestic Enemy, President Donald J. Trump thumbnail

New Documents: Democrats Sicced the CIA on their Domestic Enemy, President Donald J. Trump

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By The Geller Report

The Democrats have weaponized and destroyed every U.S. government agency. Irretrievably broken.

New Documents Suggest Democrats Sicced The CIA On Their Domestic Enemy, The President

By: Margot Cleveland, The Federalist, April 20, 2022

Newly released CIA memoranda suggest the tech gurus behind the Alfa Bank hoax also tracked Donald Trump’s movements to devise another collusion conspiracy theory.

While smaller in scale than other aspects of Spygate, the Yotaphone hoax represents an equally serious scandal because it involved both the mining of proprietary information and sensitive data from the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and the apparent surveillance of Trump’s physical movements.

When Special Counsel John Durham charged former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann in September 2021, the indictment focused on the Alfa Bank hoax that Sussmann, tech executive Rodney Joffe, and other cybersecurity experts had crafted. The indictment detailed how Joffe and other tech experts had allegedly mined data and developed “white papers” that deceptively created the impression that Trump had maintained a secret communication network with the Russia-based Alfa Bank.

Then, allegedly on behalf of the Clinton campaign and Joffe, Sussmann provided the Alfa Bank material to the media and to the FBI’s general counsel at the time, James Baker, with Sussmann falsely telling Baker he was sharing the “intel” on his own and not on behalf of any client. That alleged lie formed the basis for the one count, Section 1001 false statement charge against Sussmann.

There’s Another Alleged Lie

The 27-page indictment, however, also spoke of Sussmann sharing “updated allegations” on February 9, 2017, to another U.S. government agency, namely the CIA, while allegedly repeating the same false claim that he was not sharing the “intel” on behalf of any client. From the framing of the indictment, it appeared that what Sussmann had shared with the CIA concerned the same Alfa-Bank data provided to the FBI several months earlier, albeit updated.

But then two months ago, as part of the government’s “Motion to Inquire Into Potential Conflicts of Interest,” Durham’s team revealed for the first time that when Sussmann met with the CIA in early 2017, he provided agents with internet data beyond the Alfa Bank conspiracy theory. This data, Sussmann claimed, “demonstrated that Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations.”

The “supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones” were “Yotaphones.” Following Durham’s filing of the conflicts of interest motion, it appeared Sussmann bore responsibility for peddling a second conspiracy theory to the CIA. But the details contained in the government’s motion proved insufficient to understand the Yotaphone angle to Spygate. That all changed on Friday, when the special counsel filed two CIA memoranda memorializing what Sussmann said about the Yotaphones and the data Joffe and his tech experts had compiled.

What Sussmann Told the CIA

The first memorandum, dated January 31, 2017, summarized what Sussmann told a former CIA employee in hopes of scoring a meeting with the CIA. Sussmann said his client “had some interesting information about the presence and activity of a unique Russian made phone around President Trump.” Sussmann claimed the activity started in April 2016 when Trump was working out of the Trump Tower on its Wi-Fi network. That phone was also used on the “Wi-Fi at Trump’s apartment at Grand Central Park West,” according to Sussmann.

The memorandum then noted that “when Trump traveled to Michigan to interview a cabinet secretary, the phone appeared with Trump in Michigan.” The unnamed cabinet secretary apparently refers to Trump’s education secretary Betsy DeVos, whose husband Richard DeVos was chairman of the Michigan-based Spectrum Health in 2016.

According to the notes, Sussmann also told his contact that “the phone was never noticed in two places at once” and was seen “only around the President’s movement.” The memo noted that once, when Trump was not in Trump Tower, the phone was active on the Trump Tower WiFi network. Then, “in December 2016, the phone disappeared from Trump Tower Wi Fi network and surfaced on [the Executive Office Building] network,” the memorandum said, with Sussmann claiming it was the same Yotaphone and that it “surfaced” at the Executive Office Building after Trump moved to the White House.

The Yotaphone is rare, Sussmann told his contact, with only about a dozen or so present in the United States, and Russian government officials often receive a high-end version of the phone as a gift. According to Sussmann, the Yotaphone connected to Trump made a number of WIFI calls to Moscow and St. Petersburg from April 2016 until February 2017.

Keep reading…..

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Letter to the Editor of the WSJ RE: Military Preparedness thumbnail

Letter to the Editor of the WSJ RE: Military Preparedness

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By Royal A. Brown III

Below was reported as being part of a Letter to the Editor in a recent WSJ article in reference to their editorial on the consequences of the The Shrinking U. S. Navy. I think it applies to all our military services these days.

Here’s the attachment to the letter to the editor:

You can relax about our military preparedness. In terms of manpower, we have far more diversity coordinators and gender advisors than the Russians and Chinese. In materiel, our advantage in maternity flight suits is overwhelming. Faced with such potent weapons of war, who would dare engage us in armed conflict?

Harry O. McKinney

Southfield, Mich.

I feel much better about our military now – how ’bout you?

Thank you Fake POTUS Biden, SecDef Austin, Chair JCS Milley and all the other WOKE senior officers who have reduced the morale and fighting spirit of those soldiers in the trenches.

Yes and let’s not forget:

  • the female Navy Officers who graduated from Canoe U (USNA) with poor seamanship training and were in charge on the Bridges of 2 Navy Destroyers which collided with other ships at the cost of sailors lives;
  • the Navy Officer who surrendered two well armed gun boats to Iran without firing a shot;
  • the Army hierarchy which has reduced standards for PT tests;
  • Ranger School Graduations, installed field lactation stations for pregnant female soldiers;
  • the Air Force for installing a Lesbian Commandant of Cadets at the AFA and a black Commandant whose #1 priority was weeding out cadets he felt were racists or sexual harassers;
  • the Marines for reducing standards for their officer training program to commission more women;
  • SecDef Austin for ordering a 50 day stand-down to ferret out soldiers considered extremists (i.e. Trump supporters);
  • Chairman of JCS Milley for touting Critical Race Theory, etc. etc.

Our entire military is now WOKE and more concerned at the top with Climate Change, the environment and Diversity, Equality and Inclusion than combat readiness and warfighting.

©Royal A. Brown, III. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘Wokeism’ destroying U.S. military

Border Patrol Stopped 23 People on Terrorist List at Southern Border in 2021 — How Many Got Through? thumbnail

Border Patrol Stopped 23 People on Terrorist List at Southern Border in 2021 — How Many Got Through?

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By Jihad Watch

Biden’s handlers are recklessly endangering the American people in pursuit of a reliable voting bloc.

