EXCLUSIVE: GOP Women Introduce National Women’s Sports Week Resolution thumbnail

EXCLUSIVE: GOP Women Introduce National Women’s Sports Week Resolution

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By Mary Margaret Olohan

Female Republican lawmakers are backing girls fighting to preserve the integrity of women’s sports by marking the observance of National Women’s Sports Week.

Republican Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst and Republican New York Rep. Claudia Tenney introduced a bicameral resolution this week to celebrate the contributions of individual female athletes and the coaches and parents who support them, promote “equal access to athletic opportunities for members of both sexes,” and “support the commitment of the United States to supporting female athletes.”

The effort is partnered with the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), “the leading national women’s organization” devoted to celebrating women’s rights and fighting to expand women’s opportunities.

“At a time when women’s sports are under attack, we must celebrate the remarkable progress we have made since the passage of Title IX and stand united to protect the future ability of women and girls to compete fairly in sports,” Tenney told The Daily Signal.

“As we celebrate this week, we reaffirm the importance of protecting Title IX and recognize the countless benefits that come from women’s active participation in sports,” Tenney added. “I urge my colleagues to support this resolution and join us in celebrating National Women’s Sports Week. Together, we can continue to uplift and inspire the next generation of female athletes, ensuring a bright future for women’s sports across our great nation.”

Ernst similarly told The Daily Signal: “We cannot and will not allow our daughters to be erased.”

“Doors that were opened over 50 years ago are being slammed in the faces of girls across the country because of the progressive left’s radical gender ideology,” she said. “I’m proud to work with Rep. Tenney to recognize the achievements of female athletes during National Women’s Sports Week and will continue standing arm in arm with Riley Gaines, Paula Scanlan, Payton McNabb, and countless others in their fight to safeguard life-changing opportunities for women and girls.”

The move comes as female athletes like Riley Gaines, a NCAA swimmer, push back against biological males competing in women’s sports. Gaines raced against a biologically male athlete, Lia Thomas, and has become a nationally known advocate for preserving the integrity of women’s spaces.

Gaines, who continues to speak out in the face of harassment and violence, testified Wednesday at a Senate hearing on “Protecting Pride: Defending the Civil Rights of LGBTQ+ Americans” where she accused the NCAA of “intentionally and explicitly” discriminating “on the basis of sex.”

“As an athlete, I am honored by the efforts of Independent Women’s Forum to celebrate National Women’s Sports Week and encouraged by our leaders in Congress who are filing resolutions to establish the week as a recurring national event,” Gaines, who is an IWF advisor, told The Daily Signal. “Doing so will ensure present and future generations of women will be rightfully honored for dedication to their sport and the strides women have made in athletics since the passage of Title IX in 1972.”

On Thursday, Gaines and other female athletes will speak at a press conference at the United States Capitol upon the introduction of Ernst and Tenney’s bicameral resolution. One of these athletes is Paula Scanlan, a former University of Pennsylvania swimmer and an ex-teammate of Thomas.

“Forcing females to compete against and with biological males on their sports teams threatens to undermine the progress that women have made in these spaces thanks to Title IX,” Scanlon told The Daily Signal on Wednesday. “Thanks to Independent Women’s Forum, members of Congress are moving to establish National Women’s Sports Week, which promises to bring continued focus to the unique opportunities, scholarships, and friendships that female-only sports teams can provide.”

Payton McNabb, another spokeswoman for the IWF’s Forum and a high school volleyball player injured while competing against a biologically male student who identified as transgender, told The Daily Signal that “allowing males to participate in female sports is a denial of the basic physiological advantages the average man has over the average woman.”

“Independent Women’s Forum stood by young female athletes like myself in inaugurating National Women’s Sports Week last year,” she shared. “Now, by sponsoring resolutions to establish National Women’s Sports Week, members in the House and Senate have the opportunity to affirm that we deserve to compete on a level playing field without fear of devastating injuries.”

*****

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

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Reparations

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By Bruce Bialosky

Anyone who has previously read my columns will quickly conclude that I believe reparations (as being currently discussed) are a tragically stupid idea. You have probably read a multitude of opinions telling you why that is so. You are about to get a significantly different take on the issue.

The first aspect comes from my reading of a novel years back which I believe is The Winner by David Baldacci. It is combined with my personal and concurrent experience. Remember a good novel often has a significant basis in fact.

The premise concerns a genius criminal who figured out how to fix the Powerball lottery. He realizes that if he fixed it for himself, he would soon get caught. He also realized that the vast majority of people who buy lottery tickets are financial underachievers, so to speak. He would hand-pick someone from that underachieving population and create a deal with them. He would rig the lottery so the person would win and then the person would turn the money over to him to manage, ultimately splitting the monies 50/50. That is basically how the story goes until a smart detective comes on the scene.

The smart detective noticed a pattern that there were these people who would win the lottery and retain their wealth many years later. Here is the true part: that just does not happen. Nearly all people who win these sums — unless it is the mega multi-million-dollar winners — have little winnings left in just a few years or less.

Every friend and relative comes out of every sinkhole to gladhand for money. Every con artist in the world surrounds them to separate them from their money. These “winners” are generally people who do not have a trusted financial advisor to protect them from the wolves and they have no means of determining who they should turn to as a trusted advisor. I have experienced people with money not knowing who to turn to. This part of the plot line was so true to me.

I had someone who was referred to me who had won $350,000 in the lottery. He came too late. By the time he came to me, he had invested almost all the monies: He bought public pay phones. This was right after I had gone to my annual continuing education class at the usual location. They always had an alcove packed with wall pay phones. When I arrived that year, I found the pay phones were all gone as no one was using them any longer. My thought was what a sucker this person was to put his money into this investment and why had he not come to me six months earlier so I could save him from himself.

For my money, the same likely outcome applies to reparations. You drop the kind of dough the reparations people are proposing for some Californians; and, considering their background in financial affairs, five years later for most of them it will all have gone poof.

If the recipients of reparations are not financial underachievers, then why would they be recipients of funds; obviously they have not been harmed by the perceived grievances. They have systems in place to protect their wealth with qualified and reliable personnel.

The amounts that are being talked about are just numbers that are being thrown around for attention. They are stalking horses for the real numbers which will be significantly reduced. Politicians can then say, “See how good we are? We cut those crazy numbers in half, a third or whatever.” The real answer should be “No, we are not committing taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars to this travesty.” That will not happen.

In addition, I believe this will just be the beginning. Different groups will come from all over fully sold on their rationale that they should be recompensed. A group is already stating they deserve money for the land that sits under Dodger Stadium. Without the building of Dodger Stadium on that site the land would be of little value.

Members of Congress led by Cori Bush have proposed $14 trillion for reparations as if it were a trivial amount.

For my money, there are three simple solutions to the conditions plaguing blacks in California as there are across the country:

1. Stop having 80% of children outside of marriage. Put a premium on fathers.

2. Rid the black community of the racist public school systems controlled by the racist teachers’ unions. Give them universal school choice.

3. Stop telling them they are victims. I grew up in a disadvantaged household and my mother never told us or permitted us to have a victim mentality. If you keep telling people they should believe they are victims, they will ultimately believe it.

Reparations will only reinforce in their minds that victim mentality. That is what the proposers of these plans want so as to achieve perpetual power over them. These proposals are as bad as they get for the reasons above, and a good deal more.

*****

This article was published by Flash Report and is reproduced with permission from the author.

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Arizona News: June 30, 2023 thumbnail

Arizona News: June 30, 2023

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By The Editors

The Prickly Pear will provide current, linked articles about Arizona consistent with our Mission Statement to ‘inform, educate and advocate’. We are an Arizona based website and believe this information should be available to all of our statewide readers.

Hobbs Doubles Down On Executive Orders For LGBTQ Community

Hobbs limits Arizona counties’ ability to prosecute illegal abortions

SCR 1015 Would Ensure That Our State’s Initiative Process Is For All Arizonans

Arizona legislators push human trafficking awareness

Wadsack Proposes Bill Removing BOS Ability To Choose Legislative Replacements

Phoenix Gets $10 Million In Federal Funding For Cultural Equity Corridor

Biden Administration Gives Arizona $993 Million To Establish High-Speed Internet

Tucson Outlaws Lawns, Reduces Water Flow In New Constructions

Corporation headquarters are moving to Florida, Texas and Arizona

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An Estimated 200K Babies Saved from Abortion Since Dobbs thumbnail

An Estimated 200K Babies Saved from Abortion Since Dobbs

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By Catherine Salgado

Once again in America do unborn babies have the right to life, as the Declaration of Independence said all men have. A recent estimate said around 200,000 babies have been born instead of aborted since the landmark June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision overruling the infamous Roe v. Wade and Casey. That’s 200,000 precious, irreplaceable human beings saved from brutal murder in the womb!

“An estimated 64,443,118 abortions were carried out during the 50 years after Roe v. Wade, according to National Right to Life,” a horrific death toll. I noted last year that the number of babies lost to abortion is 52 times more than the total of all US war casualties, combined. That’s mind-blowing genocide. But Dobbs was the first step toward a more pro-life America.

Across America, pro-life crisis pregnancy centers outnumber abortion clinics by an estimated 3 to 1, all those centers ready and eager to help mothers with supplies, medical care, adoption services, and other aid for their unplanned pregnancies. There’s a waiting list of literally millions of couples waiting to adopt babies—including down syndrome babies—in the US too. Having an abortion puts women at risk of mental health issues, suicide, drug abuse, and other serious issues, and it’s never necessary to save a mother’s life. Abortion is not a solution—it’s murder. But pro-death Democrats don’t want you to know that.

