Zuckerberg: FBI urged Facebook to Suppress New York Post’s Explosive Exposé on Hunter Biden’s Laptop thumbnail

Zuckerberg: FBI urged Facebook to Suppress New York Post’s Explosive Exposé on Hunter Biden’s Laptop

By John Eidson

During a recent interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the company’s censors acted on a request by the FBI to be on the lookout for a Russian misinformation dump set to occur shortly before the 2020 presidential election. In actuality, the “misinformation dump” that prompted the FBI’s politically-tainted request was a pending New York Post exposé the contained damning information about Hunter Biden’s notorious laptop.

In other words, the FBI intentionally lied to Facebook. Using that lie as justification, Facebook ordered the company’s platforms to limit availability of the Post’s 100% accurate report, which was scheduled for release less than three weeks prior to what was widely viewed as the most pivotal presidential election in American history.

Having obtained possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2019, the FBI knew that information it contained was authentic. But despite that knowledge, the crooked agency suggested to Facebook that the laptop contained misinformation planted by the Russian government, the same fabricated claim that was being parroted by the Biden campaign, corporate media outlets and over 50 former U.S. intel officials.

By deceiving Facebook to believe the Post’s exposé was Russian propaganda intended to boost Trump’s chances, the FBI knowingly helped tip the election to Biden.

MUST-SEE: Tucker Carlson’s Aug. 25 monologue on Zuckerberg’s blockbuster revelation during his interview with Joe Rogan.

MUST-SEE: Tucker’s Aug. 26 monologue on the FBI’s blatantly illegal efforts to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

©John Edison. All rights reserved.

The Vaxxed Are ‘Dropping Like Flies’ from Sudden Death Syndrome thumbnail

The Vaxxed Are ‘Dropping Like Flies’ from Sudden Death Syndrome

By The Geller Report

/1 Comment/in , , , , , , , , , /by

There’s no other way to say it.

Dolphins executive Jason Jenkins dead at 47 https://t.co/olF55TJnVs pic.twitter.com/QtgSPYsRgm

— New York Post (@nypost) August 28, 2022

German insurer: Covid jab injuries jump almost 3,000%

The British Government Has Begun Paying $140,000 for COVID-19 Vaccine Damage Victims

Unusual Toxic Components Found in COVID Vaccines, ‘Without Exception’: German Scientists

Deaths Among Female Children Increase by 57% Immediately After Taking Covid-19 Vaccine

PFIZER DOCS: 44 Percent of Pregnant Women Miscarried After Receiving Pfizer Vaccine

Denmark Bans Covid Vaccine for Children

FDA Accepted Major Flawed Study From COVID Vaccine Producer

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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Jabbed Athletes Die Suddenly

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

0 0 The Geller Report 2022-08-30 09:41:22The Vaxxed Are ‘Dropping Like Flies’ from Sudden Death Syndrome

FBI Special Agent Who Opened Trump Investigation Escorted Out of Bureau thumbnail

FBI Special Agent Who Opened Trump Investigation Escorted Out of Bureau

By The Geller Report



A senior FBI official in the bureau’s Washington field office has abruptly resigned after coming under congressional scrutiny for suspected political bias in handling the investigation of Hunter Biden’s laptop computer.

FBI Agent Timothy Thibault, who publicly posted anti-Trump Lincoln Project tweets, and buried the investigation into Hunter Biden’s laptop, was also one of the FBI agents tasked with “combatting election fraud.”

He was the mastermind behind the affidavit to raid Mar-a-Lago.

He has longtime connections to the Clintons and the Obamas.

Thibault was the FBI official who was Assistant Agent in Charge (ASAC) in investigating voter fraud in the 2020 election. (source).

WATCH — FBI Agent Timothy Thibault, who publicly posted anti-Trump Lincoln Project tweets, and buried the investigation into Hunter Biden’s laptop, was also one of the FBI agents tasked with “combatting election fraud”.

Truth Social (https://t.co/IB4vMLa3zV) | @KanekoaTheGreat https://t.co/JLMlzF58m7 pic.twitter.com/td5iU93lus

— ✨TRVSHCVN✨ (@HiKaylaMichelle) July 27, 2022

FBI special agent who opened Trump investigation reportedly escorted out of Bureau

“Mr. Thibault was seen exiting the bureau’s elevator last Friday escorted by two or three ‘headquarters-looking types.’”

By: Just The News, August 29, 2022:

Former FBI Washington Field Office Assistant Special Agent in Charge Tim Thibault was reportedly escorted out of the bureau on Friday, amid whistleblower allegations that he showed political bias in his handling of politically sensitive investigations.

The Washington Times reported eyewitness accounts that “Mr. Thibault was seen exiting the bureau’s elevator last Friday escorted by two or three ‘headquarters-looking types.’” The article appears to have been updated and now states that Thibault “abruptly resigned” but that he was “forced to leave his post” and cites two unnamed former FBI officials.

Just the News was unable to independently confirm the Times’ report.

Whistleblowers alleged that Thibault concealed the partisan nature of evidence from FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland to secure their approval to open an investigation into former President Donald Trump in 2020 unrelated to the raid, according to information made public by Sen. Charles Grassley.

Those whistleblower allegations have raised questions about the bureau as it also deals with the fallout of the raid on Trump’s home earlier this month.

In that matter, the public release of the affidavit that accompanied the search warrant revealed the warrant application relied heavily on information from news articles, including a CBS Miami piece titled “Moving Trucks Spotted At Mar-a-Lago” and a Breitbart News article in which former Trump adviser Kash Patel discussed the classified status of documents the bureau previously removed from the estate on behalf of the National Archives.

Grassley confirmed to Just the News prior to the raid that Thibault had been removed from his post and reassigned to an unspecified position.

The FBI declined to comment on the matter.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLES:

High-Ranking FBI Official Out After Allegedly Stonewalling Hunter Biden Laptop Probe

President Trump: Declare ‘Rightful Winner’ or ‘New Election’ Over FBI Meddling

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The CDC is Broken and Apologies Can’t Fix It: “We’ve Made Some Mistakes, But NOW You Can Trust Us!”

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

President Trump: Declare ‘Rightful Winner’ or ‘New Election’ Over FBI Meddling thumbnail

President Trump: Declare ‘Rightful Winner’ or ‘New Election’ Over FBI Meddling

By The Geller Report

“This is massive fraud and election interference at a level never seen before in our country.” — President Donald J. Trump, post on TRUTHSocial


Absolutely.

Trump: Declare ‘Rightful Winner’ or ‘New Election’ Over FBI Meddling

By: Eric Mack | Newsmax | 29 August 2022|

Former President Donald Trump is taking his case against FBI “election interference” to the American people — and to a new level — by demanding to be declared the “rightful winner” or “have a new election.”

“So now it comes out, conclusively, that the FBI BURIED THE HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY BEFORE THE ELECTION knowing that, if they didn’t, ‘Trump would have easily won the 2020 Presidential Election,’” Trump wrote Monday in Truth Social.

“This is massive FRAUD & ELECTION INTERFERENCE at a level never seen before in our country.”

Trump added the “remedy” for the 2020 presidential election meddling should be to “declare the rightful winner” or, a minimum, hold a “new election.”

“REMEDY: Declare the rightful winner or, and this would be the minimal solution, declare the 2020 election irreparably compromised and have a new election, immediately!” Trump’s statement concluded.

Trump’s remarks came after a weekend of rebuke of multiple angles of the 2020 presidential election, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg acknowledging the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story came after a visit and warning from the FBI.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLES:

FBI Special Agent Who Opened Trump Investigation Escorted Out of Bureau

Man Interrupts Biden speech, “You stole it [2020 Election]! You stole it, guy! And you’re a pedophile too.”

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

Afghan Refugees in U.S. Are Sending Our Tax Dollars Back to Afghanistan thumbnail

Afghan Refugees in U.S. Are Sending Our Tax Dollars Back to Afghanistan

By Jihad Watch

Not actually a surprise.

Some countries run their entire economies around remittances, promoting mass migration to America, and then profiting from the money sent back to their families. Once we enabled money to enter Taliban territory, this was inevitable.

But this little detail emerges from what is supposed to be a sympathetic profile of Afghan migrants by the Los Angeles Times, but is actually an exercise in entitlement.

In many ways, Musafer said, America has provided him and his family with the safety and opportunity they had hoped for. He quickly found a full-time job at an Apple warehouse. His children — Sefatullah, 18; Rabia, 16; Muqaddas, 12; and Subhanullah, 10 — are enrolled in school. He and Yalda take English-language courses. Many in Yalda’s family immigrated to California several years ago, during an earlier phase of the U.S. occupation, and on weekends the Musafers spend time with her sister’s family, cooking together or exploring Northern California.

But America sucks.

About 10 miles from Musafer’s home, Ali Zafar Mehran questioned why the resettlement process for Afghans hasn’t gone more smoothly. Since arriving in the U.S. in April, Mehran, 36, has struggled to find housing. His caseworker told him that it could take months for the resettlement agency to help him find a place to live.

It can take Americans months to find a place to live. And we do it without subsidies or a government-funded agency.

“This resettlement system and refugee services are not fair,” said Mehran, who worked as a budget advisor for the Justice Sector Support Program — an international partnership with the U.S. and Afghan governments to help reform the Afghan criminal justice system and curb the flow of narcotics. “Some of my friends received good services. But most are in bad situations like me.”

His resettlement agency didn’t help him find a home, he said.

Why should it? The vast majority of people coming to this country don’t have government agencies finding them homes. They have to do that on their own.

He found his current apartment through another friend, who said he knew the leasing office manager in a complex in the Arden Arcade area where many Afghans have resettled.

That’s how it works.