Border Patrol stopped 23 people on terrorist database at southern border in 2021: CBP data

by Bill Melugin and Adam Shaw, Fox News, April 18, 2022 (thanks to the Geller Report):

EXCLUSIVE: Border Patrol apprehended at least 23 people coming across the southern border whose names are on the terror watchlist in 2021, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data obtained by Fox News.

Between Jan. 20 and Dec. 27, 2021, there were 23 encounters with individuals whose names matched on the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB)….

The Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) contains information about the identities of those who are known or “reasonably suspected” of being involved in terrorist activities. Republicans lawmakers have repeatedly called for the number of those encountered at the border to be made public by the administration….

Former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott has repeatedly sounded the alarm over the number of TSDBs coming across the border, telling fellow agents last year that it was “at a level we have never seen before.”…

Fox News reported earlier this month that over 62,000 illegal immigrants evaded Border Patrol agents in March, averaging about 2,000 a day….

RELATED VIDEO: Melugin: ‘23 Known or Suspected Terrorists’ Were Encountered at the Southern Border

RELATED ARTICLES:

Illinois offers free taxpayer-funded health care to illegal migrants

UK: Woke Archbishop of Canterbury uses Easter message to attack border control

UK: Tran murderer nicknamed Hannibal Lecter Jr. now identifies as infant, demands diaper changed

Marine Le Pen Just Lost My Vote

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

BLM’s Defund Police Movement Cause of Massive Increase in Black Americans Murdered thumbnail

BLM’s Defund Police Movement Cause of Massive Increase in Black Americans Murdered

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By The Geller Report

By Emma Colton | Fox News April 19, 2022:

Project 21 co-chair Horace Cooper and former Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek join ‘Fox News @ Night’ to discuss the rise in violent crime across the U.S.

Support of Black Lives Matter and calls to defund the police reverberated across America in 2020 following the death of George Floyd, igniting social justice protests and riots at a time when the coronavirus and lockdowns upended society in unprecedented ways. What was left in 2020’s wake was a massive increase in the number of murders, dealing a disproportionate blow to Black Americans.

“Certainly, the protests and riots mid-2020 after the death of George Floyd followed a pattern of spiking violence that we’ve seen following past viral police incidents, such as the deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray. This pattern has been termed the ‘Ferguson Effect’: police pull back while violent crime spikes precipitously,” Hannah Meyers, director of the policing and public safety initiative at the Manhattan Institute, told Fox News Digital.

Murders across the board spiked by nearly 30% in 2020 compared to the year prior, according to FBI data, marking the largest single-year increase in killings since the agency began tracking the crimes. Among Black Americans, the number of deaths spiked by more than 32% compared to 2019.

FBI DATA SHOWS LARGE INCREASE IN MURDERS IN 2020 NATIONWIDE

In 2019, at least 7,484 Black Americans were murdered. That number shot up to at least 9,941 murders in 2020, meaning there was an increase of 2,457 Black Americans murdered over the previous year.

The number of Black murders was also far higher than White murders in 2020. The FBI data shows there 7,043 White people murdered that year, meaning 2,898 more Black people were killed compared to Whites.

Between 2010 and 2019, there was an average of 5,954 White murders, which is roughly 16% lower than the 10-year average of Black murders. During that same time period, an average of 6,927 Black Americans were murdered each year, meaning Black murders shot up by 43% in 2020 compared to the previous 10-year average.

There was a roughly 21% increase in White murders in 2020 compared to 2019.

The figures are more staggering considering White Americans make up 76% of the population compared to Black Americans representing only 13%, according to Census data.

Murders in the 2010s first broke the 7,000 murder benchmark in 2015 after the high-profile deaths of Freddie Gray that same year and Michael Brown in 2014, jumping by nearly a thousand in one year. Brown was fatally shot by a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer and Gray died after he sustained injuries in the back of a Baltimore police van. Their deaths sparked protests and riots similar to the ones following Floyd’s death.

Prior to Brown’s death, Black murders had fallen the previous four years.

Fox News Digital reviewed murder data from 2014 and 2015 and found a spike of 15% in year over year data. At least 7,000 Black Americans were killed each year thereafter without ever exceeding the 8,000 mark……

Read the rest….

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The Feds Are So Desperate For Violent ‘White Supremacy,’ They’re Fabricating It

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By Madeline Osburn

Last Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas declared white supremacists and “domestic violent extremism” to be the “most prominent threat” currently facing our country. The timing could not have been more perfect. Just hours later, a jury in Grand Rapids, Michigan exposed the Justice Department’s largest alleged “domestic terrorism” case of the last 18 months as a failed FBI entrapment scheme to smear conservatives as white supremacists ahead of the 2020 election.

By refusing to convict four men accused of plotting to kidnap and kill Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer before Election Day 2020, the Grand Rapids jury seemed to side with defense attorneys who argued their clients were not domestic terrorists but entrapped by undercover FBI agents and at least a dozen informants who planned and funded the kidnapping operation.

“The key to the government’s plan was to turn general discontent with Gov. Whitmer’s COVID-19 restrictions into a crime that could be prosecuted,” defense lawyers wrote in a joint motion. “The government picked what it knew would be a sensational charge: conspiracy to kidnap the governor. When the government was faced with evidence showing that the defendants had no interest in a kidnapping plot, it refused to accept failure and continued to push its plan.”

Needing Terrorists to Justify Counterterrorism

The FBI’s governor-kidnaping hoax demonstrates just how serious federal law enforcement agencies are about pursuing domestic extremists, even if it means the alleged threat originates in Washington, D.C. or FBI field offices.

Mayorkas’s doubling-down on the threat of white supremacists, even in light of DOJ’s failure in Michigan, is a result of the time and resources the Biden administration and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have dedicated to fighting this perceived threat instead of actual threats, such as the massive migrant surge expected to overwhelm U.S. borders next month.

In his first address to Congress, President Joe Biden cited “white supremacist terrorism” as the “most lethal terrorist threat to the homeland today.”

In March 2021, DHS and the FBI issued a joint memo warning that “domestic extremists” were ramping up to “take control of the U.S. Capitol and remove democratic lawmakers on or about the 4th of March.” Nothing happened on March 4.

In June 2021, DHS issued a warning, without evidence, that the centennial commemoration of the Tulsa Race Massacre might be a target of extremism. Nothing happened that day either.

That same month, the Biden White House issued a “fact sheet“ entitled the “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.” It claimed that “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists who advocate for the superiority of the white race” are a top domestic terror threat facing America.

This “white supremacist” drumbeat was just the precursor to the creation of a new “domestic terrorism unit,” the Justice Department announced it was forming in January this year. Of course, we experienced a similar overaction in the Bush-era, when DHS was created to protect us all from another 9/11, which also led to the kinds of mass surveillance and accusations of FBI entrapment that we are witnessing now.