“[LifeNews, June 26] As the nation celebrates the first anniversary of the Supreme Court decision returning abortion to democratic control, national leaders celebrated the birth of tens, or hundreds, of thousands of unborn children saved by pro-life laws.

Although precise estimates vary, “the best guess that we have is about 200,000 children were born this year that would not have been born” apart from the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, said Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) at a news conference Tuesday. ‘That’s 200,000 kids. That’s 200,000 smiling faces on playgrounds. That’s 200,000 silly songs, starting in kindergarten. That’s 200,000 families that will be blessed with looking in the eyes of a child.’

The Dobbs decision, which took the shackles off voters and lawmakers to enact life-saving protections for the unborn, eliminated 96% of abortions in the 13 states that enacted pro-life protections between the June 24 decision and year’s end, The Daily Caller found. Although abortion rates had risen early in 2022, state pro-life laws prevented 32,260 abortions in the first six months following the ruling, according to the WeCount report from the Society of Family Planning released in April. A total of 25 states have since enacted some pro-life protections, since they ‘now have an opportunity in the United States to see this message in the hands of lawmakers and the people,’ Family Research Council President Tony Perkins told Newsmax on Friday.

Saving 200,000 babies — the upper end of an estimate analysis from Susan B. Anthony Pro-life America — would be enough people to fill a city the size of Grand Rapids, Michigan; Vancouver, Washington; or Chattanooga, Tennessee.”

Let us pray that babies will continue to be saved from abortion as Democrats try to bring back universal abortion on demand and infanticide (Democrat states are more pro-abortion than ever). Dobbs wasn’t the end of the fight, it was only the beginning.

*****

This article was published by Pro Deo et Liberate and is reproduced with permission.

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Supreme Court Bans Racial Preferences in College Admissions

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By Jonathan Butcher

On May 17, 1954, The New York Times reported that the U.S. Supreme Court “set aside” the “separate but equal” doctrine in education in its Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Racial segregation would no longer be permitted in K-12 public schools. On June 29, 2023, the court finally buried the doctrine once and for all, along with the prejudice that has haunted college admissions for more than 50 years.

The justices banned the use of racial preferences in college and university admissions programs. Students for Fair Admissions, an advocacy group representing Asian-American students, brought two lawsuits—one against Harvard University and another against the University of North Carolina—charging that the schools used racial bias in their admissions practices and discriminated against these students.

The Supreme Court agreed and ruled 6-2 in the Harvard case and 6-3 in the University of North Carolina case that the schools violated the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Since Title VI of the Civil Rights Act reflects the 14th Amendment within schools that receive federal taxpayer spending, the ruling applies to federal law as well as the Constitution.

The majority wrote, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.” 

Americans have long supported the ideas in the court’s majority opinion. Surveys find broad opposition to the use of racial preferences.

Results from a Pew Research survey released earlier this month found that 82% of respondents do not think that race or ethnicity should be a factor in college admissions. Seventy-one percent of black respondents and 81% of Hispanic respondents agree.

State voters have also rejected racial preferences at the ballot box. Californians have twice rejected preferences, first with the passage of a measure known as Proposition 209 in 1996 and then again with the defeat of Proposition 16 (which would have overturned Proposition 209) in 2020. In 2006, Michigan voters also voted to ban racial preferences.

Now the high court has said university programs “may never use race as a stereotype or negative, and—at some point—they must end.” While citizens and taxpayers have been waiting for this court ruling, many college administrators have been devising ways to continue using race in admissions.

For example, research from law professor and well-known critic of racial preferences Richard Sander and others has documented how administrators in the University of California system defied Proposition 209 after its passage. More than a decade ago, the American Bar Association attempted to change its policies to require law schools to defy state and federal legislation if lawmakers chose to ban racial preferences (the ABA toned down the policy after some resistance, but only slightly).

Meanwhile, college administrators have helped so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” departments to spread across campuses nationwide. These offices serve as political outposts that rally support for racial preferences in university hiring, campus speakers, and other school activities.

The court’s ruling allows Americans to ask what, exactly, DEI intends, if not to continue the racial discrimination the justices just ruled illegal. Lawmakers in Florida and Texas have already adopted policies that defund these offices, recognizing the prejudice that has been in plain sight for years.

WATCH:

Yet if activists really want to help minority students, they should be interested in what racial preferences hath wrought. For example, the “mismatch” problem that the preferences cause is a notable one that critical race theorists and other radical activists do not care to discuss.

By putting a finger on the scales for or against students who are racial or ethnic minorities, racial preferences have caused black and Hispanic students, in particular, to be admitted to competitive institutions even if those students were unprepared for their academic rigor. A mismatch is created between students and schools, and these students earn lower grades, are more likely to drop out, and are less likely to be able to use their college experience to succeed in the workplace.

High-performing black and brown students succeeded at competitive colleges and graduate schools before and after California’s Proposition 209 and other bans on preferences—and will still do so after the Supreme Court’s ruling. But students across the nation who would have been mismatched at postsecondary and graduate institutions due to preferences are now more likely to enroll and succeed at colleges aligned with their skills.

Woke actors can no longer claim that discrimination has a place in college admissions. School officials must maintain high standards and make school admissions policies transparent so families and students know how they are being evaluated. Lawmakers should use the court’s opinion as justification to replace DEI programs with merit-based, colorblind departments and activities that work with students according to their academic abilities and needs.

This is the American Dream—one in which public officials cannot judge you based on the color of your skin. The Supreme Court has given all Americans, of all skin colors, more reasons to dream again.

*****

This article was published by Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

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16 Bombshells on Hunter Biden From The IRS Whistleblowers

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By Chuck Ross, Joseph Simonson and Andrew Kerr

Two IRS whistleblowers leveled serious allegations about Hunter Biden and the government’s investigation of the troubled first son, according to transcripts of testimony released this week.

The whistleblowers, IRS supervisory criminal investigator Gary Shapley and a second unnamed IRS investigator, provided evidence to the House Ways and Means Committee that top Justice Department officials stonewalled an investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes and foreign business ventures. They also call into question President Biden’s repeated denials that he has no knowledge of his son’s business dealings.

Here are 16 of the biggest revelations from transcripts of their interviews:

Hunter linked dad to Chinese deal in threat to business partner

Hunter Biden invoked his father’s name in a text message, threatening his Chinese business partner to come down on him with their full weight if the business partner did not fulfill his “commitment.”

Biden claimed he was sitting right next to his father in an encrypted message on July 30, 2017, to an associate at CEFC China Energy. While the message does not verify that Joe Biden was sitting with his son, the Washington Free Beacon obtained photographic evidence that places Hunter Biden at his father’s Delaware home the day of the text message.

“I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father,” Hunter Biden wrote to CEFC official Henry Zhao. Hunter pressed Zhao to call him to discuss a delay in payment as part of the multimillion-dollar consulting agreement.

“I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. All too often people mistake kindness for weakness—and all too often I am standing over top of them saying I warned you,” Hunter wrote.

Joe Biden attended other business meetings with Hunter and his Chinese partners

Biden family friend and business partner Rob Walker told the FBI that the elder Biden often attended business meetings with his son, including when he was vice president.

The bombshell claim undermines Joe Biden’s claims to have never been involved in his son’s business ventures.

Walker said he was present when Joe Biden stopped by a meeting at the Washington, D.C., Four Seasons hotel with executives from CEFC China Energy.

The FBI authenticated Hunter Biden’s laptop almost a year before we knew it existed

The FBI authenticated Hunter Biden’s laptop as far back as November 2019 and knew the device was not part of a foreign disinformation campaign.

Democrats had questioned the authenticity of the laptop after it was released in October 2020. They cast doubt on Delaware computer shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac, who said Biden had abandoned his computer at his store in April 2019. The Biden campaign even orchestrated an initiative to portray the laptop as a Russian intelligence operation.

But FBI agents authenticated the laptop as Biden’s in November 2019 and found no evidence that its contents were manipulated, according to IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley.

Investigators also obtained evidence that placed Hunter Biden near Isaac’s computer shop on the day he allegedly dropped it off for repairs.

Hunter deducted hooker and sex club payments from his taxes

Hunter, who has been known to frequent strip clubs and pay for sex, deducted payments he made to prostitutes and a Los Angeles sex club from his 2018 taxes, according to Gary Shapley, who called the evidence a “slam dunk case” of tax fraud.

According to another whistleblower, Biden sent wire payments to a “West Coast assistant,” who was actually a prostitute. He also sent a $10,000 wire earmarked for a golf club membership that was actually a dues payment for a sex club.

The FBI division that investigates foreign spies was involved in Biden probe

The FBI’s national security division, which investigates foreign intelligence and espionage operations, took an interest in Biden’s dealings with China, according to Shapley.

“The FBI is considering a lot of national security type issues here,” Shapley said in a discussion about Hunter Biden’s work with CEFC China Energy, which had links to Chinese military intelligence.

Hunter Biden received at least $6 million from CEFC China Energy. The company approached Biden in late-2015 with an offer to donate to a charity affiliated with the first son.

Biden referred to one of his CEFC associates, Patrick Ho, as the “fucking spymaster of China” in a 2018 audio recording. CEFC had hired Biden to the tune of $1 million to represent Ho after he was indicted for trying to bribe African officials for oil rights.

The Justice Department and FBI obtained Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants to surveil Ho based on suspicion that he was acting as a covert agent of China.

Shapley said he does not know the status of the FBI’s national security probe.

The investigation into Biden had porn-related origins

The investigation into Hunter Biden has a strange but not entirely shocking origin given Hunter’s history of sex addiction.

“The investigation into Hunter Biden, code name Sportsman, was first opened in November 2018 as an offshoot of an investigation the IRS was conducting into a foreign-based amateur online pornography platform,” Shapley testified…..

*****

Continue reading this article by Washington Free Beacon.