Mehran used his “welcome money,” about $3,500 disbursed by the resettlement agency, to pay for the apartment that he has furnished with hand-me-downs and items he’s salvaged from the street. His wife, Karima, 31 — a former nurse who gave birth to their second daughter after moving to California — sleeps on a mattress he pulled from the trash. The decorative pillow cases that he brought from Afghanistan are also filled with things he found in the garbage.

Mehran works in a warehouse, he got $3,500 in aid and is getting government aid now. Why can’t he afford a mattress for his pregnant wife?

He borrowed roughly $12,000 from friends to purchase a car, a rug and other household items.

Buying the rug is a priority, but your wife can sleep on a mattress from the trash. That’s a cultural value.

“I really didn’t expect it, that life will start like this in the United States,” Mehran said. “I have lots of other problems. I must earn money to send to my parents in Afghanistan.”

Each month, he receives roughly $1,400 from Sacramento County in the form of cash aid and food stamps.

Between a full-time job and $1,400 in state welfare, Mehran might have more money, but he’s sending it to his family who live in Talibanstan. One way or another, the terrorists will get a cut of money brought into Afghanistan.

How much money is he sending to them? We’re not told.

The bottom line though is that Mehran is surly and complaining about the country that took him in and is lavishing cash on him because it’s not doing enough, meanwhile he’s sending money back to his home country.

We haven’t left Afghanistan.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

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Biden’s Open Door to Jihad Terrorists

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

How To Intervene In Tyranny? thumbnail

How To Intervene In Tyranny?

By Anand Ujjwal

The Cause

Why do we have massive governments? Because we have insecure people. They don’t know that they have valuable skills and talents to meaningfully contribute to the free market and generate an income. So they look for jobs that don’t require skills and talents. These generally are administrative and bureaucratic jobs that talented people don’t even consider real jobs. They deep down know that their jobs are meaningless and unneeded. But they have to pay their bills, so they keep justifying to themselves why their jobs are important. In the long run, they feel a lack of purpose/meaning in life. They look for something to stimulate them. This is the beginning of addiction. They soon get trapped.

Imagine if every single tax collector found out that he has massive latent potential that can produce him sustainable income. Taxation would end overnight. Imagine if all insurance agents, day traders, and government bureaucrats found out they can live off their natural talents; it would eliminate a lot of dumb jobs.

Imagine if every single priest/pastor knew that he does not have to do what he is doing and he can be much wealthier living off his talents. He wouldn’t have to call people sinners and play mind games with them.

Imagine if every single public school teacher found out he does not need to teach useless things and he can live his life much more productively. Institutionalized education would become history.

Imagine if every single prostitute knew about her natural talent(s). We wouldn’t have prostitution anymore. The same can be said about people who engage in criminal activities.

No one would do dumb, meaningless, and dangerous jobs if they knew that they are sitting on millions of dollars worth of talent(s). Of course, there are some legitimate priests/pastors and public school teachers, but most just want to hold a job. Most of these people are where they are not because of choice but because of lack of alternatives. They would desert their jobs in a heartbeat if they had a better option. This is how we can liberate them. We tell them the truth that they have latent talent(s) that they have inherited as sons and daughters of Earth.

Evidence of natural talents

All plants and animals on this planet are born with whatever intelligence they need. Apple trees don’t need to be taught how to bear apples. Cats don’t need to be taught how to hunt. Horses don’t need to be taught how to run fast. Cheetahs absolutely don’t need instructions to run at 100 km/hour. Bees don’t need to know how to make honey. Birds don’t need to learn how to sing.

Think about a lion in a cage. Even if you knew that the lion has been in that cage his entire life and no one has ever seen him hunt, you would still be afraid to enter his cage. You know that his natural skills and talents can show up any time. You know his latent potential. Most humans are like caged lions, their cage being societal brainwashing.

I myself did not have to learn a lot of things I write about. It is almost as if I was born knowing them. I know precisely when I figured out who all among my peers would be future bureaucrats. It was in 7th grade. I have vivid memories of a fellow student who did good in class. I wondered why he cared to do good when he obviously wasn’t passionate about learning. I sensed immense insecurity from him as if he knew no one would even acknowledge his existence if he was not good at academics. He was short, unattractive (based on societal definitions), and had only a few friends. Sinking in the social scene, academics was his only hope to stay afloat and be visible. I further noted that most guys who did good academically had very uninspiring social lives. I could sense insecurity from them. Instead of cementing better relationships, they studied hard to prove themselves to the world. I felt like they would grow up to do meaningless jobs since they were able to drudge through boring schoolwork and keep up with mean and disrespectful teachers.

Solution: tell the truth

If we go around telling everyone the truth about their natural talent(s), I hope that people would revert to the person they were before they conceded to a meaningless and uninspiring life. Let’s address how we can find our natural talent(s). One simple method I have described here. Just by saying that you are talented, your talents would start to emerge (read more on the link). If you have ever been ridiculed for saying or doing something in school, that might be it. What people don’t understand they laugh at. If some of your good peers noticed something unique in you, that might be it. Your greatest qualities are qualities you have always had. You had them even in your early memories. Chances are, you grew up thinking that there was nothing unique about them, because you did not have to acquire them. When 12-year-old me told his Judo teammates that he could do 50 pushups, he was asked to demonstrate. I didn’t know it was a big deal. I thought everyone could do it.

You can also conduct a thought experiment to find out your greatest talent(s). Imagine your parents died when you were 12. How would you have survived? What talents would you have relied upon to support yourself? This experiment forces you to go back to a time when you had only your natural talent(s) to help you. You had not yet gathered anything significant from school, college, and work. This is important because there is nothing unique about scholastic learning. Most people go through similar curricula and, thus, possess relatively the same knowledge. To stand out, to be possibly the greatest version of yourself, you must focus on what qualities only you possess. These qualities may come out if you try the above thought experiment.

Why people forget their talents

In toxic cultures, it is common for people to not realize their specialty because most people are busy tearing one another down. This is why, toxic cultures breed criminals, prostitutes, and psychopaths. In my case, my parents heavily gaslighted me by telling me I would understand when I grow up and that I had not experienced enough life. Well, after living in two countries, meeting a lot of people, and reading a lot of books, I discovered that I am, in fact, extraordinary, a word that was often used to describe me by my peers and some teachers at school. Most views I expressed in childhood were correct.

As long as we have people who think they are not talented, we will have unneeded bureaucratic institutions living off the working class. Let’s go out and liberate them from their invisible cages. If we do this, all predatory institutions in the world would run out of labour. Big bureaucratic governments can’t function without insecure people looking for a job.

Endnotes:

Some think that they can defend against tyranny via the use of force. They can use guns or their judicial systems (law is also an insidious use of force), but tyranny cannot be eliminated without eliminating the spiritual cause of tyranny. How do innocent children, who like noodles and video games, grow up to become tyrants, criminals, and their accomplices? They have to be not in love with life. How can we make them fall in love with life again? As long as spiritual gaslighting exists, we will continue to have insecure people. We must neutralize gaslighting with truth. This is a spiritual war. Our defence is the truth.

Global tyranny was not possible before public education. Young adults used to know real skills like weaving, metal works, farming, carpentry, masonry, shoemaking, etc. Now, these skills have largely disappeared. Of course, corporations have played a role in it. Armoured with massive capital from banks and the stock market, they have artificially outpriced local talents and destroyed their markets. People still continue to patronize them and buy their shares, which only empowers them. As public education expands, and more and more adults grow up to become unskilled but educated, we may have a massive problem at hand.

Suggested readings:

The Myth Of Industrialization

How To Make Shoes

To consult with me, send me an email at ua@philosophicallyinclined.com.

©Ujjwal Anand. All rights reserved.

Is California Going to Kill McDonald’s? The Golden Arches leaving the Golden State? thumbnail

Is California Going to Kill McDonald’s? The Golden Arches leaving the Golden State?

By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

One Republican state lawmaker says that McDonald’s warned her that they may stop expanding in California or even abandon the Golden State entirely, if a current proposal becomes law.


“Fight for Fifteen” is old news, it would seem. In California, they may soon have a $22/hour minimum wage—at least for fast food employees.

The “FAST Act” is headed to Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk after recently passing through the state legislature. As the Wall Street Journal reports, it would “create a government panel that would set wages for an estimated half-million fast food workers in the state.”

“The bill would establish a panel with members appointed by the governor and legislative leaders composed of workers, union representatives, employers and business advocates,” the Journal explains. “They would set hourly wages of up to $22 for fast food workers starting next year and can increase them annually by the same rate as the consumer-price index, up to a maximum of 3.5%.”

Basically, a board of political cronies would actually set wages for the state’s fast food sector. This is a dramatic expansion of the government’s reach and would drastically disrupt what market forces remain. It would have several utterly predictable economic consequences that would far outweigh any benefits.

Like all Americans, Californians are struggling with inflation right now. Food, in particular, has become especially unaffordable. The Golden State’s legislative meddling would make this problem worse.

“In a state that already burdens businesses with countless regulations, adding another layer would simply increase costs that ultimately would be borne by consumers,” the US Chamber of Commerce warned in a statement condemning the legislation.

It’s pretty basic economics that when the government imposes unnecessary costs on businesses, some of it will ultimately be borne by consumers. One study found that the proposal could raise fast-food prices by up to 20%.

What’s more, the pro-business Employment Policies Institute commissioned a poll of economists, most of whom identified as independents or Democrats, and received an overwhelmingly negative assessment of the legislation. A whopping 83% opposed the bill, with a supermajority also specifically agreeing it would ultimately lead to higher prices.

The last thing Californian families struggling to put food on the table need right now is a big increase in prices.

While the California commission may attempt to set the minimum wage for fast food employees at up to $22/hour in their state, they will run up against a painful economic reality: the real minimum wage is always $0. It’s unemployment.

“Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount— and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed,” Thomas Sowell explains. “Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they either lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force.”

The simple truth is that many fast food employees do not produce $22/hour in value for their employer.

And, as Milton Friedman explained, to employ someone at a wage above their productivity is “to engage in charity.”

“Most employers are not in a position where they can engage in charity,” the Nobel-Prize-winning economist concluded. “Thus the consequences of minimum wage laws have been almost wholly bad… to increase unemployment and to increase poverty.”

So, while we can’t predict exactly how many, countless fast food employees will lose their jobs altogether thanks to this law that’s supposed to help them.

California is a vast and diverse state. Different parts of the Golden State have wildly different economic conditions, average incomes, price levels, and more. Yet this government commission setting wages would cram a one-size-fits-all regulation concocted by political cronies onto the entire state’s fast food sector.

That’s a recipe for dysfunction. As the Chamber of Commerce put it, “We firmly believe franchisees and other business owners are better equipped to run restaurants in California than unelected political appointees in Sacramento.”

This foolish attempt to commandeer an entire industry would ruin many businesses, leaving their employees and customers worse off as well. It’s estimated that this plan would increase businesses’ labor costs by up to 60 percent, a huge spike that many can’t afford. It doesn’t take an economist to realize that this will lead to store closures, job losses, and economic malaise.

One Republican state lawmaker says that McDonald’s warned her that they may stop expanding in California or even abandon the Golden State entirely. How, exactly, is that supposed to make Californians better off?

The California lawmakers who concocted this proposal might genuinely have good intentions. They may earnestly believe that their plan will help uplift workers. But those good intentions will be cold comfort to the countless thousands of Californians who will ultimately suffer if this legislation becomes law.

AUTHOR

Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education.

WATCH: Nina Turner’s most absurd communist tweets (Brad Reacts)

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

We Must Create A New Reality thumbnail

We Must Create A New Reality

By Anand Ujjwal

Governments around the world made a momentous collective effort to eliminate Covid. Imagine if they did the same to eliminate hunger and homelessness. Cures for both are cheaper and easier to implement. The victims are not infectious.

Recently, the United Nations uploaded an article about the benefits of world hunger. It suggests that world hunger is good because hungry people are desperate enough to work for little to no pay. They have taken it down, but the Wayback machine has already archived it here.

Satirical or real, there is no reason to suggest that elites don’t think like that. Prevailing knowledge in India suggests that casteism emerged from the same line of thought. The nobility kept lower castes out of education to ensure access to cheap labour. Slavery existed in so many countries for the exact same reason. Colonialism happened for the same reason. Modern slavery or wage slavery exists for the exact same reason. Education loans that students can’t declare bankruptcy out of exist for the same reason. Many career coaches advise young graduates to not mention their student loans so employers don’t take advantage of their situation. In several of my articles, I have stated that wages are kept artificially low to help the capital class. Poverty exists because there are people who benefit from poverty. It will exist as long as people who benefit from it exist. This is why I say that 9-5 lifestyle (slave-master relationship) is not normal.

Story time:

When I was 15, I told some of my peers not to go into engineering. They laughed at me. My argument was simple: mass production of engineers via standardized education would devalue engineering to a point that engineers would sell at the price of toast, which has become true today. India keeps exporting its excess produce of engineers all over the world. We still have massive reserves of unemployed engineers. My hypothesis was that the industry needed engineers at low wages to sell more technology.

This was one of the major reasons why I travelled to the US. I wanted to escape standardized education. In the US, I stayed undeclared for as long as I could. I came up with my own individualized program, which my financier (my parents) did not agree with. But I still managed to escape a factory-like education, the result of which is visible in my works.

Growing up, I kept my pessimism to myself, but I saw the spirit of tyranny in most adults, even in parents, who don’t allow their children to read certain books or explore other religions. They want to control their intellectual and spiritual growth.

How can we change this?

We must know that reality is manifested. What happens in the physical is a reflection of what is happening inside us. Society is a microcosm of the individual. Contrary to popular opinion, governments are not the sole problem. Governments are only a small part of the world. They are simply one part of the reality that humanity has collectively manifested. They represent the insecure part of the human spirit. If we want to manifest a different reality, we must change ourselves first.

A simple 60-day challenge:

1. No television

2. No social media

3. No YouTube

If you want to take this a step beyond then:

4. No sugar or salt after sunset

5. Limited to no fast-food

6. No packaged food

7. No smartphone

If can you can’t do the first three for 60 days, you have a serious problem.

If you do the challenge, you will likely not go back to doing the things you quit. Via television, social media, and YouTube, we are being made to feel lower emotions that are keeping us trapped in lower vibrational states. Once we feel a higher emotion, we would never want to return to a lower vibration state. When we change, others change via contagion. This is the creation of a new reality. We all are nodes of creation, creation being decentralized. What songs we collectively sing determine what is being heard throughout the forest, by all her silent beings.

Are you with me!

©Ujjwal Anand. All rights reserved.

60 Minutes Highlights Vulnerabilities of the Electric Grid and Biden Administration Inaction thumbnail

60 Minutes Highlights Vulnerabilities of the Electric Grid and Biden Administration Inaction

By Center For Security Policy

“No one is in charge” of protecting America’s electrical grid, Biden Homeland Security Advisor Dr. Liz Sherwood-Randall told CBS News’ 60 Minutes, during a recent short segment regarding the vulnerability of America’s most critical of critical infrastructures. Sherwood-Randall added that the federal government has no ability to mandate utility companies implement security improvements to the national electric grid.

One of the most troubling aspects of the 60 Minutes segment is that it only scratches the surface of the grid’s vulnerabilities. In reality, the U.S. government has known about these vulnerabilities for more than five decades. The government’s own reports highlighted the cyber insecurity of the critical electric infrastructure since at least 2003; geomagnetic disturbance (GMD) threats since at least 1990the vulnerability of the electric grid to physical threats since at least 1981; and the danger posed by electromagnetic pulse (EMP) threats since at least 1972.

Indeed, the CBS News segment was nearly identical to a previous version which aired exactly six months prior, in February, and featured an expose on the professional assault on a major electrical substation near San Jose that nearly blacked out Silicon Valley, San Francisco in 2013.

Despite consistent recommendations to the Biden Administration and to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and her advisory board, the White House appears to have done nothing to remedy this glaring problem during the six months that have passed between CBS’ two episodes.

If anything, the Administration has put the electric grid at greater risk over the past two years. On his first day in office, Biden suspended Executive Order 13920 (securing the U.S. bulk-power system) which declared “a national emergency with respect to the threat to the United States bulk power system,” and warned “that foreign adversaries are increasingly creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in the United States bulk-power system.”

President Trump issued E.O. 13920 in response to the discovery in 2019 of hardware back doors built into Chinese-made transformers that are critical to the grid’s operations.  According to Latham Saddler, the former Director of Intelligence Programs at the National Security Council in Trump Administration, “they found hardware that was put into that that had the ability for somebody in China to switch it off.”

One of the experts featured in the 60 Minutes episodes was retired U.S. Army Command Sergeant Major Michael Mabee, who has researched and documented the threat posed by Chinese-manufactured transformers.  Mabee has found more than 300 Chinese transformers in the U.S. grid as of last August and the reversal of E.O. 13920 guarantees many more are on the way. Hopefully, CBS will have the courage to air a future segment highlighting this problem.

E.O 13920 was intended to remedy supply chain vulnerabilities because regulators for the bulk power system – The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) –refuse to create or enforce effective regulations with respect to the supply chain and cybersecurity.

Ultimately, neither the government nor the utility industry will accept responsibility for fixing vulnerabilities to the grid until they get the sense that the American people demand it. For example, government and industry forced wind and solar generation upon the grid based on an assumption that these are good for the environment and that Americans want more “clean” power generation. The perception that Americans demand “clean energy” created an environment where policymakers felt compelled to spend taxpayer and ratepayer monies to massively subsidize these forms of power generation.

Currently, there is very little demand by the American people to secure the grid due to an overall

lack of awareness about the its vulnerabilities or the reasons these weaknesses persist – namely effective lobbying by the utility industry to avoid government regulation.

For this reason, two film-makers have set out to shine light on this glaring issue. David Womick is producing The Black Sky Event docuseries, featuring short but thorough segments on each of the threat vectors to the grid.

David Tice recently launched “Grid Down, Power Up”, narrated by actor Dennis Quaid and gives viewers the ability to “participate” by sharing the film with others and by taking action to contact the grid’s regulators and our elected officials.

Fortunately, this is a fixable problem and states don’t have to wait for Washington. But not even state or local leaders will act if they don’t recognize the gravity of the problem. Therefore, it’s up to the people – citizens across the nation – to get smart on the issue and get involved.

AUTHOR

Tommy Waller

Center for Security Policy Executive Vice President.

RELATED VIDEO: Targeting the Electric Grid

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

Woke Corporations Can Abuse Us, But Not for Free thumbnail

Woke Corporations Can Abuse Us, But Not for Free

By The Daily Skirmish – Liberato.US

Last week, Texas put the investment company BlackRock on a list of firms that may not get to manage state pension funds because the firms boycott oil & gas stocks.  BlackRock is trying to get off the list, but the story shows you there are starting to be real-world consequences for companies that go Woke.  It’s a mixed picture right now, with some companies still playing footsie with the Wokemeisters on the radical Left and others leaving the field after being bruised in the culture wars.

Communist-inspired transgenderism is still a corporate favorite.  Disney continues to lead the pack with plans for an upcoming show that will fly the transgender flag and spew the outlandish propaganda that men can have periods, too.  Other companies are not far behind.