If the Whitmer case is any indication, this type of hyperfocus will incentivize federal law enforcement to go to whatever lengths necessary when investigating potential domestic extremists, no matter how overstated the risk.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

PODCAST: Biden Bans Nuclear Weapons Critical To U.S. National Security! thumbnail

PODCAST: Biden Bans Nuclear Weapons Critical To U.S. National Security!

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By Conservative Commandos Radio Show

GUESTS AND TOPICS

TRISTAN JUSTICE

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism.

TOPIC: Biden Raises Cost Of Domestic Oil Production With New Order On Federal Leases!

DR. PETER VINCENT PRY

Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is Executive Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, served as Chief of Staff of the Congressional EMP Commission, Director of the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, and on the staffs of the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, the House Armed Services Committee, and the CIA. He is author of the books Will America Be Protected? (2022), Blackout Warfare (2021), and The Power And The Light (2020).

TOPIC: Biden Bans Nuclear Weapons Critical To U.S. National Security!

©Conservative Commandoes Radio. All rights reserved.

Americans overwhelmingly support a congressional review of a new Iran deal thumbnail

Americans overwhelmingly support a congressional review of a new Iran deal

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By Center For Security Policy

Editor’s note: The Center for Security Policy gratefully acknowledges its collaboration with tippinsights on the simultaneous and exclusive release of this important story.

As the final stages of the Vienna talks progress, the prospects for a revived joint U.S.-Iranian nuclear deal become more likely. Americans overwhelmingly agree that a new deal must be submitted for Congressional review.

Congressional Review And Vote

A new collaborative CSP/TIPP poll conducted in early April 2022 found that 83% of respondents, including 85% of “liberals” who are following the story, feel that it is essential that Congress votes on whether or not the U.S. rejoins the nuclear deal.

38% of respondents are “closely” following stories related to the Iran deal, while 53% are not. The number of Americans tuning in to the progress of the Vienna talks is likely to rise as the prospects for a revived deal become more imminent.

The Iran Nuclear Agreement Act (INARA), passed in 2015 with bipartisan support, prevents the president from suspending or waiving sanctions before Congress can vote on an agreement. Essentially, any new deal to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons must be submitted to Congress for review. Therefore, if Democratic Party leaders refuse to submit the current Iran deal on the table in Vienna for Congressional review, they would violate this treaty. Additionally, according to the poll results, a lack of Congressional review would not be supported by the American people. But, the administration is not likely to follow it. The argument is that the reentry to JCPOA is not a new deal and that Congress authorized it earlier in 2015.

President Biden promised to rejoin the Obama-era deal that remains constitutionally questionable at the onset of his term. In 2015, the Obama administration executed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as an executive agreement, not a treaty reviewed and voted on by Congress. While executive orders alone are not rare, the use of one to accomplish significant international arrangements is. Article II of the Constitution dictates the president must obtain consent from a two-thirds majority to pass international obligations.

The method the Obama administration used to push through the original 2015 JCPOA, combined with Iran’s growing capabilities, may be influencing the strong support Americans have for Congressional oversight this time around.

Joining The Deal

62% of those following the story support joining the deal, while 33% oppose it. Support by party and ideology varies widely. Most Democrats and liberals support while Republicans and conservatives oppose the agreement. Support by party and ideology:

  • 84% of Democrats,
  • 37% of Republicans,
  • 49% of Independents,
  • 43% of conservatives,
  • 69% of moderates, and
  • 84% of liberals.

Full Disclosure Of Terms

In the same CSP/TIPP poll, respondents were asked, “How confident are you that the Biden administration will fully disclose all of the terms of the new Iran deal to Congress?” 64% of those following the Iran story selected “confident,” while 34% selected “not confident.” Ideally, Americans would trust the sitting president to be transparent with Congress, especially when significant consequences are on the line.

President Biden’s credentials aren’t the best, despite his 40 years of foreign policy experience. We hope he will be transparent and negotiate a long-term agreement with bipartisan support.

AUTHOR

MAYA CARLIN

Maya Carlin is an analyst at the Center for Security Policy. She is a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at Reichman University in Israel and has bylines in The National Interest and The Jerusalem Post.

RELATED VIDEO: Donald Trump warns new Iran nuclear deal would doom Israel

EDITORS NOTE: This Center for Security Policy column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Wikileaks just dumped all of Hillary, CIA, FBI, PedoPodesta and more emails! Get them here! thumbnail

Wikileaks just dumped all of Hillary, CIA, FBI, PedoPodesta and more emails! Get them here!

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By Save America Foundation

Wikileaks just dumped all of their files online.

Everything from Hillary Clinton’s emails, McCain’s being guilty, Vegas shooting done by an FBI sniper, Steve Jobs HIV letter, PedoPodesta, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Bilderberg, CIA agents arrested for rape, WHO pandemic.

Happy Digging! Here you go, please read and pass it on. The info enclosed will take a lot of time to read and digest.

These are Clinton’s emails:

Send to everyone you can as fast as you can!

©Fred Brownbill. All rights reserved.

Book by citizen of the former Soviet Union reveals the truth about what’s happening to America thumbnail

Book by citizen of the former Soviet Union reveals the truth about what’s happening to America

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By Dr. Rich Swier

This new book by lawyer and citizen of the former Soviet Union, Simona Pipko titled “What Is Happening To America?: The Hidden Truth of Global Destruction” offers a first-hand analysis of the Russian KGB government that brought the world and America to its current crisis.

Though China’s military is a great danger to the United States, yet, Russia presents an existential threat covertly destroying our republic from within.

Do you know Putin’s policy toward America and the world?

Have you heard about the ideology of Soviet Fascism?

If not, this book is a rich arsenal of information based on both first-hand personal experiences as a Soviet defense attorney and factual data.

It exposes the core of modern terrorism, its ideology and its operations.

By reading this seminal book written by a citizen of the former Soviet Union, you will learn about America’s problems in 2022 derived from decades of collusion between Russia and the Democratic Party.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER:

What Is Happening To America?: The Hidden Truth of Global Destruction

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

EDITORS NOTE: To read many insightful columns by Simona Pipko please click here.

The Nation is the Heart of the Matter thumbnail

The Nation is the Heart of the Matter

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By Christopher Demuth

Editor’s Note: This article is based on Mr. DeMuth’s opening address at the European National Conservatism Conference in Brussels, Belgium, on March 23, 2022.

February 2020 turned out to be the last month to date of normal life in most of the world. Early in the month, a few cases of what came to be known as Covid-19 were identified in Rome, in individuals recently arrived from Wuhan, China. Soon Italian hospitals were overwhelmed and the government locked down the entire nation. Cases began popping up in other well-traveled parts of Europe and the United States, and local, state, and national authorities—with little understanding of the spread or seriousness of the disease, but terrified by the news from Italy—began locking down their populations. The global pandemic was upon us.