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Russia’s Crawling Neighbor thumbnail

Russia’s Crawling Neighbor

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By Doug Bandow

Would Europeans fight if NATO ends up in a real war with Russia?

The Vilnius NATO summit is approaching, and the alliance is focused on the war in Ukraine. Kyiv wants in on NATO. Many Europeans support Ukraine’s inclusion, including several whom I recently met when they visited America to press their case.

Of course, by NATO they really mean the protective umbrella provided by America—the only member with a military that matters. They are saying the U.S. should promise to go to war, if necessary, to defend Ukraine.

Why? Almost all of them insisted that if Russia’s Vladimir Putin “wins” he is sure to expand his ambitions. He will throw his vast legions at the Baltic States, Poland, and maybe even Germany and France, incorporating Europe into his new Soviet empire. This will require Washington to do even more in the future to protect its reliably helpless dependents, they warn. In this way the Ukrainians are fighting for all of us!

Yet the Russian leader, while capable of invasion, has demonstrated little interest in reviving the Soviet geopolitical corpse, which is beyond his means. Until February 2022, all he had managed was grabbing Crimea and establishing some control over disputed territories—Georgia’s South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Ukraine’s Donbas. Vlad the Conqueror he is not.

Unsurprisingly, Western officials continue to refuse to acknowledge their reckless post–Cold War treatment of Russia. Moscow long focused on the issues of NATO expansion, the dismemberment of Serbia, and regime change efforts in Georgia and Ukraine. That doesn’t justify Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. But his treatment of the latter was sui generis and responded to multiple grievous allied missteps.

Moreover, the mess Putin and his military have made of the Ukraine invasion makes it highly unlikely that he would attack even the Baltic states, let alone Poland or Germany. Victory would be unlikely, and success would yield little gain.

My newfound friends responded that Ukraine has fought so well because it received a deluge of Western arms and cash. True, but that means Washington need not fight for other nations to bolster their defense. Military assistance can thwart Moscow’s objectives and make it pay a significant price for its actions.

The visiting Europeans also claimed to fear a change in the global balance of power. To not “defeat” Putin, whatever that means—the debate is largely between reclaiming just the territory lost since last February and recovering everything seized before as well—would “show weakness,” I was told, and would encourage aggression by China as well as Russia.

In fact, even a ceasefire along current lines would be a defeat for Moscow. Rather than cow Ukrainian nationalism, Putin’s war intensified it. Rather than keep NATO away from Russia’s borders, his “Special Military Operation” brought Finland (and also will presumably bring, at some point, Sweden) into the transatlantic alliance. Moreover, European governments now talk about spending more on the military, a dramatic turnaround for many—though whether they carry through on their promises remains to be seen.

More importantly, while the conflict is a terrible humanitarian tragedy, it involves no substantial U.S. security interests. Ukraine has never mattered militarily to America. It was part of the Soviet Union for the entire Cold War, and part of the Russian Empire before that. Ukraine’s status is no more important to America today. While it matters more for the Europeans, that should be their responsibility, not Washington’s.

Nor is Ukraine likely to change China’s security calculations. Beijing has desired to reclaim Taiwan ever since Japan seized the islands in 1895. Irrespective of Ukraine, Beijing is likely to dismiss the likelihood of the European allies taking a firm stand on the issue, which is so distant from them. The war may cause Xi Jinping to be more cautious about his military’s ability to back his threats. But Western support for Kyiv is unlikely to divert him from his basic objectives, along with his willingness to use military force if that is the only way he believes he can achieve them.

Playing to international sympathy for Ukraine, its advocates argued that the country not only has a right to join NATO but also wants to be part of Europe. Russia shouldn’t get to determine who joins the alliance or the West. Indeed, they insisted, the U.S. should prevent Moscow from establishing a sphere of influence.

Although Russia should not be able to decide Ukraine’s role in NATO, neither should Kyiv. Existing NATO members select who joins, and the purpose of the alliance is their safety, not other nations’ welfare. Military allies are not the equivalent of Facebook friends, with more always being better. The U.S. should agree to further NATO expansion only if the process makes America more secure. Thus, Washington should consider Moscow’s opposition. Adding Ukraine adds not only an existing conflict but one involving a hostile nuclear power.

Worse, the chief combatant in any hot war with Moscow would be America. Indeed, despite the fervent support for Ukraine by the European visitors with whom I spoke—mostly members of national governments and the European Parliament—several admitted that their public was growing weary of providing material support to Ukraine, which led me to ask: Would their people fight if NATO ended up in a real war with Russia? None said yes.

Three years ago a survey by the Pew Research Center found that more European people opposed going to war on behalf of their neighbors than fighting for them. (Naturally, majorities in those same NATO states assumed that the U.S. cavalry would ride to the rescue!) A recent poll by the European Council on Foreign Relations reported that “Europeans want to remain neutral in a potential U.S.–China conflict and are reluctant to de-risk from China—even if they recognize the dangers of its economic presence in Europe.” Apparently, the Russian invasion hasn’t stopped Europeans from asking, “What’s in it for us?” So much for allied solidarity and all that.

Although many Eastern Europeans are now pushing for some form of NATO promise to Ukraine of inclusion in the alliance, every member government played along with NATO’s ostentatious lies to Kyiv through last year. In truth, no NATO member wanted to fight for Ukraine. Nor was anyone willing to fight in 1994, when the U.S. signed the Budapest Memorandum formalizing Ukraine’s relinquishment of nuclear weapons. Washington and the other signatories promised in the event of war to go to the United Nations, the emptiest of threats. And so far no one wants to fight in the current conflict, despite the torrent of weapons delivered, money transferred, and praise offered.

My European interlocutors also claimed that the U.S. benefits as much from NATO as does Europe, which has spent more than seven decades underinvesting in its defense. After all, they pointed out, Article 5 has been invoked only once, and that was after 9/11. European soldiers died in America’s foolish Afghan and Iraq wars. Yet however welcome for Washington, inserting a limited number of troops, most with serious caveats or restrictions on their roles, does not compare with acting as chief guardian against a major conventional power that possesses nuclear weapons.

The Europeans also insisted that the U.S. needed their continent’s backing against China, both economic and military—that America could not go it alone. No doubt, both forms of support would be helpful. However, the first requires a close relationship, not a military alliance. And despite growing European disquiet with Chinese foreign policy, it will take much to convince the continent to sacrifice markets and profits in such a conflict with so little evident consequence for its people. So far European publics are not convinced.

The second is a fantasy aspiration unlikely to come to fruition for years or decades, if ever. After all, the Europeans won’t spend enough money to defend themselves; who seriously believes that they will construct a vast naval armada, filled with heretofore nonexistent marines, to speed eastward and join Washington in battling the Chinese hordes? Europe should provide for its own defense, relieving Washington of that burden. If that ever happens, then serious discussions about the continent’s military role in containing China could follow.

Moreover, Ukraine’s advocates claim that the war represents the broader struggle between democracy and autocracy. It is important that Ukraine wins, both for itself and for the rest of us. Indeed, the visiting Europeans insisted, victory for Ukraine could tip the global balance of power America’s way.

No doubt, Ukrainians feel, or at least want to feel, this way. However, this exalted interpretation has little to do with the conflict’s reality. Ukraine’s democratic credentials are considerably less than pristine. They look good only in comparison with Moscow’s. The U.S. and West more broadly have done much to crash their brands as well, which has led to significant reluctance in the Global South to join the U.S. and its allies against Russia.

Ultimately, Washington has no reason to fight for Ukraine. Most people’s sympathies naturally lie with Ukrainians. However, war should be an existential necessity rather than a charitable impulse. My European visitors insisted that Washington would not have to fight since NATO membership would prevent further conflict. That’s a comforting assumption, but who expected Russia to attack last February, Ukrainians included? Any peace is likely to be cold and dangerous. Both Russia and Ukraine, especially if the latter thought allied military intervention to be automatic, might soon be ready for a second round.

Never before have two significant conventional powers armed with nuclear weapons gone to war, which is the most important reason for Washington to say no to NATO membership for Ukraine. Even if the chances are small, the risks are enormous, too great for any justification offered. Especially by Europeans forever ready to fight to the last American.

*****

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

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PRESS RELEASE: Independent Women’s Voice Launches Keep Women’s Sports Female Open Letter Signed By Over 100 Female Athletes thumbnail

PRESS RELEASE: Independent Women’s Voice Launches Keep Women’s Sports Female Open Letter Signed By Over 100 Female Athletes

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By Press Team Independent Women’s Forum

Today, Independent Women’s Voice (IWV) launched an open letter and public sign-on campaign to keep women’s sports female. The letter is spearheaded by over 100 female athletes at the high school, collegiate, and Olympic levels of sports. The open letter calls upon athletic associations, policy makers, and government officials to enact policies and laws that keep women’s sports female.

The letter states, in part, “Title IX is under attack, and women’s spaces are being erased. Faced with this reality, we have no choice but to stand up for women by defending basic truth. We implore all athletic governing bodies and public servants to join us in our fight to protect women’s sports and spaces.”

The Keep Women Sports Female Open Letter responds to President Biden’s promise to veto the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which has passed the U.S. House of Representatives and has been introduced in the U.S. Senate by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL). The letter urges officials to reject calls to sacrifice female athletes on the altar of “inclusion,” and instead stand up for fairness, privacy, and safety for female athletes.

The Keep Women’s Sports Female Open Letter represents a growing movement of female athletes who recognize the importance of protecting single-sex spaces. IWV hopes the campaign will inspire tens of thousands of female athletes to sign on, joining the fight to protect female sports.