Crayola posted an ad featuring a transgender model wearing a chain-link bra over outside clothing in order to normalize transgenderism for the masses.  Then there’s transgender Barbie from Mattel, billboards from Ben & Jerry’s pushing transgenderism in children, donations for transgender surgery for children from the Detroit Tigers, transgender appreciation night from the Milwaukee Brewers, and a book from Pizza Hut telling children as young as four how inspiring it is for boys to dress up as girls and perform for adults in drag shows.  No, this is not normal, and interfering with children’s psycho-sexual development is not healthy for children or society.

Woke corporations are pushing other left-wing causes, too.  Kroger removed pro-American merchandise from its shelves after a left-wing crank complained on Twitter.  American Express pledged another $3 billion for diversity, equity, and inclusion events and programs, bringing the total to $4 billion.  It’s also spending money to support climate change advocacy and illegal immigration.

But in addition to Texas, other people are pushing back.  A former employee sued American Express for firing him because he is white and he objected to the company’s “racially discriminatory” policies.  A new Viewpoint Diversity Score ranks companies on how well they respect freedom of speech and religion.  Microsoft and AirBnB are among the worst.  Another 17 Republican-led states joined Texas in sending a letter to BlackRock accusing the company of putting Woke investment criteria above shareholder returns in state pension funds.  An asset management firm in Ohio promises to take politics out of investing and focus on companies that deliver what they should – business excellence.

People are not only fighting back; they’re winning.  State Farm abandoned its support for a transgender book program for kindergartners in Florida after a national backlash.  Paramount refused to cave in to pressure to censor its old films to conform to today’s Woke standards.   HBO welcomed back Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling despite her stance on transgenderism.  And after PayPal froze the account of Moms for Liberty, a parental rights group – preventing it from receiving donations – Florida announced a new initiative to “prohibit big banks, credit card companies and money transmitters from discriminating against customers for their religious, political, or social beliefs.”

So, as you can see, the price of going Woke is going up. How long will shareholders be willing to pay it?

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

RELATED TWEET:

In Canada, they can jail you for refusing to use the woke language they made up that day.

— Steven Crowder (@scrowder) August 30, 2022

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The Destruction of American Catholic Identity

By The Catholic Thing

Casey Chalk reviews a new book about how, beginning in earnest in the mid-twentieth-century, Catholics traded their parochial, traditionalist, and often ethnic clannishness for the domesticity of bourgeois, suburban America.


American Catholics made a trade. You may not be aware of it or have personally participated in it. But it’s likely, if you’re a Catholic living in the United States in 2022 reading this, you feel its effects (and benefits). And though it may sound bleak, the trade more-or-less destroyed the American Catholic identity familiar to those living just a couple of generations ago.

That’s perhaps the most salient lesson I derived from Christendom history professor Christopher Shannon’s new book, American Pilgrimage: A Historical Journey Through Catholic Life in a New World. Though Shannon’s history covers much ground beyond just the United States, with long early chapters on Spain and France, the sections on England and the United States teach the most important lesson.

First, consider a few numbers. In 1969, when the U.S. population was about 202 million, there were about 60,000 diocesan priests. Today, with a national population of about 330 million, there are fewer than 40,000. And it’s not as if the number of Catholics here declined over that period. Far from it: we increased from about 30 million in 1950 to more than 70 million today (plus another 13 percent of American adults who describe themselves as “ex-Catholics”). The drop is even more stark for women religious: in 1970 there were about 161,000 women religious in the United States; today there are about 42,000.

What happened? According to Shannon’s incisive narrative, those numbers are emblematic of an epochal shift, in which Catholics, beginning in earnest in the mid-twentieth-century, traded their parochial, traditionalist, and often ethnic Catholic clannishness for the domesticity of bourgeois, suburban America. Catholics became just another “denomination” in big-tent American Judeo-Christianity – devout, patriotic, and trustworthy members of America’s civil religion.

How and why that happened is a complicated story beginning in the early years of the Republic, when Catholics like Baltimore archbishop John Carroll (1735-1815) aimed to synthesize “old World faith and New World culture,” as Shannon puts it. It continued through the nineteenth century with prominent Protestant converts to Catholicism, such as Orestes Brownson, who were critical of the insular and often unassimilated ethnic Catholics from Ireland, Germany, and elsewhere.

But it reached its most dramatic moment in presidential candidate John F. Kennedy’s address to the (Protestant) Houston Ministerial Association in 1960. It was there that our first Catholic president declared: “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute. . . .I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair.” Indeed, as Shannon notes: “Aside from attendance at the church of his choice on Sunday, Kennedy could have been any other upper-middle-class white American.”

Of course, Kennedy’s words represented a trend that was already decades old. It was visible in the departure of Catholics from their tight-knit urban parishes for the more anonymous, religiously diverse suburbs. Shannon explains: “The suburbs cut Catholics off from that world and placed them into a social setting where they mixed much more freely with non-Catholics.” And as long as our Catholicism was a private affair, non-Catholics didn’t care.

Suburbia also meant embracing a family life that often looked more Protestant than Catholic. As early as 1952, about half of Catholics had no moral qualms with artificial birth control. That translated to fewer kids for Catholics, who focused their energies on the same kinds of values as their Protestant neighbors: consumerism, physical and emotional fulfillment, and affluent professionalism. “Most Catholics had made their peace with artificial contraception and an increasing number seemed willing to accept legal abortion,” writes Shannon.

There were of course other relevant developments. The “Land O’Lakes Statement” of 1967 sought to modernize and assimilate Catholic academic institutions into the broader secular (or nominally Protestant) American academy. Catholic thinkers like John Courtney Murray, S.J., meanwhile sought to repudiate scholars such as Will Herberg and Paul Blanshard, who claimed that Catholicism and democracy were antithetical. Rather, Murray famously declared, the Founders “built better than they knew.”

Whether we are talking about social, economic, educational, or professional matters, the goal was always the same: develop the habits “required to attain a decent, moderate middle-class lifestyle.” And boy, did we succeed: most Catholics in post-World War II America secured middle-class status. We now comprise a significant percentage of both houses of Congress and a majority of the Supreme Court, and (at least nominally) occupy the White House.

Did we lose anything in the process? Shannon thinks so: “What has decidedly been lost is unity, or better, a sense of people-hood. Despite the rhetorical shift toward understanding the Church as the ‘people of God,’ there are few if any ways in which Catholics stand apart from other Americans to identify themselves as people.” There’s also the depressing fact that ex-Catholics make up the nation’s second-largest religious demographic. The more we tried to be like middle-class Protestants, the less we cared to be serious Catholics.

More radically, the recent secularized intellectual and cultural offshoots of Protestantism – progressivism, the sexual revolution (culminating in the LGBT+ orthodoxy), and racial activism – have imposed themselves on the American public, including Catholics.

In one of his most astute observations, Shannon notes: “Soon after Kennedy declared that his faith was a totally private matter, various strains of the counterculture rallied around the slogan ‘the personal is political.’” Catholics got bourgeois respectability, but we let the post-Protestant Left impose their anti-Christian ideologies on the American people, including millions of Catholic kids in the nation’s public schools. “Religious pluralism seemed to require a privatization of faith, or at least those aspects of the faith that set Catholics apart from the universally American.”

Perhaps this trade was in certain respects inevitable. Catholics weren’t going to live in ethnic ghettos forever. And however much we can be cynical about the materialist nature of the exchange, what parents don’t want their children to do better professionally and economically? The more urgent challenge, however, is ensuring they do spiritually better as well.

You may also enjoy:

David G. Bonagura Jr.’s Catholic Schools and the Woke Revolution

Brad Miner’s “Practicing” Catholics

AUTHOR

Casey Chalk

Casey Chalk is a contributor for Crisis MagazineThe American Conservative, and New Oxford Review. He has degrees in history and teaching from the University of Virginia and a master’s in theology from Christendom College.

RELATED ARTICLES:

The Destruction of American Catholic Identity – Tuesday, August 30, 2022

Beauty: Not in the Eye of the Beholder – Saturday, June 11, 2022

The Jewish Difference and the Difference It Makes – Monday, April 4, 2022

Liturgy and Imbecility – Wednesday, January 26, 2022

Mary and the Protestants – Thursday, September 16, 2021

How We Lost the Bible – Wednesday, August 4, 2021

Catholicism and the Whole Truth – Tuesday, January 5, 2021

Diagnosing the Modern Self – and the Cure – Monday, December 21, 2020

A “Woke” Examination of Conscience – Wednesday, November 11, 2020

The Church and Jayber Crow – Wednesday, September 30, 2020

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2022 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

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CNN Medical Analyst Says Masking Stunted Her Toddler’s Language Development—and Taught Her an Important Lesson about Tradeoffs

By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

A year ago, Dr. Leana Wen was arguing unvaccinated people shouldn’t be allowed to leave their homes. But now she says she’s abandoned her “extremely cautious” Covid views.


During the 1960s, the phrase “the personal is political” became a rallying cry for second-wave feminists challenging the social framework that existed at the time.

There was an unhealthy collectivist undercurrent to this idea—“There are no personal solutions at this time,” wrote Women’s Liberation Movement member Carol Hanisch in an essay on the topic, “There is only collective action for a collective solution”—but the phrase also contains an element of truth.

Personal experience does play an undeniable role in how many humans perceive politics and social structures, which brings me to CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen.

Throughout the pandemic, Wen was in what I’ll call the “pro-mandate” camp.

In March 2021, she excoriated governors who rescinded or failed to pass mask mandates in their states.

“We are not out of the woods. We haven’t reached the end of the pandemic,” Wen said in a pro-mask CNN piece. “It’s counterproductive and truly infuriating these governors are treating this as if the pandemic is over. It’s not true.”

Later that year, she went so far as to argue that unvaccinated people shouldn’t be allowed to leave their homes.