Two years later, in February 2022, the worst of the pandemic was receding; its wounds and disruptions were being repaired and life was springing up again. Then Russia invaded Ukraine and commenced killing its people, destroying its cities, and threatening the world with nuclear war. A natural disaster was replaced by a man-made disaster of horrifying savagery and stupidity.

The free nations of the prosperous West that have been under sustained assault constitute a great and admirable civilization. Vladimir Putin and the dictators of China and Iran are right to fear not only the allure of freedom but also its power. One of the first lessons of the Ukraine onslaught is that authoritarians are as bad at military organization as they are at economic and political organization. Our far-flung interconnectedness made the novel coronavirus an instant global killer—but was also key to the rapid invention of equally novel, miraculous vaccines that have saved millions of lives.

The Free World has also, however, fallen prey to certain soft conceits, which Putin and his ilk are right to see as weaknesses. We had imagined that the world’s troubles were amenable to rational management and apolitical expertise. We could leave them to specialized agencies somewhere up there in the cloud, or maybe in Brussels, if only politicians would “follow the science” and accede to the arc of global progressivism. That would free modern man to cultivate his individuality—his personal pleasures and grievances, his likes and dislikes. The fantasy that hard problems can be wished out of our lives has been an important source of decay in our culture, political rhetoric, and institutions of government.

But the last two years have been disenthralling. Experts claimed they could specify the path of global temperatures for a century hence within a few degrees—and it turned out they could miss the path of global disease for one month hence by an order of magnitude. Experts claimed that nation-states and borders were barbaric vestiges and that global bureaucracies could usher in peace and harmony—and it turned out we had barbarians at the gates in the here and now and that nations with borders were essential to peace and harmony. Experts claimed that global markets would bring prosperity and democracy—and it turned out they could also bring domestic division and imperial domination.

Into the breach came, willy nilly, the nation-state. It is unnecessary to argue that the United Nations and the World Health Organization proved useless in the crises at hand, for everyone could see that they mainly got in the way, or yakety-yacked while others took urgent action.

Managing a pandemic—a quintessential global emergency—fell inescapably to individual nations, with their diverse demographics, healthcare, and hospital systems, public attitudes, structures of government, and leaders accountable to actual electorates and fellow citizens. When the European Union asserted authority over vaccine procurement and distribution, it badly mishandled them—even the New York Times called it a “fiasco.” Nations that didn’t have EU insider privileges had to come up with workarounds. When the going gets tough, democracy loses patience with technocracy.

Russia’s latest war has been analyzed in terms of spheres of influence, the return of great-power competition, dictatorship versus democracy. But the heart of the matter is the integrity of the nation. An imperial power invaded a peaceful self-governing nation for conquest, aiming to seize its territory and farms and industry, to subjugate its people, and to extinguish its traditions and institutions. That is why Ukraine has become a popular cause around the world. The Ukrainians cry out, this is our land, our home, our country. President Zelensky compares his countrymen’s struggle and heroism to the historic struggles and heroes of other nations; he is even gauche enough to name names at a time when other nations are toppling their heroes. You don’t have to have taken a course in political science to understand this war. Nor to be overwhelmed by the bravery and determination of the Ukrainians and to reflect on your responsibilities for your own national home.

And the response has been a rallying of sovereign nations that few living people have seen before. In the order of nation-states, each nation defends the overall order as its own interests require or permit. Some nations have been constrained by their existential reliance on Russian energy; others have judged that they may play a useful role as diplomatic intermediaries; plus, we are going to need a delegation to inform Putin that he has lost. Close to the fray, fears that one’s own nation may be next on Putin’s hit-list, or that in desperation he may introduce nuclear or chemical weapons into the military theater, have produced a spectrum of reactions both among and within nations. But the total response has been the provision of stupendous defensive armaments and intelligence, logistical, and humanitarian support, and repudiation of Putin and isolation of the Russian economy. Most striking of all has been the many reversals of national defense, energy, and financial policies that would have been inconceivable the day before the invasion.

All of this has been spontaneous collaboration, each nation bringing its unique assets to the cause without the benefit of direction by any supernational body. The EU has been helpful as a convening body, but it has disgraced itself by imposing heavy financial penalties on Hungary and Poland, for patently partisan and ideological reasons, just as those nations were struggling to welcome and care for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees. No self-respecting nation would have behaved in this manner in a time of war. Let us hope that Ukraine’s victory and EU membership will bring Brussels to a new policy of liberality towards the nations of Central Europe.

It is surely a positive development that, from terrible events, we are directing our hopes and expectations at the performance of the nation-state constrained by a renewed sense of realism.

The newly engaged nation-states came to the crises of the past two years woefully unready, following a long period of desuetude, self-indulgent politics, and, for many, mediocre leadership. Sovereignty needs to be earned continuously—through prudent finance and low public debt, diversification in energy and other requisites of national independence, and ample provision to prepare for natural disasters and military defense. Lacking these fundamentals, we have faced many tragic choices that were more painful and costly than they needed to have been. Having witnessed a display of national self-determination that will ring through history, we may be inspired to greater political seriousness in our own nations.

In the pandemic response, the diversity of national approaches, and within the United States the diversity of state approaches, yielded continuous policy competition and learning-by-doing. Among the free Western nations, the sharing of real-time data on infections, hospitalizations, and morbidity and mortality, and the rigorous criticisms of independent physicians and immunologists, contributed powerfully to policy realism. The climate-change mantra of “the science is settled” never got traction in a genuine crisis.

We are now coming to understand, better late than never, that comprehensive lockdowns and school closures were largely ineffective in controlling Covid-19 but fabulously costly to our economies and social well-being. We have gained this understanding precisely because of the knowledge generated by nation-led responses, which would have been obscured by uniform responses directed by the WHO, EU, or the federal government in the United States. For now, government restrictions are being lifted much faster than skeptics were predicting just a month ago. We will come to the next pandemic less confused and perhaps better equipped.

In the Ukraine response, it is disheartening that the German government has stuck with its plans to decommission perfectly good nuclear power plants, and that the U.S. government is still zealous to obstruct the development and use of fossil fuels. Nor has the war inspired Americans to set aside our bad habits of performative politics, personal positioning, and incessant scoring of ideological debating points. But the most striking development in the United States is that Congress has seized the initiative from the foreign policy elites, repeatedly forcing the Biden administration to revise and strengthen its assistance to Ukraine. Congress’s more representative, populist response has displayed Americans’ instinctive support for the underdog, but also a keen appreciation of the constraints and complications that attend American action.