The open letter is a part of the second annual National Women’s Sports Week (June 19-25) celebration designated by Independent Women’s Forum (IWF). National Women’s Sports Week celebrates the incredible expansion of opportunities for female athletes since the passage of Title IX in 1972 and recognizes the role of Title IX in guaranteeing equal athletic opportunities.

Outkick covered this story exclusively HERE. 

The letter can be found HERE. 

To add your name to the letter, click HERE.

*****

This article was published by the Independent Women’s Forum and is reproduced with permission.

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How Oppressed Can They Be?

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By Ellie Fromm

Pride Month, also known in the Gregorian calendar as “June”, is a time for those outside of the overwhelmingly predominant heterosexual population and some who believe they are gender confused to celebrate their sexual or gender orientations. The celebration of these lifestyles and personal assignments ought to be in the privacy of their own homes, not in public and highly visible venues, such as restaurants, streets, schools, and even the White House. Why is this population defining themselves solely based on sexual practices or gender identities? Many believe that this ‘sets them apart’ and ‘gives them a sense of individuality’. Also, it’s increasingly common and acceptable to play the victim card in today’s social media dominated society.

The victim card gives the belief that you are not responsible for poor choices because, it is claimed, you are oppressed by others. You are, therefore, exempt from doing harm to others because damage is or was done to you. Yes, true victims need to be helped and sometimes protected. However, I don’t believe those defining themselves as members of the LGBTQ+ group (or ‘community’) are victims of oppression in present-day America.

As I grew up, my mother quoted Derrick Wilburn frequently to us: “you are a victim of three things – your own ignorance, laziness, or poor choices.” In other words, stop playing the victim card and take responsibility.

The LGBTQ+ group is not a group of victims, no matter how adamantly they believe they are. Look at the facts.

They have an entire month to celebrate themselves and their sexual or gender orientations. Where is Straight Pride Month? Inclusion is stated as one of their primary purposes, yet they demonize and exclude those who disagree with them. Anyone who is not a flag-waving supporter is labeled a transphobe or bigot. Simply questioning these practices, ideologies or identities can cost you your livelihood and future, possibly causing great harm and damage to your family or business.

The White House recently hosted a large Pride event on the lawn. Many attended the event, including some transgender influencers. One such influencer, Rose Montoya, a man who identifies as a woman, exposed himself topless in front of the White House for a photo-op. In the aftermath of this action Montoya has been banned. Yet just one look at his Instagram page makes it clear his actions at the White House were not out of character.

For the event, the White House was decorated with Pride and American flags. American flags flanked a Pride flag, which violates the US flag code. Code states the American flag must always be front and foremost when surrounded by other flags. Disregarding this code, the White House placed the Pride flag front and center.

Journalist Dave Seminara compiled a list of 433 (and counting) known woke, LGBTQ+ celebrating companies. The following are some big names on the list: Target, Budweiser, Chick-fil-A, Chipotle, Adidas, AT&T, Ben & Jerry’s, Comcast NBC Universal, Duolingo, Gatorade, Indeed, JP Morgan Chase, Kitchen Maid, Lego, Mac Cosmetics, Maybelline, Neutrogena, North Face, Old Navy, State Farm, Tampax, and Victoria’s Secret. The list goes on.

Notice one significant name in the above group: Tampax, a global tampon company. Tampax, which focuses exclusively on female hygiene products, shipped free boxes of tampons to Dylan Mulvaney, a male who believes he is a woman. Mulvaney does not need these tampons because he is an adult human male, yet he has received free boxes of feminine hygiene products. All the women (adult human females) I know, myself included, have never received a single free tampon from Tampax, let alone several boxes.

Victoria’s Secret, Calvin Klein, and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit have all cast transgender models. These models are achieving castings at some of the biggest names in the modeling industry while claiming they are an oppressed group and, somehow, victims.

After noting all of the above examples, how oppressed can the LGBTQ+ ‘community’ actually be? In an overwhelming majority of the United States, transgender people are allowed in the restroom, locker room, dormitory, and sport of their choice. This includes access to women’s restrooms/locker rooms, women-only dorms, and women’s athletics even if the person is not female and causing great distress to the great majority of Americans.

If there is a full month of Pride celebration, a specific flag, a White House event seen around the world, a US flag code violation, censorship of Americans objecting to this rapidly accelerating invasion of our private lives, overwhelming corporate donations, companies decorating stores, and models chosen merely to celebrate sexual and gender orientations and identity, you are not oppressed. True oppression is CCP’s Uyghur work camps, Jim Crow laws, forced relocation of Japanese Americans during World War Two, the Armenian Genocide, the Nazi death camps in the 1930s-1940s, and other past and present atrocities. The LGBTQ+ community needs to stop playing the victim card and pretending they are oppressed.

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Corrupt DOJ Shielded Criminal Hunter Biden at Every Turn

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By Catherine Salgado

While Donald Trump is being persecuted by corrupt and dishonest prosecutors for a “crime” he didn’t commit, the misnamed Department of Justice (DOJ) was and is shielding “President” Joe Biden’s traitorous and criminal son Hunter. Both the FBI and IRS were also helping protect the Bidens.

The New York Post’s Miranda Devine decried Hunter Biden’s “sweetheart” plea deal as Hunter is to plead guilty to “federal tax and firearms charges,” calling it a mere “slap on the wrist.” Hunter’s traitorous foreign deals, sexual scandals, and other criminal or questionable activities are widely and publicly known, with more evidence emerging all the time. But the federal government has been protecting Hunter even before his father became president—indeed, censorship of the Hunter laptop scandal, which was a result of Big Tech-government collusion, helped steal the utterly fraudulent 2020 presidential election.

Yes, the federal alphabet agencies have been shielding and coddling Hunter Biden at every turn. Because there are laws for the rest of us to follow, and then there’s “rules” for the oligarchs.

The Federalist CEO Sean Davis tweeted June 22:

“BREAKING: According to IRS whistleblowers, DOJ tipped off Hunter Biden about a search of his storage unit, prohibited investigators from executing a warrant on Joe Biden’s guest house, and repeatedly prohibited charges from being brought against Hunter Biden.”

Davis linked to a US House Ways and Means Committee press release, headlined, “[Committee Chairman Jason] Smith: Testimony of IRS Employees Reveals Biden IRS, DOJ Interfered in Tax Investigation of Hunter Biden, Revealing Preferential Treatment for Wealthy and Politically Connected.” No way! It’s almost as if we’re living in an oligarchical dictatorship instead of a democratic republic now!

Podcast host Stephen L. Miller tweeted about the FBI’s corruption in shielding the Bidens as well. “The FBI had the laptop in October of 2019. It was verified in November 2019. In October of 2020 Twitter blocked any sharing of the NY Post story. Biden called it a smear orchestrated by Russia. Biden’s name appears here,” he said, with a screenshot of documentation from the House Ways and Means Committee.

As The Post Millennial’s Jack Posobiec posted on TruthSocial:

“Hunter Biden bragged to CCP [Chinese Communist Party] oligarchs that his father was involved in his payoffs, gets a sweetheart deal

Trump was charged over a paperwork dispute

Are you understanding the System yet?”

The DOJ (not to mention the FBI and IRS) is nothing more than an arm of the evil, traitorous Democrat Party.

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FDR’s Other ‘Day of Infamy’: When the US Government Seized All Citizens’ Gold thumbnail

FDR’s Other ‘Day of Infamy’: When the US Government Seized All Citizens’ Gold

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By Lawrence Reed

December 7, 1941 will forever be remembered as, in the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “a date that will live in infamy.” Another infamous date is April 5, 1933—the day that FDR ordered the seizure of the private gold holdings of the American people. By attacking innocent citizens, he bombed the country’s gold standard just as surely as Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

On this 90th anniversary of the seizure, it behooves us to recall the details of it, for multiple reasons: It ranks as one of the most notorious abuses of power in a decade when there were almost too many to count. It’s an example of bad policy imposed on the guiltless by the government that created the conditions it used to justify it. And the very fact of compliance, however minimal, is a scary testimony to how fragile freedom is in the middle of a crisis.

Suddenly on April 5, 1933, FDR told Americans—in the form of Executive Order 6102—that they had less than a month to hand over their gold coins, bullion and gold certificates or face up to ten years in prison or a fine of $10,000, or both. After May 1, private ownership and possession of these things would be as illegal as Demon Rum. After Prohibition was repealed later the same year, the sober man with gold in his pocket was the criminal while the staggering drunk was no more than a nuisance.

Hoarding gold was preventing recovery from the Great Depression, FDR declared. Government (which caused the Depression in the first place) had no choice, if you can follow the logic, but to seize the gold and do the hoarding itself. But of course, the big difference was this: In the hands of the government, huge new gold supplies could be used by the Federal Reserve as the basis for expanding the paper money supply. The President who had promised a 25 percent reduction in federal spending during his 1932 campaign, could now double spending in his first term.

What evidence suggested Americans were “hoarding” gold? Roosevelt pointed to a run on banks that immediately preceded his April 5 seizure decree. Indeed, people were showing up at tellers’ windows with paper dollars demanding the gold that the paper notes promised. But Roosevelt had prompted the bank run himself!

On March 8, three days after succeeding Herbert Hoover as the new President, FDR declared the gold standard to be safe. After all, America’s gold reserves were the largest in the world. Then out of the blue, on March 11, the President issued an executive order preventing banks from making gold payments. The message was clear: In spite of its campaign pledge to protect the integrity of the currency, this was an administration intent on spending and printing like none before. Citizens who wanted to protect their savings and financial assets suddenly had every good reason to find and keep whatever gold they could get their hands on. James Bovard writes in “The Great Gold Robbery,”

Roosevelt was hailed as a visionary and a savior for his repudiation of the government’s gold commitment. Citizens who distrusted the government’s currency management or integrity were branded as social enemies, and their gold was seized. And for what? So that the government could betray its promises and capture all the profit itself from the devaluation it planned. Shortly after Roosevelt banned private ownership of gold, he announced a devaluation of 59 percent in the gold value of the dollar. In other words, after Roosevelt seized the citizenry’s gold, he proclaimed that the gold would henceforth be of much greater value in dollar terms.