“We need to start looking at the choice to remain unvaccinated the same as we look at driving while intoxicated,” Wen told CNN’s Chris Cuomo. “You have the option to not get vaccinated if you want, but then you can’t go out in public.”

.@DrLeanaWen: “There are privileges associated with being an American. That if you wish to have these privileges, you need to get vaccinated. Travel, and having the right to travel in our state, it’s not a constitutional right as far as I know to board a plane.” pic.twitter.com/eyhEVooV20

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 10, 2021

A year later, Wen’s views have changed. In a recent Washington Post article, she explained why she’ll no longer be masking her children and how she shifted away from “being extremely cautious” with Covid protocols.

“I accept the risk that my kids will probably contract covid-19 this school year, just as they could contract the flu, respiratory syncytial virus and other contagious diseases,” she writes. “As for most Americans, covid in our family will almost certainly be mild; and, like most Americans, we’ve made the decision that following precautions strict enough to prevent the highly contagious BA.5 will be very challenging.”

Wen’s observations are not wrong. The new variants are less deadly, and this is particularly true for children, which has always been the case.

A year ago, when Wen was still advocating strict mandates, we pointed out that the CDC’s own data showed small children were at far greater risk of dying from the flu, drowning, vehicle collisions, cancer, and other things than Covid.

This data, for whatever reason, apparently did little to persuade Wen in 2021, however. What does appear to have changed her mind is that her child appears to have suffered from the mandates.

“Masking has harmed our son’s language development,” she bluntly asserts in the article.

Throughout the pandemic, few policies have been debated with more fury than mask mandates. The vast majority of these debates focus on a single point: does masking prevent or even reduce Covid transmission? Some studies say yes, others cast doubt on their efficacy.

For many, however, the efficacy of masking became a sort of dogma that could not even be questioned. (If you doubt this, consider that until a few days ago one faced risk of suspension on YouTube for suggesting that masks don’t play a role in preventing Covid transmission.)

Far less discussion focused on the costs of forcing people to wear masks, and Wen now sees this as a mistake.

“There is a tradeoff,” Wen says.

Many on Twitter have asked–how did I go from being extremely cautious with #covid19 precautions for nearly two years to now resuming pre-pandemic activities, including not masking my young kids at school?

I explain in this @postopinions column 🧵: https://t.co/3UGUxWvCH7

— Leana Wen, M.D. (@DrLeanaWen) August 23, 2022

Many, however, refused to acknowledge this and argued that masking is simply a moral imperative. I recently had a discussion at a family gathering with a person who supports mask mandates. He became indignant when my sister-in-law said she didn’t think it was right to force her children to wear masks at school all day long.

“It’s about protecting others,” he said. “It’s the smallest thing.”

The fact that he was not wearing a mask himself as he said this didn’t seem the least bit ironic to him, but it proved Wen’s point: there are tradeoffs. (If there was not, we’d wear them all the time.)

The idea of tradeoffs is perhaps the most basic principle in all of economics. It’s rooted in a simple idea: in order to have or do one thing, one must sacrifice having or doing something else. All things come with opportunity costs, big and small. (A minor tradeoff with masking is simply being able to breathe more freely.)

For most of the pandemic, many Americans and most public health officials refused to acknowledge the reality of tradeoffs. In 2021, The New York Times described a phenomenon known as “Covid Absolutism.” It consists of two primary factors: 1. Taking every conceivable step that could reduce the spread of Covid regardless of its actual effectiveness; 2. Downplaying or ignoring the unintended consequences and tradeoffs of these policies.

There is an important difference between taking steps that *appear* to reduce the spread of Covid and taking steps that actually reduce the spread of Covid.

A thread…

— David Leonhardt (@DLeonhardt) February 12, 2021

Basic economics, however, teaches us the folly of this thinking.

“There are no solutions, there are only trade-offs,” Thomas Sowell famously observed.

This was the economic lesson Wen learned during the pandemic. She didn’t learn it in a classroom or in a textbook. She learned it in her personal experience when her own child began to struggle with language development (not a minor tradeoff), just like countless other children.

Writing in The Atlantic, Stephanie Murray also wrote about the reality of tradeoffs, stating that many parents with youngsters who are struggling see the potential benefits of masking as a poor trade for what they lose developmentally.

“Children with speech or language disorders offer perhaps the clearest example of these murky trade-offs,” she writes.

This is precisely why decision-making must be left to individuals, not bureaucrats. Nobody is more capable of weighing the pros and cons of a trade or action better than the people who themselves stand to lose or benefit from that trade or action (or in this care, their parents).

Dr. Wen no doubt knows a great deal about public health, just like Anthony Fauci and Rochelle P. Walensky. But even Fauci and Walensky, I suspect, would concede that it’s Wen who knows what’s better for her child.

It must be stressed that it’s not just that Wen wants what’s best for her child. It’s that she actually knows what’s best for her child because she has infinitely more knowledge about her child than any distant bureaucrat or meddling politician could ever possess.

Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek detailed this “local knowledge” concept in his work exploring “the knowledge problem,” and he showed why central planners seeking to engineer society through force are capable of producing little beyond “planned chaos.” This is why it’s so important that freedom of decision-making is left to those who have the most local knowledge and can most accurately assess the risks and rewards of any given action.

The good news is that Wen, to her credit, appears to have learned something throughout the tragedy of the Covid pandemic, as have so many others.

The tragedy is that for so long she overlooked tradeoffs and used her platform to advocate coercive policies that deprived individuals of the ability to choose, a tragedy that is compounded by the fact that Wen now finds herself a target of cancellation for advocating a more sensible approach.

I’m on 3 immunosuppressants. COVID’s been scary.

I never talk about this. Until I saw 600 experts publicly compare @DrLeanaWen to a supporter of eugenics bc she’s come to oppose mandates.

They’re doing this in the name of folks like me. I’d like to tell you why they’re wrong.

— Billy Binion (@billybinion) August 25, 2022

It’s an ironic twist considering that only a year ago Wen herself was a proponent of confining unvaccinated people to their homes, and not one we should celebrate.

But hopefully it can be a learning experience for Wen and others, who now recognize the danger in turning what should be individual decisions over to bureaucrats and political tribes.

AUTHOR

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

RELATED ARTICLE: The CDC is Broken and Apologies Can’t Fix It: “We’ve Made Some Mistakes, But NOW You Can Trust Us!”

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

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Understanding the Dangers of Ambien Addiction

By Kevin Morris Delphi Behavioral Health Group

Certain places have achieved the status of “The City that Never Sleeps.” New York City is the most famous example of this. It’s a place where the lights are always on, and there are always things to do. However, many of us could describe ourselves as people who never sleep, and it has nothing to do with city life. Instead, it has to do with problems of insomnia and other sleep disorders. Ambien has risen to the occasion as a miracle drug to combat sleep disorders, and its popularity cannot be downplayed. But what are its dangers, and just how addictive is this sedative drug?

Sleep at What Cost?

Ambien’s website wastes no time describing the complex problem of insomnia. The claim is that 30 percent of Americans have trouble falling asleep, and if you fall into this one-in-three category, it’s time to talk to your doctor about this drug, which people have turned to “for more than two decades.” It’s a strong statement, and it communicates two things to the average reader: Sleep problems are common to many of us, and Ambien is a time-tested option to help you get to sleep.

It is true that roughly one in three people have at least mild insomnia. However, it’s important to know that the idea of time-tested sleep aids is a much more rocky journey than it might sound. The story of sleep aids is very much a story of ongoing sedative drug addiction. Early on, people used barbiturates to try to relieve their insomnia. Over time, however, medical professionals and others discovered these drugs caused significant side effects, including behavior disturbances, severe addiction, and withdrawal symptoms.

The 1960s saw a shift from barbiturates to benzodiazepines, a drug that was believed to be much safer but ended up causing the same tendency of addiction and withdrawal. In fact, as the most commonly prescribed drug in the world at one time, benzos arguably caused even greater damage than their barbiturate predecessors. This is where the era of Z-drugs begins, with Ambien leading the way as the No. 1 sleeping pill on the market.

Unfortunately, over two decades of Ambien use have taught us a different story than the idea of time-tested reliability; Ambien can be very addictive with withdrawal symptoms that can be medically dangerous. This seems contrary to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)’s scheduling of Ambien, classifying it as a Schedule IV with a “low potential for abuse.” However, in 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave Ambien a black box warning, along with other sleeping medications, such as Lunesta and Sonata. The FDA’s black box is its strongest warning label for drugs that can have serious or life-threatening side effects.

DUIs and Fading Memories

Besides the initial danger of being an addictive drug, what are some examples of Ambien’s serious and life-threatening side effects? Two main side effects that come up in headlines quite often are intoxication and memory loss. Intoxication might sound surprising, but it’s true that DUIs are no longer limited to alcohol. Ambien’s effects are truly intoxicating, causing people to black out, hallucinate, and even drift in and out of consciousness. People under the influence of Ambien can begin to experience these side effects while driving, or these side effects can lead them to get behind the wheel without realizing what they are doing. Because of this, the term has been coined “sleep-driving.” More and more deadly car crash stories involving Ambien are coming to light.

This also connects the problem of Ambien-induced intoxication to the problem of memory loss. Public indecency and even sexual assault cases have occurred under the influence of Ambien. Some defendants claim they have no memory of committing these crimes. Some suggest that this is true, while others claim that these statements are taking advantage of another known side effect of Ambien: memory loss. Ambien is a central nervous system (CNS) depressant.