The situation is highly dynamic, with many national elections in-store and adjustments underway in party positions and electoral strategies. Among intellectuals, the new thinking and Left-Right-Radical alignments that began with Donald Trump and Brexit in 2016 are shifting dramatically. Where government is concerned, a good rule of thumb is to Expect the Worst and Hope for the Sufficient. But it is surely a positive development that, from terrible events, we are directing our hopes and expectations at the performance of the nation-state constrained by a renewed sense of realism.

*****

This article was published by Law & Liberty and is reproduced with permission.

While Vets Die Waiting, VA Will Focus on LGBT Rights thumbnail

While Vets Die Waiting, VA Will Focus on LGBT Rights

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By Jihad Watch

Remember the VA waiting list scandals under Obama. They’re back under his veep. Or more accurately they never really left.

Biden decided to appoint Denis McDonough, an Obama aide, to head Veteran Affairs and things are going well.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough acknowledged that he is “frustrated” with inconsistency in how medical appointment wait time data is calculated and recorded within the department’s health care systems, and promised changes on the issue later this year.

During testimony before the House Appropriations Committee this week, McDonough said he is concerned about delivering accurate information on appointment timeliness to veterans as they seek to resume care that was deferred or canceled in recent years.

Yes, the waiting list scandal was never actually fixed. Or much of anything else.

Mike Tonkyn had to go to Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center three times to get his blood drawn.

Charlie Bourg’s cancer diagnosis was delayed several months, and now he needs surgery.

Heather Hill saw several of her patients suffer withdrawals after going weeks without medications to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

Others went months without insulin, accidentally got a double-dose of remdesivir to treat COVID-19 or went through withdrawals after going without anti-seizure medication.

More than a year after the Department of Veterans Affairs began testing a new electronic health record system at Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center, veterans who rely on the Spokane hospital and the health care workers who count on the software to do their jobs say flaws in the system continue to threaten patients’ safety, even as VA last week announced plans to roll it out in Walla Walla and other cities early next year.

But don’t worry, the VA is laser-focused on its mission… of identity politics.

The Justice Department wants to help non-English speakers report crimes, and Defense Department is reviewing algorithmic bias in its Artificial Intelligence technology as part of the Biden administration’s broad effort to tackle inequality. Driving the news: More than 90 federal agencies released their Equity Action Plans on Thursday that were ordered by President Biden during his first days in office.

We could have affordable gas or 90 equity plans.

The Department of Veterans Affairs said it will work to improve the social and economic determinants of health for LGBTQI+ veterans.

It’s like Obama never left.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

RELATED ARTICLES:

Biden’s Drilling ‘Poison Pill’ Sabotages Domestic Energy Production

Convicted Islamic State terrorist got security job at Austria Center Vienna, is on trial for raping coworker

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

WHOOSH, Dollar’s Purchasing Power Goes to Heck as Services Inflation Takes Off, Food Spikes, Energy Explodes, But Used Cars Finally Stall thumbnail

WHOOSH, Dollar’s Purchasing Power Goes to Heck as Services Inflation Takes Off, Food Spikes, Energy Explodes, But Used Cars Finally Stall

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By Wolf Richter

The Fed is still pumping fuel on the fire.

The Consumer Price Index today – a measure of how fast the dollar and everything denominated in dollars, including labor, lost its purchasing power – is a horror show, the likes of which the majority of Americans have never experienced in their lives. The reality on the ground is even worse for many people because CPI is slow to pick up the red-hot housing inflation as we’ll see in a moment, and because CPI structurally is skewed to represent the inflation felt by higher-income households, while lower-income households, as Fed governor Lael Brainard pointed out last week, face higher inflation and feel it much more.

The overall Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) spiked by 1.2% in March from February, and by 8.5% from a year ago, the worst since 1981, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics today.

But in 1981, the Fed was effectively cracking down on inflation with double-digit policy interest rates, and inflation was on the way down.

Now inflation is spiking, and the Fed is still repressing short-term interest rates to near 0%, and it still holds $8.9 trillion in assets on its balance sheet as a result of years of money printing, including $4.8 trillion that it printed over the past two years to repress long-term interest rates and to produce the biggest wealth disparity ever. And now we’re surprised by this spike in inflation?

There is no period in history that compares to this period, not even the 1970s because the Fed wasn’t printing money in the 1970s.

WHOOSH goes the Dollar’s Purchasing Power.

Consumer price inflation is not a sign of anything positive, but a sign of the loss of the purchasing power of the consumer’s dollar, including the purchasing power of labor. And it’s cumulative, month after month, year after year. In March, the purchasing power of $100 in January 2000 dropped to a new record low of $58.80, which explains why the mood of Americans has curdled:

Inflation in services is now spiking.

The CPI for services – which includes housing costs – jumped by 0.7% in March from February, the third jump in a row of this magnitude, and by 5.1% compared to March last year, the worst services inflation since 1991. Given how slow the CPI is in picking up the surging housing costs, this portion of the CPI will continue to get worse, even as prices of gasoline and used cars might come down some.

Inflation in housing costs.

The largest component in CPI is “shelter,” a basket of services that is designed to represent housing costs and accounts for 32.7% of total CPI. The largest components in this basket are “Rent of primary residence,” accounting for 7.3% of total CPI, and “Owner’s equivalent rent of residence,” accounting for 24.0% of total CPI.

“Rent of primary residence” jumped by 4.4% in March (red in the chart below). This tracks what tenants reported as their actual rent payments, including in rent-controlled apartments.

“Owner’s equivalent rent of residences” rose 4.5% (green line). This tracks the costs of homeownership as a service, based on what homeowners reported that their home would rent for.

Because both of these rent measures are lagging, they will continue to spike as they catch up, even if over the next 12 months housing inflation actually were to cool down a little. So these housing components that weigh much more heavily than used cars or gasoline are guaranteed to provide upward pressure on CPI well into 2023 (my discussion of this phenomenon).

Note that both measures are still well below the overall CPI and therefore are still holding down CPI, but less than before, and as they rise, they will hold down CPI even less.

*****

Continue reading this article at Wolf Street.

Video Shows Police Allowed January 6 Defendants Into Capitol Building thumbnail

Video Shows Police Allowed January 6 Defendants Into Capitol Building

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By C. Mitchell Shaw

For the past 15 months, liberal politicians and their accomplices in the mainstream media have pointed to January 6, 2021, as an “insurrection” that “threatened democracy” and nearly overthrew the federal government. But newly released video confirms the claims of many who were there — even those who have been charged with breaching the Capitol Building — that police allowed them to enter the building through open doors.

The video — which Gateway Pundit reports was compiled to be presented in court as part of the defense of Brady Knowlton and Patrick Montgomery — shows police officers allowing protesters into the Upper West Terrace Doors of the U.S. Capitol on January 6. The video is edited to mark certain time stamps and includes a voice-over narration of the events.