Dentists, jewelers, and industrial users were allowed to acquire gold to meet their “reasonable needs.” If you had a gold tooth, the government did not yank it out. But if you possessed more than $100 in monetary gold (coin or notes denominated in the yellow metal) after May 1, 1933, you were a villainous lawbreaker until private gold ownership was legalized four decades later.

With the passage of the Thomas Amendment to an agricultural bill on May 12, 1933, vast new presidential powers over money were affirmed by Congress. But even some of FDR’s own party still had a conscience. Democratic Senator Carter Glass of Virginia solemnly and honestly lamented,

It’s dishonor, sir. This great government, strong in gold, is breaking its promises to pay gold to widows and orphans to whom it has sold government bonds with a pledge to pay gold coin of the present standard of value. It is breaking its promise to redeem its paper money in gold coin of the present standard of value. It’s dishonor, sir.

When FDR followed up in June by abrogating the gold clauses in both private and government contracts, he asked blind Oklahoma Senator Thomas Gore, a fellow Democrat, for his opinion. Gore had lost his eyesight at the age of 12 but he saw right through FDR on this matter. He famously replied, “Why that’s just plain stealing, isn’t it, Mr. President?”

In his book, Economics and the Public Welfare, A Financial and Economic History of the United States, 1914-1946, the great economist Benjamin Anderson recalled Senator Gore’s words on the Senate floor:

Henry VIII approached total depravity, as nearly as the imperfections of human nature would allow. But the vilest thing that Henry ever did was to debase the coin of the realm. [See: “How Henry VIII Debauched English Money to Feed His Lavish Lifestyle.”

Many Americans were cowed by government threats to do the “patriotic” thing and turn in their gold as Roosevelt mandated. But true to the rugged individualism and defiance of tyranny ingrained in our culture, FDR’s order prompted widespread noncompliance. Best estimates, corroborated in this short video and elsewhere, suggest that for every one dollar in gold that Americans relinquished, they quietly kept three.

If the federal government tried today to seize the gold holdings of private American citizens, how much do you think we would turn over?

Call me a scofflaw if you want, but it would NOT get its hands on mine.

*****
This article was published by FEE , Foundation for Economic Education and is reproduced with permission.

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Whistleblower Transcripts Show Deep-State Election Rigging For Biden Was Way Bigger Than A Laptop thumbnail

Whistleblower Transcripts Show Deep-State Election Rigging For Biden Was Way Bigger Than A Laptop

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By Kylee Griswold

If you thought censorship of a laptop was the extent of the deep state’s 2020 election rigging on behalf of the Biden family, think again.

All roads lead to Hunter Biden.

That is, all roads paved with (alleged) extortion, bribery, money laundering, tax evasion, prostitution, drug abuse, and, most importantly, election rigging. The roads traversed by Internal Revenue Service agents-turned-whistleblowers — whose disclosures to the House Ways and Means Committee were released as transcripts on Thursday — are no exception.

The troubled Biden son has always been at the center of concerns about the 2020 election, in the form of the infamous “Hunter Biden laptop.” When reports surfaced in October 2020 of an abandoned laptop showing the dirty details of not only Hunter’s shady business enterprises and potentially criminal conduct but also then-presidential candidate Joe Biden’s knowledge of and involvement in it, the corrupt Department of Justice joined hands with Big Tech censors and media propagandists to hide the story.

This was hugely significant, not only because it exposed the depravity of federal law enforcement and America’s information gatekeepers, but also because polling showed that if voters had known the depths of Biden family filth at the time, a potentially scale-tipping number of them would have voted differently in the 2020 election.

The IRS whistleblower transcripts released on Thursday, however, add new layers to the election rigging. According to the IRS agents who came forward, federal agencies abandoned standard procedures to slow-walk investigations into Hunter Biden, ignored agents who pushed for the investigation to move forward properly, retaliated against those agents, and — crucially — interfered even further in the 2020 election by making sure not to go public with details of their investigation until Donald Trump was on his way out the door and Joe Biden was safely elected.

How It All Went Down

The second IRS whistleblower, who remained anonymous, recalled what he remembered from May 2019 to Dec. 8, 2020, the day agents went “overt” with the Hunter Biden case, immediately following the contested presidential election.

He explained that in criminal tax investigations, IRS policy dictates the “need to interview the subject within 30 days of elevating the investigation.” Though sometimes undercover investigations or ongoing criminal activity might delay interviewing a source, that just isn’t how tax crimes work, he said, because “the evidence is typically historical.” The whistleblower said he especially wanted to go overt to put the Biden son “on notice,” since Hunter apparently had unpaid taxes from 2015 and unfiled tax returns from 2016 and 2017. One can infer from the transcripts that if the IRS’s standard timeline had been followed, Hunter Biden would have been interviewed by the early summer of 2019. But he wasn’t.

According to the whistleblower, he repeatedly raised the issue of going overt but was always shot down. “I was continually being told that we had to stay covert to preserve potential evidence from the FBI side of the investigation,” he said. Assistant U.S. attorneys and the DOJ’s tax attorneys, however, told the IRS agents that prosecutors would eventually be able to move forward with hard-hitting “Spies evasion” charges, felony charges for willful tax evasion. Based on the sweetheart Hunter Biden plea deal revealed this week, those felony charges were never pursued. Instead, assuming the deal is accepted, the Biden son’s tax charges will be mere misdemeanors with probation, no jail time.

So the investigation dragged on, covertly, with electronic search warrants and time-consuming reviews. Here’s what happened, in the whistleblower’s words:

Throughout all this time we’re having biweekly meetings. At these biweekly meetings, I am continually bringing up that we need to go overt. There came a point in time to where there were some bank reports out there that were going to get released, and they were going to include potentially the names of the investigators from the IRS and the FBI who received those bank reports. So with that being released in the public, we’re like it’s going to out our investigation, so we need to come out and go overt with the tax case. And I remember there were always times to where we were always on an impending election cycle. It was always the election being brought up.

It doesn’t get much clearer than that. Any time there was reason to make the case public, “the election” was always “being brought up.”

“In early 2020, it was the [primaries],” the whistleblower continued. “I think that Iowa was the very first one where we weren’t sure what we were allowed to do or we weren’t — it was always wait and see.”

Then while his team was preparing to issue search warrants — for scouring physical residences to look for evidence of a subject’s attempt to file tax returns — before going overt, the higher-ups shut them down, the whistleblower said. In early September 2020, the DOJ Tax Division and the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office halted “overt activities or any activities that could be overt whatsoever.”

Then on Oct. 20, 2020, just days after the New York Post broke the first bombshell laptop story and only two weeks before the election, the whistleblower’s team was prepping to do a covert walk-by to confirm the address of Hunter Biden’s residence for a search. But no. A DOJ tax attorney — it appears to be Mark Daly (who has no problem prosecuting tax evasion of non-Bidens), but the transcript is a bit ambiguous — said, in the whistleblower’s telling: “Tax does not approve. This will be on hold until further notice.”

“I have never in my career have had Tax Division, let alone approve us doing a walk-by or anything like this,” the whistleblower said. “…[U]ltimately, we never were able to do the walk by the residence until after the election. And that’s ultimately when we went overt and were able to do the activities that day on December 8th.”

The other IRS whistleblower, Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley, shared similar concerns with the House Ways and Means Committee, alleging the DOJ “slow-walked the investigation” and denied search warrants of Hunter Biden’s quarters because of “optics.”

So What?

You might not care about the chronology or seemingly mundane details of an IRS investigation. Heck, most Americans would rather not think about the IRS ever, for any reason. But this is more than a bureaucratic timeline. It’s an account — under penalty of perjury, from two respected IRS agents who were present for these hangups — that exposes the next layer of the deep state’s proven record of interference in the 2020 election.

That matters not only because the interference has shattered Americans’ confidence in our electoral process, but because conservatives who were decried as conspiracy theorists and “election deniers” for calling foul in 2020 were right all along.

The Democrat regime interfered in the election, plain and simple. Local officials did so by unlawfully changing rules at the last minute. Big Tech did so by hiding damaging information on their preferred candidates and censoring conservatives. Billionaire activists did so by pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into government offices in the blue areas of swing states to run get-out-the-vote operations. The media did it by lying to voters, day in and day out.

But the regime’s deep-state footsoldiers are perhaps the most egregious offenders. Their censorship and legal malpractice to shield the Biden family were in-kind campaign contributions to the now-president — who likely wouldn’t hold that title without their help.

*****

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

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Politized Science Can Be Hazardous To Your Health

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By Dr. Thomas Patterson

The Lancet was once a leading British medical journal. It was sober and medically exacting. It was so respected that it was often cited to settle controversial issues in the field of medicine.

Today, it is a shell of its former self, shot through with leftist political ideology. A recent editorial called out the UK Home Secretary for her “appalling and shocking“ comments.

Was it about a drop in research funding or disputed medical opinions or something else of direct relevance to medicine? No, the Secretary opined that new migrants to the UK possessed “values which are at odds with our country“ and brought “heightened levels of criminality“.

Some might dispute such statements and some not, but how is this discussion pertinent for a medical journal? Richard Horton, the editor, went on to call for “war“ on the other side of the ideological divide.

Horton and The Lancet are hardly alone in degrading medicine by politicizing it. Science and scientists are in reputational decline because, well, they deserve to be.