The drug activates a receptor in the brain that suppresses the firing rate of other neurons, slowing down activity in the central nervous system. This is Ambien’s sedation process, which is how it helps people fall asleep. But this process also reduces the activity of neurons responsible for learning, memory, and decision-making. A whole host of factors can intensify this problem (other drug use, age, metabolism, physical health, etc.). Ambien’s short half-life means people can wake up while still experiencing the other sedative effects. In some cases, memory loss is limited to what someone did while under Ambien’s influence. Still, abuse and long-term use of the drug can lead to a permanent decline in memory, including dementia.

What to Do

There’s no doubt that Ambien is widely sought after and widely abused. Ambien’s website states that the drug is meant to be used for “short-term” treatment, but the reality is people who are desperate enough to cure their sleep problems with medication are unlikely to limit prescription drug use to short-term. They may think, “if it’s working, why stop?” But using the drug for longer periods than prescribed only increases the risk of negative side effects and developing a substance use disorder with Ambien. If you or someone you know is actively using Ambien— especially if you were unaware of this information—it’s important to consider the risks involved. If an addiction has been formed, be sure to get professional medical help right away.

©Kevin Morris. All rights reserved.

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Ambien. (n.d.) Ambien Homepage. Retrieved https://www.ambien.com/

Sleep Health Foundation. (2011). Insomnia. Retrieved https://sleephealthfoundation.org.au/pdfs/Insomnia.pdf

Delphi Health Group. (n.d) Sedative Addiction. Retrieved https://delphihealthgroup.com/sedatives/

Delphi Health Group. (n.d) The Effects and Dangers of Mixing Alcohol With Ambien. Retrieved https://delphihealthgroup.com/alcohol/mixing-with-ambien/

Delphi Health Group. (n.d.). Guide to Benzodiazepine Addiction and Treatment. Retrieved https://delphihealthgroup.com/benzodiazepines/

Delphi Health Group. (n.d.). Ambien Addiction Guide. Retrieved https://delphihealthgroup.com/sedatives/ambien/

DEA (2018 Jul 10). Drug Scheduling. Retrieved. https://www.dea.gov/drug-information/drug-scheduling

Healthline. (2019 May 2). FDA Issues ‘Black Box’ Warning on Sleep Aids Like Ambien: What You Need to Know. Retrieved https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-fda-issued-a-black-box-warning-for-sleep-aids-such-as-ambien

Delphi Health Group. (n.d) Guide to Alcohol Detox: Severity, Dangers, and Timeline. Retrieved https://delphihealthgroup.com/alcohol/detox/

Harvard Health. (n.d.). Sleep Driving and Other Unusual Practices During Sleep. Retrieved https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/sleep-driving-and-other-unusual-practices-during-sleep-2019091617754

CBS Boston. (2022, Jun 1). Man charged with groping 2 women on flight from Los Angeles to Boston. Retrieved https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/california-man-charged-groping-women-flight-boston/

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Delphi Health Group. (n.d.). Guide to Drug Addiction: Symptoms, Signs, and Treatment. Retrieved https://delphihealthgroup.com/addiction/

Healthline. (2019, June 29). Lunesta vs. Ambien: Two Short-Term Treatments for Insomnia. Retrieved https://www.healthline.com/health/healthy-sleep/lunesta-vs-ambien

Governor Ron DeSantis on the Recommendation of a Grand Jury Removes 4 Broward County School Board Members thumbnail

Governor Ron DeSantis on the Recommendation of a Grand Jury Removes 4 Broward County School Board Members

By Royal A. Brown III

The gross negligence surrounding the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shootings in March 2018 was astounding including failures by the School District, the local FBI, the Broward Cowards in the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, including Sheriff Israel, and even the Administrator’s of the High School itself.

Parents of children murdered sued the School District for negligence and received $130 million after settling with the Department of Justice.

Remember that the School District had taken a large Grant from Obama/Holder called the “Promises Program” to suppress the criminal activity of minority students including the killer Cruz.  Also both the Broward County Sheriff’s Office and FBI had numerous reports on social media warning about Cruz that they failed to follow up on.  Sheriff Israel had a terrible policy in regard to response to active shootings; his Deputy stationed at the school was a coward hiding behind those policies and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Administration failed in many ways.

These terrible mass murders were preventable.

This was outlined in the Special Commission’s Report on the shootings.

Sadly, the result was a knee jerk reaction by Republicans under pressure in the Legislature to quickly drum up a Red Flag Law modeled after existing Blue State Laws which reduced the rights of law abiding gun owners.

DeSantis removes more local elected officials from office. This time, it’s school board members

Zac Anderson Tallahassee Democrat:

Gov. Ron DeSantis is removing more local elected officials from office, this time on the recommendation of a grand jury.

DeSantis announced Friday he is removing Broward County School Board members Patricia Good, Donna Korn, Ann Murray and Laurie Rich Levinson. They serve the nation’s sixth-largest school district and second-largest in Florida.

A grand jury investigating school safety issues in the wake of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County recommended that the school board members be removed. The grand jury accused the elected officials of “incompetence and neglect of duty.”

“We recommend that the Governor remove them from their elected offices,” the grand jury report states.

DeSantis immediately appointed four people to replace the suspended school board members:

  • Torey Alston, a former Broward County commissioner and president of Indelible Solutions;
  • Manual “Nandy” A. Serrano, a member of the Florida Sports Foundation Board of Directors, and CEO and Founder of Clubhouse Private Wealth;
  • Ryan Reiter, a U.S. Marine veteran and Director of Government Relations for Kaufman Lynn Construction;
  • Kevin Tynan, an attorney who previously served on the Broward County School Board and South Broward Hospital District.

©Royal A. Brown III. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: DeSantis suspends Democratic state attorney he accuses of being ‘woke,’ not enforcing laws

America First Declares the Dade County Florida Republican Party Dead, Less Than 19% Voter Turnout in August Primary Election thumbnail

America First Declares the Dade County Florida Republican Party Dead, Less Than 19% Voter Turnout in August Primary Election

By Dr. Rich Swier

WASHINGTON, D.C. /PRNewswire/ — America First declares the Dade County Florida Republican Party dead. Less than 19% of registered Republican voters participated in the August primary elections, allowing the RINO’s Republicans Carlos GimenezMaria Salazar and Mario Diaz-Balart to slither through once again on questionable Mail in Ballots and virtually no voter turnout.

Disgusted Republican voters have simply given up on the corrupt Republican Party, which is infested with Socialist Democrats. The Republican party is failing on all fronts and the voter base has lost confidence and quit.

Case in point, over 82% of Republican Voters in Florida 28th Congressional District did not even bother to vote in the Primary. The corrupt Republican Party continues to prop-up failing RINO Carlos Gimenez otherwise known as a Socialist Democrat. Gimenez has a long record of supporting radical socialist policy, dating back to his time as Miami-Dade Mayor.

As Miami-Dade Mayor, RINO Gimenez locked down and destroyed small businesses during Covid. Gimenez was also tainted with corruption and ethics accusations including unauthorized business dealings with Communist China.

In Washington, D.C., RINO Gimenez has voted with Nancy Pelosi and the radical leftists. Gimenez defended disgraced Liz Cheney after she voted in favor of the ‘Sham Impeachment’ against Donald Trump.

RINO Gimenez has openly voted the radical Democrats in Congress on ‘Unconstitutional Issues’ too many times and continues to support a socialist agenda:

  • RINO Gimenez openly supported and Voted for Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Agenda in 2016;
  • RINO Gimenez also voted for the ‘January 6‘ Democrat ‘Witch Hunt’ against American Citizens and Republican voters;
  • RINO Gimenez voted with Nancy Pelosi and the radical Democrats on H.R. 550, to allow the federal government to create a database, track unvaccinated Americans, who could be targeted, segregated, discriminated against, and forced to comply with vaccination mandates;
  • RINO Gimenez voted with Nancy Pelosi and the radical Democrats on Anti-Second Amendment legislation HR-8, making it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to purchase, own, carry, and use a firearm;
  • RINO Gimenez voted with Nancy Pelosi and the radical Democrats on H.R. 6 for ‘Open Borders and Amnesty’ to over 20 million criminal illegal aliens, which would permanently avoid deportation, obtain a pathway to citizenship, and full voting rights;
  • RINO Gimenez also voted with Nancy Pelosi and the radical Democrats to strip Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of all Congressional Committee positions.
  • RINO Gimenez voted with Nancy Pelosi and the radical Democrats on the wasteful $1.5 Trillion wasteful socialist spending bill packed with billions in earmarks (Pork);
  • RINO Gimenez voted with Nancy Pelosi and the radical Democrats to codify homosexual marriage into federal law, overturning voter-approved measures in more than 30 states.

About America First Political Committee

Our mission is to protect the integrity of the U.S. Constitution, promote conservative political candidates and policy that puts America First.

©America First. All rights reserved.

TikTok’s New ‘Elections Center’ Is A Massive Threat To National Security thumbnail

TikTok’s New ‘Elections Center’ Is A Massive Threat To National Security

By Emily Jashinksy

That we’ve forfeited this much control to a hostile foreign power is one of the most mind-boggling, slow-motion political blunders in modern history.

TikTok just unveiled an “Elections Center” that will put detailed voter profiles in the hands of a company based in Beijing, stocked with party members and state employees, subject to laws that allow the Chinese government data access. Given the Chinese Communist Party’s influence over ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, China could exercise enormous control over the midterm elections with this data. What’s worse is that American institutions are actively encouraging TikTok to do this.

By law, ByteDance is required to give China access to its data upon request. TikTok claims such requests would be rejected, but there is no way to know whether that’s true. We do, however, know that members of the CCP actually work for ByteDance. We also know TikTok’s data has been accessed in China, despite the company’s claims. Finally, we know TikTok is currently the most popular social network in America.