Gateway Pundit reports that Alan Dershowitz is representing both Brady Knowlton and Patrick Montgomery. Both men have been charged with “Obstruction of an Official Proceeding” for entering the Capitol Building on January 6. But Dershowitz says the video shows “that a reasonable person could believe that he or she was not being stopped or prevented from going in.” He goes on to say that one could even gather from the video that someone who entered the building that day could have believed “that the police were welcoming him in.”

Gateway Pundit says the video was provided to them by “a trusted source” and that it was “originally obtained from the United States Department of Justice after media organizations joined a motion to have it released.” But since the video lacked context, “it has gone largely under the radar until it was put into context by our source, who carefully edited the video so the average viewer can understand what is going on.”

Assuming the video is presented as evidence for the defense, it is hard to imagine an impartial jury made up of reasoning adults finding Knowlton or Montgomery guilty. The video does clearly show that the police officer held the Upper West Terrace Doors open for people to enter the building. The video also shows police officers walking back and forth through the crowd — sometimes turning away from the crowd and showing no signs of believing themselves to be in danger from the people they had just allowed into the building.

In the video, we see the same scene from two different side-by-side vantage points of the interior house cameras of the US Capitol. Both cameras were facing the same door on the Upper West Terrace from opposite directions. The identical time codes in the videos can be seen in the upper left corners.

The video shows police behaving like museum staff security guards as they stand or walk idly by as unknowing men and women walk through a small set of Capitol doors carrying American flags and Trump signs. Many are innocently occupied by taking selfie videos of themselves and the crowd, apparently excited to be inside the People’s House and wanting to commemorate the occasion. They are clearly oblivious to the fact they were doing anything illegal, or they surely would have turned their cameras off and hid from video recording. They had no idea of the political persecution, shame and the witch hunters that will come for them later.

Dershowitz says he hopes “all Americans” see the video, adding, “I think it is going to help in the court of public opinion as well.” The liberal mainstream media have consistently portrayed anyone who entered the building on January 6 as “insurrectionists” trying to “overthrow the government.” Dershowitz’s wish for people to see for themselves that — at least at the Upper West Terrace — police allowed (or even welcomed) people into the building could go a long way to showing that narrative as false.

Gateway Pundit quotes Harvard law professor Ronald Sullivan, Jr. as saying, “The Capitol is the People’s House — it is normally open.” Sullivan added, “Unless you are an insider you would have no way of knowing which doors are public access and which doors are not. Hundred of thousands of people, if not millions, every year go in and out of The Capitol so there is nothing on its face odd about that.”

Besides planning to enter this video into evidence, Dershowitz is also fighting to get the audio from bodycams worn by police officers that day, saying, “We have to get the audio recordings from the Capitol police.” He went on to say, “The Brady decision trumps local law.”

As Gateway Pundit explains:

Dershowitz is referring to a Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963). The primary holding was that the government’s withholding of evidence that is material to the determination of either guilt or punishment of a criminal defendant violates the defendant’s constitutional right to due process.

Incredibly, the Capitol Police and DOJ continue to withhold exculpatory video and audio evidence that could exonerate January 6th prisoners.

Dershowitz is reported to have said:

So if a government unit has any relevant evidence it must be turned over. There is no justification for not turning over. They have not turned all of it over yet and they are absolutely required to turn it over by law. Those rules (Capitol police exemption of Freedom of Information Requests) are subordinate to the Constitution. Brady v. Maryland is a constitutional decision and every government unit has an obligation to comply with Brady. I think they will have to comply and we will get the chest camera video and the audio as well. We think the audio is very important. We are fighting for it and will not rest until we get it.

While the anti-Trump rhetoric of a violent “insurrection” has saturated most media reports of January 6 — and has certainly poisoned the well of any chance of a fair trial for most of the defendants — this video may help Knowlton and Montgomery. On April 6, Judge Trevor McFadden acquitted January 6 defendant Matthew Martin on all charges in a bench trial after viewing similar video presented at trial. That video clearly showed Capitol Police waved Martin through a door, which is what he had claimed all along.

As Gateway Pundit reported on that acquittal:

The judge said video shows two police officers standing near the Rotunda doors and allowing people to enter as Martin approached (this video has not been released to the public). One of the officers appeared to lean back before Martin placed a hand on the officer’s shoulder as a possible sign of gratitude, the judge said.

McFadden acknowledged that Martin entered the Capitol, but said in his ruling that “intent was key”. The Judge ruled that Martin’s belief that he had police officer’s permission be inside the building was reasonable and “plausible” because police officers didn’t try to stop him.

“You are a free man,” he told Martin after he found him not guilty.

Martin’s acquittal was perfectly reasonable. It would also be reasonable for Knowlton and Montgomery to be acquitted of all charges. After all, what impartial jury or judge would find someone guilty of entering a building that is usually open to the public — especially when police allow and even appear to welcome them in?

*****

This article was published by The New American and is reproduced with permission.

New Emails Provide Smoking Gun Evidence that Joe Biden Was Directly Involved in Hunter’s Corrupt Business Dealings thumbnail

New Emails Provide Smoking Gun Evidence that Joe Biden Was Directly Involved in Hunter’s Corrupt Business Dealings

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By Debra Heine

Smoking gun evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s shady business ventures has emerged in the form of a college recommendation letter for the son of a Chinese executive. According to emails obtained by Fox News, the elder Biden wrote the letter to please BHR CEO Jonathan Li, who did business with Hunter Biden’s firm Rosemont Seneca.

Hunter held a 10% stake in BHR as recently as last year, the White House previously acknowledged. Hunter’s attorney told the New York Times in November that he had since divested.

In an email dated Jan. 3, 2017, and sent to Hunter Biden and his business associates Devon Archer and Jim Bulger, Li wrote: “Gentlmen[sic], please find the attached resume of my son, Chris Li. He is applying the following colleges for this year.” Li listed Brown University, Cornell University, and New York University, as the schools his son was considering. Li attached an “updated version” of his son’s “CV” in a subsequent email.

In a response that cc’d Hunter and Archer, Bulger said they have “received the updated version of the CV.”

“Lets [sic] see how we can be helpful here to Chris,” Bulger wrote.

Joe Biden has repeatedly denied discussing Hunter’s business ventures with his son.

A month and a half later, on Feb. 18, 2017, Eric Schwerin, who served as president of Rosemont Seneca, replied to Li: “Jonathan, Hunter asked me to send you a copy of the recommendation letter that he asked his father to write on behalf of Christopher for Brown University.”

“The original is being FedExed to Dr. Paxson directly at Brown,” Schwerin wrote. “It should be there by Tuesday at the latest (given Monday is a holiday here in the U.S.). Let us know if you have any questions. Best, Eric.”