Physicians were once respected for their integrity. They could be stodgy and paternalistic sometimes, but they couldn’t be influenced or bought.

Now medical doctors have morphed from being dedicated stewards of their patient’s health to “medical providers”, as government payers describe them. Most owe their professional loyalty to a hospital-based system that operates pretty much like any other business, with the bottom line always in view.

Meanwhile, on issues ranging from Covid to climate science to transgenderism, we are urged to follow “the Science” as if Science were the collective pronouncements of the big shots rather than a process for rolling back the limits of knowledge. “The Science” is often determined by hacks who are especially successful at scoring research grants because they supply the answers our grant-making elites want to hear.

Politicized science can lead to bizarre and harmful conclusions. There is now a movement against randomized controlled trials (RCTs) because they didn’t produce the approved answer to the question of whether face masks prevent infection.

Scientific American stated “decades of engineering and occupational science” show they worked. So there. No silly trials are needed to confirm what everyone knows anyway.

But RCTs are the only way to determine whether a premise is factual. They are the basis of the scientific method, which lifted us out of millennia of ignorance and produced the marvels of modern medicine. Exposing well-regarded but ineffective practices is precisely why they are needed.

While real scientists encourage debate and discovery, pseudoscientists silence those who dissent from the status quo. For example, scientific journals demanded the retraction of research producing evidence that transgenderism can be a social contagion.

Dr. Lisa Littman of Brown University coined the term “rapid onset gender dysphoria“ after her research revealed that although sufferers from the malady are customarily entered into transitioning protocols including hormones and surgery, they often present for treatment in clusters of young women who together discovered their supposedly mistaken gender identity. Dr. Littman’s research was retracted by Brown soon after it was published, due to the outrage of the medical mob.

Yet other researchers like Abigail Shrier and institutions like the UK’s Tavistockstock Center noted the same phenomenon. Springer Nature, a journal noted for its scientific soundness, was set to publish a review of 1655 possible cases of rapid onset gender dysphoria but reversed course, deciding to retract it due to the suspiciously flimsy objection that “written informed consent” was possibly lacking in the study. Intellectual tyranny defeated open debate again.

We need a respected, honest scientific community more than ever. We need them to make more scientific advances, to train future scientists, and to protect us from the befouling influence of politics on science.  The antics of Dr. Fauci and others, bending the truth to seek political favor, did lasting damage to the reputation of the scientific community.

Climate science too has been hopelessly compromised by politics and the biased grant-making process. One of the results is an epidemic of existential depression among young Americans who believe their lives will end in devastation because of excessive carbon emissions (still wrong, no matter how many times it’s been predicted). It’s a shame.

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Arizona State University Sees Scrutiny Over Conservative Event Backlash

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By Carly Moran

An Arizona lawmaker wants the state’s collegiate governing body to investigate why an Arizona State University employee lost her job shortly after organizing an event featuring conservative speakers.

Rep. Austin Smith, R-Surprise, wrote to the Arizona Board of Regents on June 21 following the decision by ASU to terminate the employment of administrator Ann Atkinson.

Atkinson worked as the executive director of the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development at ASU’s Barrett Honors College, where she hosted an event in Feb. 2023 titled “Health, Wealth and Happiness,” with conservative speakers Dennis Prager and Charlie Kirk. By June 30, she will be terminated from ASU.

“ASU claims to value freedom of expression,” Atkinson said in a Wall St. Journal op-ed. “But in the end, the faculty mob always wins against institutional protections for free speech.”

Atkinson argued that the move was politically motivated, but ASU argued differently, saying it was due to the Lewis Center’s loss of funding.

“Arizona State University is committed to, in practice, not just rhetoric, all things that support free speech and all of its components,” the university’s news release reads. “ASU employee Ann Atkinson has lost the distinction between feelings and fact in her recent comments about what prompted her loss of employment at the T.W. Lewis Center at Arizona State University.”

The T.W. Lewis Foundation, led by prominent home developer Tom Lewis, did cancel its funding of the development center. However, Lewis’ revokement of funds may be a response to Atkinson’s treatment, and not the cause. Lewis is known for funding conservative groups, including Prager University and Turning Point USA. He even issued a statement to the Arizona Republic in response to Atkinson’s job loss.

“The long story short is that conservative viewpoints are not welcome at ASU, or at most public universities in America,” Lewis said.

Atkinson detailed ways she believes the administration sought to censor the event without outright banning it. Nevertheless, the event was successful, with a total turnout of 1,500 attending in person, and 24,000 online.

“The university administration’s position on the event was no secret,” Atkinson said. “All advertising about ‘Health, Wealth, and Happiness’ was scrubbed from campus walls and digital flyers. Behind closed doors, deans pressured me to postpone the event indefinitely.”

The clearest form of opposition was a letter signed by 36 honors college faculty members. Though the letter condemned the event, it did not explicitly call for its cancelation.

“Dennis Prager and Charlie Kirk are purveyors of hate who have publicly attacked women, people of color, the LGBTQ community, as well as the institutions of our democracy, including our public institutions of higher education,” the letter read. “By platforming and legitimating their extreme anti-intellectual and antidemocratic views, Barrett will not be furthering the cause of democratic exchange at ASU, but undermining it in ways that could further marginalize the most vulnerable members of our community.”

The letter cited examples of Prager and Kirk’s positions in which they disagreed.

According to some, Atkinson is not the only to suffer repercussions for expressing conservative beliefs at ASU. In the letter to the Arizona Board of Regents, Smith cites the previous arrest of student Tim Tizon for handing out pocket constitutions, as well as the firing of ASU Gammage Theater employee Kin Blake for hosting Atkinson’s event that “did not align with Gammage’s values.”

“Free speech is paramount to the future of our Republic,” Smith said, “Higher education taxpayer-funded universities must be held to a higher standard regarding the First Amendment. I am disturbed that this trend continues to happen at Arizona State University. I have asked the Regents to do their job and seek answers immediately from Arizona State administrators.”

In addition to Smith’s investigation, ASU is currently being watched by the campus free speech group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

“FIRE sees no #1A problem with such a closure, provided there are genuine funding concerns,” FIRE tweeted. “But, because schools often point to viewpoint-neutral reasons to justify viewpoint-based censorship, we’ll continue to monitor closely.”

FIRE had previously given ASU their “green” rating regarding the freedom of expression and speech on campus.

*****

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

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9 Allegations About Bidens, DOJ in IRS Whistleblowers’ Testimonies thumbnail

9 Allegations About Bidens, DOJ in IRS Whistleblowers’ Testimonies

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By Fred Lucas

The White House won’t respond and Attorney General Merrick Garland is playing defense after the release of sworn testimony from two IRS whistleblowers alleging special treatment in the agency’s investigation of the president’s son, Hunter Biden.

The House Ways and Means Committee voted Thursday to make public the transcripts of the IRS agents’ testimonies—two days after the Justice Department announced a plea agreement with Hunter Biden that would result in no prison time for failing to file income taxes and lying on a background check for a gun purchase.

Here’s nine things to know about what the IRS whistleblowers said.

1. ‘WH/DOJ Weren’t Alerted?’

Gary Shapley, a 14-year veteran of the IRS, gave his testimony May 26 to investigators for the House Ways and Means Committee.

Less than a week later, on June 1, a second and anonymous IRS agent also testified under oath.

After the Justice Department announced its plea deal with Hunter Biden on Tuesday, the Ways and Means Committee, in a party-line vote Thursday, decided to release the transcripts.

In a tweet Friday, The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project raised the involvement of the White House and Department of Justice by asking: “Are we to believe that the WH/DOJ weren’t alerted to the explosive whistleblower testimony before [the transcripts were] released?” (The Heritage Foundation is the parent organization of The Daily Signal.)

If someone shared or leaked the IRS whistleblowers’ testimonies before the House committee authorized their release, it could be a violation of federal law (under 26 U.S. Code § 6103) regarding the confidentiality and disclosure of tax returns and information on such returns.

The law states that “no officer or employee of the United States, … shall disclose any return or return information obtained by him in any manner in connection with his service as such an officer or an employee or otherwise or under the provisions of this section.”

According to whistleblowers, IRS officials recommended that Hunter Biden be criminally charged with attempting to evade taxes, committing fraud, making false statements, willfully failing to file returns, and failing to provide information on over $8.3 million in income.

“Whistleblowers describe how the Biden Justice Department intervened and overstepped in a campaign to protect the son of Joe Biden by delaying, divulging, and denying an ongoing investigation into Hunter Biden’s alleged tax crimes,” Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., said in a public statement.

The Daily Signal sought comment from spokespersons at the Justice Department and the White House Counsel’s Office on their awareness of the testimony before announcement of the plea deal. Neither responded.

The Daily Signal also sought comment from the office of Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, to ask whether any Democrats on the committee shared information with the White House or Justice Department.

Neal’s office did not respond to multiple phone and email inquiries.

2. ‘Sitting Here With My Father’

The Justice Department delayed authentication of messages between Hunter Biden and a Chinese business partner, the IRS’ Shapley, a supervisory agent, testified to House investigators.

“For example, in August 2020, we got the results back from an iCloud search warrant. Unlike the laptop [abandoned by Hunter Biden at a Delaware repair shop], these came to the investigative team from a third-party record keeper and included a set of messages,” Shapley said.

The IRS supervisory agent went on to give an example:

We obtained a July 30th, 2017, WhatsApp message from Hunter Biden to Henry Zhao, where Hunter Biden wrote: ‘I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.’

Shapley also testified that at a September 2020 meeting, Assistant U.S. Attorney for Delaware Lesley Wolf said there was “more than enough probable cause for the physical search warrant there, but the question was whether the juice was worth the squeeze.”

The prosecutor also said that “optics were a driving factor in the decision on whether to execute a search warrant,” the IRS agent testified.