Last week, TikTok boasted in a press release about the creation of its new Elections Center. The center will influence American elections on two fronts: by providing voter information and countering “misinformation.” The first front means TikTok will have voting profiles on all American users who click through the Elections Center, and the second front means a Chinese company will be policing our political discourse on the single most popular social network.

Data

According to TikTok, the center will “connect people who engage with election content to authoritative information and sources in more than 45 languages.” That may sound lovely, but it means when users select their state and click “register to vote,” TikTok can now cross-reference their location and interest in voting with their age, political leanings, and other attributes that can be gleaned from its vast trove of data.

Why does that matter? Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology and “The Social Dilemma” joined “The Federalist Radio Hour” last week to outline the threats posed by TikTok. With the app’s data, Harris explained, China “can look at all the voting districts in the swing states and … can basically look at people’s sentiments with an AI that calculates what people’s opinions are in all the key voting areas.

Then, added Harris, China “can strategically up-regulate everybody who starts to say, you know, China’s really not so bad.”

“If China were to invade Taiwan tomorrow, they could up-regulate all the American voices who are saying that Taiwan was always a part of China,” Harris noted. (Listen to Elbridge Colby’s recent appearance on “The Federalist Radio Hour” to get a sense of how fragile this relationship really is.) That could be done on a local, state, or national scale on a variety of issues.

This is hypothetical, to be sure, but it’s a tool we’re simply hoping a hostile foreign power will not utilize. Imagine China knows there are a handful of likely Mark Kelly voters in a certain area of Arizona. TikTok could feed them content that could, in turn, encourage more Democrat-leaning users to vote against Blake Masters or feed likely voters who consume conservative content videos that might depress turnout for Masters.

Perhaps there are disincentives for the CCP to actually weaponize TikTok data: It could leak and escalate conflict outside the party’s control; it could harm the bottom line of one of their most powerful companies; it could jeopardize the long-term control China has over the American public’s social and individual health through the app.

There is no guarantee China will weaponize this data now or in the future, but there is absolutely no reason for us to willingly forfeit it either. The risk is not remotely worth whatever reward American consumers think they’re getting.

On the “misinformation” front, it’s obviously bad enough that Big Tech companies based in America or China now believe it’s their duty to police the public discourse. But it’s also in China’s interest to foment cultural discord and hamper politicians who might undercut their geopolitical aspirations. Controlling the rhetoric Americans are allowed to post and see on one of the most popular sources of discussion and information is a major advantage for China.

Would the CCP hand marching orders to ByteDance and TikTok? Maybe, but they also wouldn’t have to be explicit. The overwhelming ideology of censors is one that favors leftism and opposes everything else. The information that gets powerfully suppressed almost always counters the political establishment, whether it’s on transgenderism, race, election integrity, Covid policies, or China.

It’s bad enough a major corporation exerts this much control over the discourse at all, let alone in an election cycle, let alone one owned by China. Whether based in America or overseas, social media makes us less happy and less healthy basically across the board. That we’ve forfeited this much control to a hostile foreign power is one of the most mind-boggling, slow-motion political blunders in modern history.

American Partners

Instead of collective opposition to this transparent data suck, American institutions actually helped and endorsed TikTok’s creation of the Elections Center. TikTok partnered with the National Association of Secretaries of State, Ballotpedia, the Campus Vote Project, and the Federal Voting Assistance Program, among other organizations, to “provide information” on the hub.

The Federal Voting Assistance Program, for example, is a taxpayer-funded government group that “works to ensure Service members, their eligible family members, and overseas citizens are aware of their right to vote and have the tools and resources to successfully do so — from anywhere in the world.” This is a wonderful mission, but whoever authorized the TikTok partnership at FVAP made a bad decision, one that could ultimately help China draw us into a military conflict and gain the upper hand when it comes to influencing public opinion.

It should be an embarrassment for any of these groups to affiliate with TikTok at all, particularly on this effort.

The Threat

Around the time TikTok announced the Elections Center, Forbes reported that “three hundred current employees at TikTok and its parent company ByteDance previously worked for Chinese state media publications, according to public employee LinkedIn profiles.”

Forbes found that 50 of those profiles “specifically mentioned work on TikTok, in areas including policy, strategy, operations, monetization, user experience and localization.” Last month, TikTok confirmed an explosive Buzzfeed report that found U.S. user data had been accessed in China. In 2020, the Department of Justice found that 130 members of the CCP worked for ByteDance in Beijing.

TikTok is furiously working on “Project Texas,” an internal mission to emphasize its independence from Beijing. In the same week TikTok unveiled the Elections Center, Axios reported that Oracle started “vetting TikTok’s algorithms and content moderation models to ensure they aren’t manipulated by Chinese authorities,” now that its data had been routed into Oracle’s cloud.

This still puts valuable data and public influence in the hands of yet another private entity, which may not even be able to detect algorithm manipulation that benefits China when it’s less overtly political and more subtle, like the promotion of trans ideology, anti-Americanism, and more. It also doesn’t ensure Oracle would catch short-term election interference before damage is done.

Earlier this summer, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., tried to turn Rep. Val Demings’, D-Fla., use of TikTok into a political liability by running an ad on her use of the app. In a sane society, that argument would be a layup. Unfortunately, in a country with tens of millions of daily TikTok users and an elite class of clapping seals more interested in suppressing the unwashed masses than countering China, it probably is not. Shortly after taking office, President Joe Biden actually rescinded former President Donald Trump’s attempted ban on TikTok, despite his party’s incessant posturing about election integrity.

Social media is a public health crisis. Every person who uses TikTok and every organization that partners with it or sends advertising money onto the platform is boosting authoritarian China’s control over our individual well-being, our society, and our world. The company’s new Elections Center underscores the urgency of this threat, putting detailed voter profiles and algorithmic control of a massive platform at the fingertips of a company staffed with loyalists to a hostile foreign government.

*****

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

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

Tucson’s Mayor v. Miami’s Mayor thumbnail

Tucson’s Mayor v. Miami’s Mayor

By Craig J. Cantoni

The only thing that the two mayors have in common is a Spanish surname

Tucson, Arizona, and Miami, Florida, are similar in some respects and quite different in others.  One of the differences, as will be discussed momentarily, is the thinking of their respective mayors, both of whom have Spanish surnames, which is about all they have in common.

First, the similarities between Tucson and Miami:

Both are similar in population:  543,242 for Tucson, and 439,890 for Miami

Both have high crime rates:  On a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being safest, Tucson gets a score of 6, versus a 10 for Miami.  In terms of the number of crimes per 1,000 population, Tucson has a rate of 43.93, versus Miami’s rate of 35.70 (source:  NeighborhoodScout.com).

Both have a high percent of Latinos:  44.2% for Tucson, versus 72.5% for Miami.

Both have higher poverty rates than the national rate of 11.4%, but Tucson’s rate of 20.8% is significantly higher than Miami’s rate of 15.0%.

Both have a median household income that is lower than the national median of $67,463:  $45,227 for Tucson, and $53,975 for Miami.

Now, the differences between Tucson and Miami:

Geographic location is the most obvious difference.  One city is in a dry inland desert; the other is on a humid coast.  One city is close to Mexico; the other is close to the Caribbean.  One city has some international trade with Mexico; the other is a major center of trade with Latin America.

On the last point, Miami International Airport has the most international passengers in the United States, at about 13 million per year.  The number of international passengers for Tucson International Airport could not be found, but the airport has 1.3 million passengers per year in total, both domestic and international, and only five international flights per day, all of them to Mexico.

Another difference, one with long-range implications and the subject of the rest of this commentary, is the thinking of the mayors of the two cities.

In short, Miami Mayor Francis X. Suarez is a visionary, a great cheerleader for his city, an unrelenting advocate for economic growth, and a salesman par excellence in convincing big companies to relocate to the city.  By contrast, Tucson Mayor Regina Romero is provincial, non-visionary, and seemingly disinterested in economic growth or in selling big companies on relocating to the city, which may explain why they tend to bypass Tucson.

There’s not much else to say about Romero, because she’s not in the national business press and hasn’t said much that is noteworthy.  In her State of the City address, she focused on climate change, sustainability, and an initiative to plant one million trees to fight global warming.  She also mentioned public safety but didn’t appear to understand the relationship between high crime and high poverty, or the relationship between high poverty and economic stagnation.  On other occasions, she has hinted at a desire to make Tucson a de facto sanctuary city.

In stark contrast, Suarez has received positive coverage in the business press, including in the Wall Street Journal.  On July 9, 2022, for example, the journal ran a front-page story of 2,361 words on what Suarez was doing to make Miami a business destination.  And on August 21, 2022, it ran a commentary by the mayor.

An aside:  The Wall Street Journal has published seven commentaries of mine.  If a relatively unknown like myself can get published in the journal, it would seem that the mayor of Tucson also could.  One wonders if it has even crossed her mind to use the business press to make a name for Tucson, or if she or her staff even have familiarity with the business world and its culture.

When Suarez became mayor in 2017, he pledged “to make Miami a city where everyone can have an opportunity to succeed by having access to the jobs of tomorrow.”  He reinforced the pledge and made national headlines in December 2020, when he responded to a techie who had tweeted on Twitter that Silicon Valley should relocate to Miami. The mayor tweeted back, “How can I help?”  The tweet went viral.

In his recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Suarez explained that there is a competition in America between two philosophies of government.  To quote:

On one side, we have the socialist model:  high taxes, high regulation, less competition and declining public services with government imposing itself as the solver and arbiter of all social problems.  On the other side, we have the Miami model:  low taxes, low regulation and a commitment to public safety and private enterprise.  The models present a stark choice on issues ranging from personal freedom, economic opportunity, public safety and the role of government.

Suarez is a partisan Republican, a fact that runs against my preference for nonpartisan elections and government at the municipal level, such as the nonpartisan elections and government in Scottsdale, Arizona, a city of 241,361 where I formerly lived—and where the government was efficient, effective and visionary.