Dr. Christina Paxson is the president of Brown University.

Li replied: “Hi Eric, Just see the email. It is just great! Thank you very much!”

“And Hunter, thank you very much too,” Li continued. “All the best to you all.”

The string of emails directly ties Joe Biden to his son’s corrupt influence operation.

The man who initially released the incriminating and explicit contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop to the media, told

the Daily Mail earlier this week that he has an additional 450 gigabytes of deleted material he plans to make public.

Jack Maxey says this includes 80,000 images and videos and more than 120,000 archives emails from the computer. Maxey came into possession of the hard drive after he was asked by former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, and New York City police chief Bernie Kerik, to access the contents.

He told the Daily Mail he fled from the United States to Switzerland out of fear that the Biden administration would retaliate against him.

*****

Continue reading this article at American Greatness.

American Southwest border sees 6000-8000 illegals a day, expected to ‘quickly double’ thumbnail

American Southwest border sees 6000-8000 illegals a day, expected to ‘quickly double’

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By Jihad Watch

Not only is the Biden administration a global embarrassment, but it is also destroying America from within. The American Southwest border has seen a whopping 6000-8000 illegals a day enter, and it is now projected that the number will “quickly double” since the announcement of the end of the CDC Emergency Title 42 expulsion authority.

Since anyone is free to slip through America’s borders — including criminals, dealers and jihadists — it is no surprise that five sexual predators were arrested in the West Texas border sector in a week, or that U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized 123 pounds of drugs at El Paso area ports of entry over the past weekend.

While Biden builds a voter base comprising of illegals, America continues to crumble.

“EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: 250 Migrants Appear in One Hour in West Texas Town,” by Randy Clark, Breitbart, April 12, 2022:

EAGLE PASS, Texas — Border Patrol agents scrambled to respond to several large migrant groups early Tuesday. The migrants made landfall just south of the city in a steady flow to surrender. One subgroup of more than 100 were mostly Cubans.

Border Patrol agents took the group of mostly adult males into custody and began the task of gathering basic biographical information and inventories of personal property. Several Border Patrol trucks brought more migrants to a roadway from the riverbank. There were some female migrants carrying infants and young children.

According to a Customs and Border Protection source, the flow of migrants just south of the city has been steadily increasing since the announcement of the end of the CDC Emergency Title 42 expulsion authority. The CDC announced on April 1 that the emergency order will expire on May 23. As word of the program’s sunset spreads, the source says the increase in migrant crossings is likely to grow.

The source says daily apprehension totals are between 6,000 to 8,000 migrants per day across the entire southwest border – a figure which could quickly double. Even at the current pace, Border Patrol facilities are experiencing overcrowding….

AUTHOR

CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Person of interest in NYC subway shooting expressed black identity extremism in online posts thumbnail

Person of interest in NYC subway shooting expressed black identity extremism in online posts

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By Center For Security Policy

UPDATE: Law enforcement arrested Frank James on April 13th in New York’s East Village neighborhood following an anonymous tip. He has been charged under federal terrorism statutes.

Law enforcement remains on the look out for Frank James, a 63-year-old man with ties to Pennsylvania and Wisconsin who is alleged to be responsible for a mass shooting that took place April 12th, at a New York City Subway Station, in which 10 people were shot and 13 others injured. James was reportedly identified as the renter of a U-Haul van believed to be linked to the attack. According to media reports, the FBI had previously investigated the suspectfor ties to terrorism in 2019 but had cleared him.

According to Law enforcement, James, wearing a green vest similar to that used by MTA subway workers and donned a gas mask prior to the attack inside the N-Line subway train at the 36th and 4th Avenue station. He then deployed a smoke grenade inside one of the subway cars before opening fire with a small caliber handgun equipped with an extended magazine, firing at least 33 rounds, before escaping in the confusion, possibly along the subway tracks.

According to social media posts and videos which this author has reviewed, James made repeated and routine references to violence and a willingness to conduct a shooting on social media. He also posted material linked to black identity extremist ideologies, including the Nation of Islam, Moorish Science, Black Panthers, Black Liberation Army, and Black Lives Matter. He notably posted a picture of Micah Johnson, the BLM supporter who killed 5 Dallas police officers in 2016. In online videos James can be seen urging racial separatism between whites and blacks.

There is some reason to believe that James may have suffered from a mental illness at some point, as he makes a reference in a video to having been previously detained for mental illness. However, his articulation of black identity extremism appears cogent and in line with common ideological expressions although without any immediate signs of adherence to one specific group.

If it is true that the FBI previously investigated James and cleared him, it once against highlights federal law enforcement’s “Known Wolf” problem where, despite having significant intelligence capabilities that bring potential threats to law enforcement attention, the FBI remains incapable of determining which individuals represent genuine threats and has repeatedly failed to successfully intervene.

In this case that may have something to do with the FBI’s politicized determination to eliminate “black identity extremism” as a potential terrorism motivation for analysis. The FBI had previously used the term to refer to a variety of black supremacist threats until it came under political pressure from the Congressional Black Caucus and left-wing media. As the Center previously noted following an April 2021 vehicular Ramming attackwhere Noah Green, a 25-year old adherent of the Nation of Islam killed a Capitol Police Officer:

Federal Law enforcement has abandoned categorizing or identifying attacks conducted by “black identity extremists” the previous FBI term for attacks conducted by black supremacist or black separatist organizations, following politicalized criticism. The FBI, DHS, and other elements of the intelligence community have routinely downplayed the potential risk of violence from black identity extremists.

The FBI instead classifies black identity extremism under the too-broad category of “Racial or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists (REMVE),” although in practice this term is being used exclusively to refer to white supremacist ideologies. This has led to some ridiculous results, such as congressional legislation which included an attack by Black Hebrew Israelites among a list of “white supremacist” attacks. As a result of this political pressure, there has been minimal study and training done to educate law enforcement on the intricacies of the black identity extremist thought, and its various strains and idiosyncrasies. Instead, the tendency is to deny that such attacks are politically motivated, and thus deny any terrorism angle for further investigation.

Law enforcement and intelligence professionals must return to doing detailed analyses to understand threat ideologies within their own historical and ideological context. The current methodology, which seeks to lump various ideological expressions into the broadest possible category trades genuine understanding for political convenience, and as a result, leaves potential threats unaddressed.

AUTHOR

Kyle Shideler

Director and Senior Analyst for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.

EDITORS NOTE: This Center for Security Policy column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Indiana the 24th Constitutional-carry State. Three More States Right Behind

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By Bob Adelmann

Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb signed into law on March 21 his state’s permitless carry bill that had passed both the state’s House and Senate overwhelmingly.

That makes 24. And the third state so far this year.