3. White House Won’t Comment

During a White House press briefing Friday, a reporter asked National Security Council spokesman Adm. John Kirby about the whistleblower allegations concerning the text message from Hunter Biden to his Chinese business associate.

“I’m not going to comment further on this,” Kirby said. “I am not going to address this issue from this podium.”

He soon departed quickly, wishing reporters a good weekend.

Later in the same briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to  respond to reporters’ questions about the IRS whistleblowers’ testimonies. She instead referred reporters to the White House Counsel’s Office—which she said already has addressed the matter.

“I believe my colleague at the White House Counsel’s Office has answered this question, has dealt with this, has made it very clear,” Jean-Pierre told reporters. “I just don’t have anything to share outside of what my colleagues have shared. So I would refer you to him and the DOJ. I’m not going to comment from here.”

On Tuesday, when the Justice Department announced its plea deal with Hunter Biden, Ian Sams, a senior adviser to the counsel’s office, issued a written statement for the senior Biden.

In it, Sams said: “The President and First Lady love their son and support him as he continues to rebuild his life. We will have no further comment.”

Sams didn’t respond to an inquiry Friday from The Daily Signal after the White House press briefing. The Daily Signal asked whether either the White House or the Justice Department was made aware of what the two IRS agents said pending announcement of the plea deal with the president’s son.

However, it doesn’t appear that the White House Counsel’s Office has spoken to reporters about the IRS whistleblowers’ allegations.

Asked whether she stood by her earlier statement that Biden knew nothing about his son’s various business dealings, Jean-Pierre said, “Nothing has changed.”

Another reporter asked, referring to Hunter Biden’s text to the Chinese business associate saying his father was right there: “Have you spoken to the president about this? Have you asked him whether he was there with his son on July 30, 2017?”

Jean-Pierre answered: “This is not a conversation that I’ve had with the president. Again, I would refer you to the White House counsel.”

Biden’s press secretary also was asked whether the president would talk to the attorney general, Garland, about the matter.

“I cannot say if the president had a conversation with the attorney general about this,” she said.

4. ‘Weiss Requesting Special Counsel Authority’

U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss, a holdover from the Trump administration who is in charge of the Hunter Biden case, wanted to bring charges in the District of Columbia in March 2022, but was denied permission, according to testimony.

Weiss also sought special counsel status from the Justice Department in the spring of 2022, in order to conduct an independent inquiry. However, superiors also denied that request.

In the fall of 2022, Weiss requested to bring charges against the younger Biden in the Central District of California. The Justice Department denied that request in January.

“From March 2022 through Oct. 7, 2022, I was under the impression that, based on AG Garland’s testimony before Congress and statements by U.S. Attorney Weiss and prosecutors, that they were still deciding whether to charge 2014 and 2015 tax violations,” Shapley testified to House investigators.

“However, I would later be told by United States Attorney Weiss that the D.C. U.S. Attorney would not allow U.S. Attorney Weiss to charge those years in his district. This resulted in United States Attorney Weiss requesting special counsel authority from Main DOJ to charge in the District of Columbia,” the IRS supervisory agent testified.

“I don’t know if he asked before or after the attorney general’s April 26, 2022, statement, but Weiss said his request for that authority was denied and that he was told to follow DOJ’s process,” Shapley said.

5. Garland: Weiss Had Complete Discretion

During a press conference Friday, Garland responded to the whistleblowers’ allegations. As Biden’s attorney general, he previously had testified under oath before the Senate that the Weiss’ Delaware-based investigation would be completely independent…..

*****

Continue reading this article at The Daily Signal.

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Arizona News: June 26, 2023 thumbnail

Arizona News: June 26, 2023

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By The Editors

The Prickly Pear will provide current, linked articles about Arizona consistent with our Mission Statement to ‘inform, educate and advocate’. We are an Arizona based website and believe this information should be available to all of our statewide readers.

Arizona State University sees scrutiny over conservative event backlash

Is Katie Hobbs the Darth Vader of Arizona Politics?

Hobbs Vetoes Prop 400 Bill Leaving Voters With Fewer Choices

Hobbs Racks Up Vetoes Against Voter Confidence Bills

Kerr Outraged Over Hobbs Veto Of Public Safety Bills

Hobbs vetoes ban on ESG investments in Arizona

Corporation headquarters are moving to Florida, Texas and Arizona

Immigration Displacing U.S. Workers at Record Pace

Phoenix Considers Creation Of New Court To Handle Crimes Committed By Homeless

SCR 1015 Would Ensure That Our State’s Initiative Process Is For All Arizonans

Mohave Judge Assigned To Hamadeh Election Case Was Censured And Reprimanded In Past For Overdue Rulings

Former Arizona governor announced new CEO of free market PAC

State of emergency limit on 2024 Arizona ballot

Study: Federal biopharma policies could cost Arizona 11,000 jobs

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Anti-Pharma Dem Ruben Gallego Took Thousands In Campaign Cash From Drug Companies thumbnail

Anti-Pharma Dem Ruben Gallego Took Thousands In Campaign Cash From Drug Companies

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By Michael Ginsberg

Democratic Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego has accepted thousands of dollars in donations from individuals and political action committees (PACs) associated with major pharmaceutical companies and the healthcare industry despite frequently criticizing both, a Daily Caller review found.

Gallego, who is running for Senate against Independent Kyrsten Sinema, frequently blasts the former Democrat for her opposition to single-payer healthcare and perceived closeness with the pharmaceutical industry. However, Gallego’s campaign has accepted more than $30,000 from pharmaceutical company PACs since his first run for Congress, with the health sector providing the fourth-largest source of funds for his 2022 reelection bid.

Since his initial 2014 run for the House, Gallego has accepted $31,500 from political action committees associated with pharmaceutical companies. Notably, he took cash from Bristol Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly, two firms that congressional Democrats have accused of price-gouging. At the same time, however, Gallego blasted Sinema for initially opposing a price-fixing scheme that Democrats fought to include in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

“Kyrsten Sinema blocked key provisions for negotiating the cost of prescription drugs in the Inflation Reduction Act. Sinema’s support for Big Pharma over seniors on a fixed income makes her unfit to lead Arizona,” Gallego tweeted in April.

“Senator Sinema is calling herself an ‘independent’ now. Well, she’s not independent from Wall St, Big Pharma, or their pricey lobbyists,” he claimed after she left the Democratic Party. (RELATED: Dem Senate Candidate Obtained Special Mortgage For D.C. Home Despite Claiming Arizona As His Primary Residence)

The Gallego campaign did not respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment on whether or not he would return any campaign donations from pharmaceutical companies or employees. He also accepted more than $85,000 from individuals employed in the health sector during the 2022 election cycle, according to OpenSecrets.

Despite running as a left-wing populist alternative to the centrist Sinema, Gallego’s Senate campaign has accepted cash from industries that he often criticizes. During the first quarter of 2023, he accepted more than $106,000 from employees of big banks and other major corporations. Gallego raised more money from lawyers than any other profession during Q1 of 2023.

Overall, Gallego raised more than $3.7 million in Q1 of 2023, and has more than $2.7 million on hand. Sinema raised $2.1 million in Q1 of 2023, and has more than $9.9 million on hand.

A series of surveys conducted by Public Policy Polling in April found Gallego leading a series of contests with Sinema and potential Republican candidates. In a matchup with former Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, Gallego would garner 42%, Lake 35%, and Sinema 14%. Against Pinal County sheriff Mark Lamb or businessman Jim Lamon, Gallego would similarly hold 43% support, while Sinema would gather 15% and 16% respectively.

*****

This article was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

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OPINION: January 1 or December 6, Not June 19, Should Be the National Holiday thumbnail

OPINION: January 1 or December 6, Not June 19, Should Be the National Holiday

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By Catherine Salgado

Today has been declared a national holiday—Juneteenth. But if we really want to celebrate a day that was a landmark in America’s journey toward a freer, less racist society, we should not be celebrating Juneteenth—we should be celebrating January 1, the day in 1863 when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, or December 6, the day the 13th Amendment was ratified. Or even February 3, the day the 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870. And I believe the only reason the Democrats wanted this holiday is because it marks the date of a rare instance of a Democrat politician (Andrew Johnson, who was otherwise very racist) allowing an anti-slavery action. Indeed, the president in office when Juneteenth happened, Johnson, infamously wrote, “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men.”

To be more clear. . .The Emancipation Proclamation was written and issued by Republican President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, and it freed all the slaves in Confederate territory and welcomed black soldiers into the US Army and Navy. Below is an excerpt from the Proclamation:

“That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom. . .

And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.”

A magnificent document! In modern times, however, it is necessary to make a few clarifications. Firstly, Lincoln is often criticized for not freeing all slaves unconditionally. The answer is that he did not have the power to do so. While the words “slave” or “slavery” are never mentioned in the US Constitution, the slaves owned by those not in rebellion against the United States were legally considered property at the time, and Lincoln did not have the power as president to confiscate “property” from non-rebels. This is a not a mark of Lincoln’s racism, since we know that Lincoln later fought with extreme intensity for the passage of the official constitutional amendment which ended slavery once for all. Lincoln also called at least one former slave, Frederick Douglass, his “friend.”

Secondly, note that Lincoln specifically mentions that the Proclamation is in accord with the Constitution. Anti-slavery advocates such as Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and George Washington who had been disappointed to achieve no slavery ban in the Constitution had taken comfort in the fact—as noted above, per Madison—that “slave” and “slavery” are not mentioned at all in the Constitution. There is also no mentioned barrier of any sort according to race (in fact, Washington’s revolutionary army was fully racially integrated and black men could vote in most states in the early days after the Constitution was passed).