Tucson Mayor Romero is a partisan Democrat, and the city and the surrounding county have been Democrat bastions for decades.

Who is the better mayor with the better model of governance?  You be the judge.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

Judge Chastises DoD, Marine Corps in Order Granting Class Action Status in Vaccine Mandate Case thumbnail

Judge Chastises DoD, Marine Corps in Order Granting Class Action Status in Vaccine Mandate Case

By Bethany Blankley

U.S District Court Judge Steven Merryday issued a blistering rebuke of the Department of Defense and Marine Corps for refusing to grant religious accommodation requests to service members.

Merryday did so when issuing a 48-page ruling Thursday in which he granted class-action status for all active and reserve U.S. Marine Corps service men and women in a lawsuit filed against the Secretary of Defense over the department’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

He also issued a classwide preliminary injunction against the Department of Defense and the U.S. Marine Corps, prohibiting them “from enforcing against a member of the class any order, requirement, or rule to accept COVID-19 vaccination; from separating or discharging from the Marine Corps a member of the class who declines COVID-19 vaccination; and from retaliating against a member of the class for the member’s asserting statutory rights under RFRA [Religious Freedom Restoration Act].”

The class includes everyone “on active duty or in the ready reserve who serve under the command of the Marine Corps; who were affirmed by a chaplain as harboring a sincere religious objection; who timely submitted an initial request for a religious accommodation; who were denied the initial request; who timely appealed the denial of the initial request; and who were denied or will be denied after appeal.”

In his order, Merryday points out that 3,733 Marines had requested religious accommodations and only 11 were granted to those who’d already put in for retirement. He then asked, “Is it more likely than not – in nearly all 3,733 cases – that no reasonable accommodation was available?

“Because the record reveals the substantial likelihood of a systemic failure by the Marine Corps to discharge the obligations established by RFRA,” he said.

Merryday said he issued the class-wide preliminary injunction “to preserve the status quo, to permit the full development of the record without prejudice to the plaintiffs, and to permit both a trial and a detailed, fact-based resolution of the controlling issues of fact and law.”

He also chastised the Department of Defense and Marine Corps for refusing to grant religious accommodation requests, adding that it was the court’s responsibility to uphold the law when generals won’t.

“When Congress acts to preserve liberty, especially a liberty historically and constitutionally fundamental to the United States, the courts – the intended preserve of liberty – must not evade or equivocate, must not, so to speak, sacrifice the fundamental right of thousands of privates to Free Exercise in order to gratify the preference of a few generals.”

Government attorneys have argued the federal court doesn’t have jurisdiction to rule on military decisions. The Marine Corps has repeatedly asserted that, ‘The Supreme Court has made clear: ‘Judges are not given the task of running the Army,’” citing Orloff v. Willoughby, 345 U.S. 83, 93 (1953), which was decided 40 years before RFRA was enacted.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin maintains the mandate is necessary for military preparedness. He ordered that noncompliance could result in discharge from service, court martial, and other disciplinary procedures, and consequences.

While the court is “certainly not ‘given the task of running the Army,’” Merriday responded, the courts “are entrusted to ensure that those who run the Marine Corps (and the military in general and every other component of the federal government) conform their actions to the governing law, to RFRA, to which the admirals and the generals and the commandants are unquestionably subordinate …

“To repeat: Yes, Congress and the President, not the courts, govern the military. But Congress and the President in governing the military and by enacting RFRA have established – for the narrow category of Free Exercise – an action and a remedy in the district court, have specified and placed the burden of proof on the military, and have allowed for an ‘appropriate remedy’ to ensure a service member’s Free Exercise. That conclusion is not fairly contestable, and the military must acquiesce to the command of Congress and the President in that respect.”

He said service members can sue in federal district court over a RFRA violation and “pursue relief from a systemic deprivation of Free Exercise, preserved and protected by RFRA.” His order and action, he said, “will proceed accordingly.”

Merryday also addressed the fact that Marines had been charged additional monthly rent for noncompliance and given two days’ notice to be discharged and ordered to leave their military housing. He said to “resort to two-day warnings of discharge (and, in the instance of First Lieutenant and undoubtedly others, suddenly charging daily rent of more than $100 to remain in military housing while packing one’s family and searching for civilian housing) suggests retribution and retaliation …”

He also spoke about a policy employed by supervisors or chaplains to deny religious accommodation requests. He said, “Although Marines of different faiths, different education, and different acumen might understand or explain this objection differently and with more or less clarity, many Marines, including Christians and Muslims, object that the COVID-19 vaccine was developed from cell lines derived from electively aborted fetuses and that introducing an mRNA-active substance into their body either desecrates their body, a temple of the Holy Spirt, or is haram, forbidden. In any case, neither the military nor the judiciary can judge the validity of a religious objection (unless the objection is irrational, delusional, or the like) – but can judge only the sincerity of the belief, which is demonstrated firmly in the administrative record by the chaplain’s assessment of sincerity.”

Of Merriday’s ruling, Mat Staver, founder, and chairman of Liberty Counsel, the nonprofit representing the Marine Corps plaintiffs, said, “Our courageous U.S. Marines finally have relief from these unlawful COVID shot mandates. The Biden administration and the Department of Defense are not above the law. These brave service members have been abused and mistreated because of their faith. They have faced discharge, court-martial, other life-altering disciplinary procedures, and termination for simply embracing their religious freedom to choose not the inject a substance into their bodies. The Department of Defense has relentlessly violated the law and ignored their religious freedom. Today, that lawlessness ends.”

*****

This article was published by Center Square and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

‘Leftist Mindset’: DeSantis Rips Hochul, Crist For Treating Republicans Like ‘Second-Class Citizens’ thumbnail

‘Leftist Mindset’: DeSantis Rips Hochul, Crist For Treating Republicans Like ‘Second-Class Citizens’

By The Daily Caller

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida blasted Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York and Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist of Florida for attacking Republicans during a Saturday night Fox News appearance.

“We’ve got so much support in Florida, and it’s not because people have hate in their hearts,” DeSantis told “Unfiltered” host Dan Bongino. “They are thankful we saved their jobs. Mothers are thankful we kept their kids in school and senior citizens are thankful we provided medication for them, and so I think that he really put his foot in his mouth. But I think people like Hochul and Crist are representative of this leftist mindset and they do believe that the conservative half of the country are effectively second-class citizens.”

WATCH:

Crist and Hochul made their attacks last week while campaigning against Republican opponents in their gubernatorial races. Crist is challenging DeSantis, while Hochul is facing Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York, who was nearly stabbed in July.

“If you have that hate in your heart, keep it there,” Crist said Wednesday, shortly after defeating Nikki Fried for the Democratic nomination for governor. “I want the vote of the people of Florida who care about our state, good Democrats, good Independents, good Republicans. Unify with this ticket. Unify with Val Demmings and Charlie Crist.”

Hochul criticized her Republican rivals at a campaign event Monday, arguing they aren’t “real New Yorkers” due to their political beliefs.

“Trump and Zeldin and Molinaro – just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong,” Hochul said Monday, according to the New York Post. “OK? Get out of town. Because you don’t represent our values.”

President Joe Biden also attacked Republicans, claiming that they had embraced “semi-fascism” during a Thursday fundraising event for the Democratic National Committee.

AUTHOR

HAROLD HUTCHISON

Reporter.

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‘He Was Attacking The Entire Party’: Karl Rove, Juan Williams Spar Over Biden’s ‘Semi-Fascism’ Remark

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Watch Colonel Douglas Macgregor’s Exposé ‘Reinforcing Failure in Ukraine’ thumbnail

Watch Colonel Douglas Macgregor’s Exposé ‘Reinforcing Failure in Ukraine’

By Royal A. Brown III

Watch this short video of an interview of Colonel Douglas Macgregor who is a very smart man – his analysis of Ukraine situation is 100% spot on especially with following points.

KEY POINTES:

Biden can keep sending Billions in ammo and equipment to Ukraine (depleting our military capabilities) but they can’t out shoot the Russians especially with artillery because the Russians have huge stockpiles of ammo dating back many years.

  • The US is taking a huge risk continuing to provide Ukraine with intelligence from our spy satellites because Putin knows this and Russia has the capability of destroying our satellites.
  • US and NATO are providing Sr military officers which have become Ukraine’s defacto general staff as well as providing contractor cells to collect intelligence for Ukraine – Putin know this too and may not continue retraining from taking them out.
  •  The technologically advanced HIMARS rocket system lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/high-mobilitybeing provided Ukraine by U.S. is being setup and operated by US backed contractors and Russia knows this too
  •  The Wall Street Journal and other lamestream media is falsely reporting Ukraine is preparing to go on the offensive which is patently false – they have lost 70-100,000 of their best troops and don’t have the capacity to go on the offense.
  •  A mass deluge of mistakes has been made by those in U.S. government, NATO and EU  supporting Ukraine.  All of this amounts to a huge disinformation campaign by Obama 3/Biden and NATO and even liberal Europeans are beginning to catch on to the lies especially those most at risk e.g. Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Czechoslovakia and even Germany, the Obama 3 Admin and NATO  have dug themselves a huge hole and the only way out is to tell the TRUTH but they won’t do so especially with November 2022 midterm elections around the corner.
  •  Biden’s advisors running things on Ukraine are the same pack of Marxist deep Staters who failed so miserably on past foreign relations including Afghanistan including former national security advisor Susan Rice, Senior adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, DOD Secretary Lloyd Austin, Obama himself and Valery Jarrett, etc.

Ukraine is a no-win situation for the U.S. and we should stop supporting them – if we don’t this war will continue to escalate and may lead to WW III.

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