On March 10, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed a similar bill into law. This was followed by Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, who signed a constitutional-carry bill into law on March 14.

Georgia is next, as a similar bill passed both state houses last Friday and will arrive shortly on Governor Brian Kemp’s desk for signing.

Said Kemp earlier, “The Constitution should be our carry permit, and I look forward to signing a Constitutional Carry measure this year to enshrine hardworking Georgians’ ability to protect themselves and their families in Georgia law.”

National Rifle Association (NRA) Chairman Wayne LaPierre told Fox News:

The success of the carry movement in America cannot be denied at this point. When Gov. Brian Kemp signs this landmark legislation, half of America will protect the right to carry as an inherent and inalienable right.

Two more states — Florida and Nebraska — are on the brink of passing laws protecting their citizens’ right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment, without first having to get permission to do so.

South Carolina is right behind, with conservative, pro-constitutional Republican majorities in both statehouses. Constitutional-carry bills failed to pass last year, but the pressure is building on Governor Henry McMaster to urge the legislature to bring such a bill to his desk for signing.

Tennessee already has a “partial” constitutional carry law in place, but it only applies to handguns, and legislators in the Volunteer State are itching to amend it to include long guns. What’s in place, according to John Harris, executive director of the Tennessee Firearms Association, is “not real constitutional carry,” and his group is lobbying to expand the present law.

It should be noted that not a single state has repealed a constitutional-carry law, nor has there been a single move in any state to consider such a move.

It should also be noted that arguments against such laws consist primarily of worries that more firearms will mean more gun violence. But that has simply not been the case. According to the Crime Research Prevention Center (CRPC), firearms violations by police officers are very low — about 16.5 for every 100,000 police officers. For citizens who already have a permit, the rate is even lower: 2.4 per 100,000.

Further research by the CRPC reveals that gun violence drops as private gun ownership increases. As John Lott, founder of the CRPC, noted in an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Several dozen peer-reviewed academic studies show there’s no evidence of any uptick in gun crimes linked to concealed carry laws, and most show violent crime declines.

Research also shows that murder rates fall even more when states move to Constitutional Carry laws.

That makes sense, as the people who benefit the most from carrying a firearm are the most likely to be victims: They are “overwhelmingly,” wrote Lott, “poor Blacks who live in high-crime urban areas.”

As states increasingly remove infringements from the right to keep and bear arms, it becomes increasingly difficult for tyrants to turn the American Republic into a dictatorship. To succeed, they must first disarm every private owner of his firearms. At present, the momentum is heading in the other direction.

The Second Amendment was never about duck hunting. It was always about keeping the government in check.

A quote from Adolf Hitler bears repeating:

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms.

History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.

*****

This article was published in The New American and is reproduced with permission.

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Biden’s Weakness With Iran Is Putting Us in a Dangerous Situation

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By Thomas C. Patterson

Biden’s bungling of the Iranian nuclear negotiations may well go down as the most consequential error in the history of statecraft. He has granted concession after concession to coax Iran into doing what they want to anyway, which is to revive the nuclear treaty (NCPOA) under which they would eventually acquire full nuclear capability.

The foolishness of equipping Iran’s ruling mullahs with nuclear arms is nearly beyond comprehension. These are fanatically religious Muslims, not like the Iranian people or the friendly neighbors most Americans meet. Their heartfelt belief is that life’s only purpose is submission to Allah and he has already dialed in his directions.

The entire world must eventually become a Muslim caliphate. Take your time, but use any and all means necessary to achieve successful jihad, including converting or killing all those under your control, lying when needed, and actively undermining host nations. Weapons of mass destruction would be the ultimate implement.

Yet the JCPOA negotiated with Iran by the Obama administration was full of concessions and loopholes. Iran was theoretically banned from enriching uranium to weapons grade, but enforcement was lax, inspections had to be announced beforehand and sanctions for violations were ignored.

Worse, the agreement included a 10-year sunset after which all limits were off. The Obama administration was so eager to accommodate (remember the $1.9 billion cash on pallets shipped secretly to seal the deal?) that they essentially created a framework assuring Iran’s future nuclear capability.

Fortunately, the JCPOA was never ratified by the Senate, so Trump was able to cancel it, which he did. Progress in nuclear development was slowed. Tough economic sanctions were imposed for violations, crippling Iran’s economy.

By the conclusion of Trump’s tenure, the Iranian people were growing restive and were protesting.  Iran’s oppression against both America and their regional neighbors was stymied for lack of funding.

But Biden and his handlers could only see the hand of Trump in the success and therefore it had to be reversed. Now Biden is frantically conceding away, preparing to sign an agreement even worse than Obama’s infamously one-sided pact.

Biden’s proposed deal would intentionally weaken the enforcement structure needed to prevent Iran’s nuclear program development. Their illegal infrastructure housing the program would be effectively ignored.

Biden would also lift the economic sanctions in place, giving Iran $100 billion sorely needed to reboot its terrorism program. Propping up Iran’s economy is a huge favor to the ruling autocrats, too.

Almost unbelievably, Biden is assuring that Russia is also a beneficiary of the deal. Yes, that Russia, the one the whole free world is trying to weaken and punish to end their brutal, unprovoked assault on Ukraine.

Biden effectively put Russia in charge of the negotiations, where they serve as go-between, since the Iranians refuse to negotiate directly with us. In turn, Russia is demanding that Russian – Iranian trade be exempted from the sanctions imposed in response to the Ukraine invasion. Russia will effectively have a “sanctions-aversion hub” so its atrocities can continue.

Further, Biden is apparently offering an “inherent guarantee”, providing that if there is a claimed breach of the agreement by future administrations, Iran can resume full-scale development of its military nuclear capability. One way or the other, Joe will ensure their nukes.

Finally, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is the agent for Iran’s long-running proxy war which has included hundreds of terrorist attacks on military bases, civilians, and ships at sea and killed hundreds of Americans.  Biden‘s brainstorm is to rescind the IRGC terrorist designation, limiting the rights of victims, including the right to sue for damages.

Over 1000 American Gold star families have written Biden urging him not to further empower the terrorists who killed their family members. No response has been received.

For all these concessions, Biden has received nearly nothing. Instead, Iran keeps “moving the goalposts”, testing the limits of his gullibility. Observers are reportedly astonished at the Iranians’ improbable success.

Our leadership’s weakness, incoherence, and appeasement are leading us into an extremely dangerous position. An unhinged, fanatical regional power that chants “Death to America” will soon have nuclear capability and empowered allies.

Where is Ronald Reagan when we need him?

*****

Thomas C. Patterson, MD is a retired Emergency Medicine physician, Arizona state Senator and Arizona Senate Majority Leader in the ’90s. He is a former Chairman, Goldwater Institute.

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