Lincoln had long before argued for rights for black Americans on the basis of precedent, and he clearly believed his Emancipation Proclamation was only continuing the work of freedom which the Constitution had begun, in full accord with the ultimate intentions of the Constitution’s most influential writers, like Madison.

Therefore, the Emancipation Proclamation was a history-changing document, a landmark achievement. A white man born and partly raised in the South declared that all slaves in Confederate territory were free, and that black men had the right to serve their country in the military. This same man sent forth an army mostly composed of white men (though the Proclamation ensured it was a multi-racial army) who were willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice—their lives—to prove that black men ought to be free.

Nearly half a century later, one of the slaves who had been freed by the Proclamation, Booker T. Washington, was invited to give a speech on Lincoln to a group of Republicans. Booker T. Washington’s opening words capture beautifully what the Emancipation Proclamation meant to the former slaves of America: “You ask that which he found a piece of property and turned into a free American citizen to speak to you tonight on Abraham Lincoln.”

So why not celebrate January 1? Well, New Year’s Day is already a national holiday, so that makes it a little impractical; though we could well celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation on that same day. Or we could celebrate December 6, since that was the day in 1865 that the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery was ratified—the Amendment that was uniquely Lincoln’s, though he did not live to see it officially ratified. After all, December 6 is therefore the day when slavery was officially and finally ended, without exceptions, in the United States (with 100% Republican support and only 23% Democrat support). Let December 6 be the holiday celebrating the end of American slavery. So why celebrate Juneteenth? What exactly happened today that is so important?

The answer is, not much. June 19 saw no pivotal point in the history of race relations in America. It “marks the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in 1865 to take control of the state and ensure that all enslaved people be freed.” I am very happy that the federal troops were ensuring that the last territory not continue to hold people in bondage.

But the reality is that this day was merely the end point of a work that was started by other men, years before. We celebrate July 4, 1776, not the day that the siege at Yorktown ended or the day Cornwallis’s army officially surrendered. In the same way, Constitution Day is September 17, the day the Constitution was signed by the Constitutional Convention delegates, not the day the last state accepted it. Why? Because the starting point—the first brave step, the first history-rocking move, is what qualifies for a national holiday. We celebrate the start, not the finish. Obviously everything that came after in both cases was important, very important, but that does not mean any of those other days automatically qualifies as a holiday.

So why is June 19 a holiday now? My answer is that the Democrats are trying to clean up their history. It is not that this day has never been celebrated before—of course it has. But it was made a federal holiday because the president under whom the federal troops were sent into Galveston was a Democrat, Andrew Johnson. Also, this holiday allows for Democrats to put in any significance they desire, because the major significance is not already obvious to everyone.

The president who wrote the Emancipation Proclamation and pushed the 13th Amendment through Congress was a Republican, and the party that ultimately ensured the ratification of the 13th Amendment was the Republican party. Likewise, the 15th Amendment that gave black men the right to vote (as originally they had when the Constitution was ratified) was the special project of Republican President U.S. Grant, and it was passed by Republicans with not a single Democrat’s vote in favor. Democrats are erasing the true history of anti-slavery achievements to make themselves look good.

And Andrew Johnson, the Democrat president in office when “Juneteenth” happened? Johnson had owned slaves before the Civil War (only Democrats owned slaves by the time of the Civil War, by the way). He was a highly racist man, and he did not want justice for former slaves. Lincoln’s plan to give every former slave or his family “forty acres and a mule” was ruined deliberately by Johnson, who pardoned former Confederate Democrats so they could have their land back. “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men,” Johnson wrote.

Johnson “vetoed the Freedman’s Bureau Bill, designed to allocate land for the freedmen, provide schools for their children, and increase the Bureau’s legal power by setting up military courts in the southern states to protect the freedmen’s rights.” He furthermore “vetoed The Civil Rights Bill, which was designed to protect blacks against black codes and terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan.” Unsurprising, considering the Ku Klux Klan was an entirely Democrat organization, founded by a former Confederate leader and war criminal, Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Johnson did not allow troops to go into Texas because he wanted to hasten the end of slavery or increase the rights of black Americans. Johnson was a disgusting racist, as the majority of his fellow Democrats have always been. If there is one president whose actions we should celebrate, it is not Andrew Johnson. I am all for having a national holiday to celebrate an important event in American history furthering the end of racism—but let it celebrate Lincoln, the president who called a black man his friend, not the president who believed blacks incapable of engaging in anything but “barbarism.”

*****

This article was published at Pro Deo et Libertate and is reproduced with permission.

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The U.S. Is Ruled by Heinerscheids thumbnail

The U.S. Is Ruled by Heinerscheids

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By Craig J. Cantoni

They won’t rest until they get their fellow Heinerscheid, Donald Trump.

Heinerscheids on the left and right dominate the top of government, industry and media.

What is a Heinerscheid (high-nur-shide)?

A Heinerscheid is an upper-caste American from the Ivy League who has been hoodwinked to believe that a degree from a top-ranked school brings wisdom, common sense, and self-awareness.

In truth, the primary value of the degree is that it serves as an entrée into a network of other Heinerscheids.

Heinerscheids are experts at using their connections to acquire social, economic, and political power to advance themselves.  As a result, they hold influential positions in the echo chamber of a big corporation or big government, or big media, where they make multiples of what the average bloke makes, an amount that far exceeds what they contribute to the commonweal.

We’ll begin with Heinerscheids on the left and turn later to ones on the right.

Heinerscheids on the left have been steeped in crackpot race theory, marinated in social justice sophistry, and pickled in guilt over their gilded station in life.  They try to compensate for their silver spoon through hollow virtue signaling and communing with the so-called disadvantaged, believing that they are intellectually and morally superior to the middlebrows and lowbrows in Middle America.

The term Heinerscheid is eponymously derived from the name of a real person:  Alissa Heinerscheid.

Alissa Heinerscheid is the former Anheuser-Busch marketing executive and brand manager for Bud Light who thought it would be a swell idea to partner with the trans social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney in selling beer, or swill if you will.

Mulvaney supposedly has ten million followers on social media, a statistic that baffles me, because if I were on social media, I wouldn’t be interested in following even myself.  Mulvaney also was an actor in the stage production of the musical “The Book of Mormon.” Evidently, it’s okay to lampoon Mormons but not transsexuals and transgenders.   

Alissa Heinerscheid attended the Groton School, where the annual tuition is purported to be $60,000.  She went on to get degrees in English and literature from Harvard, and from there got an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the alma mater of Donald Trump.

No wonder she used the word “fratty” to describe Bud Lite drinkers.  She would know fratty.

It would be inaccurate to say that Alissa was born on third base.  Actually, she and others of her caste started the game of life with a five-run advantage and umpires who had been bribed to throw the game in their favor.

It’s possible for someone to be born and raised in a lower caste and still be a Heinerscheid, as long as the individual later went to the right college and now lives in the right neighborhood and parrots the right clichés and platitudes about diversity, social justice, and giving back to the community.  There are also a lot of Heinerscheid wannabes who don’t quite make the grade but strive to be accepted into the caste.  Joe Biden is one of them.

Heinerscheids on the right are from the same caste as those on the left, went to the same schools, and live in the same neighborhoods.  However, they differ from their counterparts on the left in not feeling guilty about their station in life, in not being woke, and in not demeaning the white working class, not that they really care about the working class or want to live among them.

If you believe as I do that the U.S. is in decline, then the fault lies with the Heinerscheids who have been running the country for the last half-century. It’s certainly not the fault of the proles, hoi polloi, and deplorables.

The lower castes weren’t responsible for the overthrow of democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, the folly of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the bloody debacle of the Vietnam War, or the closing of the gold window in 1971, or the Arab Oil Embargo and its subsequent economic downturn, or the arming of the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan, or the offshoring of their jobs, or the imbecility of the Iraq War, or the further imbecility of the Afghanistan War, or the rise of ISIS, or the decades of unsustainable deficit spending, or the tuition loan scam and the related greed of universities, or the never-ending propagation of government red tape and bureaucrats, or the economic fallout from the Federal Reserve’s easy money and zero interest rates.

On the last point, it should be noted that the Fed employs an estimated 300 Ph.D. economists.  It’s a safe bet that many of them are Heinerscheids.    

The partisan divide in Congress and the divide between the current and former administrations masks how alike the two sides are in pedigree.  There are a lot of Heinerscheids on both sides of the divide who are in the same good-ole-boy or good-ole-girl network, where, to repeat, they learned how to pull the levers of government, industry, and media in accumulating power, prestige, and wealth.

Yale is one of the breeding grounds.  Not only was the CIA born at Yale, but notable members of the university’s secret society of the Skull and Bones included JFK advisor McGeorge Bundy, President Herbert Walker Bush, President George W. Bush, Senator John Kerry, and Obama advisor Austan Goolsbee.

A small sample of the many other notable Yale graduates includes Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton, William Buckley, Time Magazine Editor Fareed Zakaria, FedEx founder Frederick Smith, and Ron DeSantis, who also has a Harvard degree.

Georgetown is another breeding ground.  Some of its notable graduates include Lyndon Johnson, Antonin Scalia, Bill Clinton, Robert Gates, Steve Bannon, Jerome Powell, Paul Pelosi (husband of Nancy Pelosi), Hunter Biden, Tiffany Trump, and Eric Trump.

Harvard graduates have permeated government, industry, and media even more.   A list of the 100 most notable Harvard graduates is at this link:

100 Notable alumni of Harvard University

It’s telling that eight of the nine Supreme Court justices are from the Ivy League.  Are we to believe that other law schools don’t produce expert constitutional jurists?

What about Donald Trump?  Is he a Heinerscheid?  He certainly is by pedigree.

Until the seventh grade, Trump attended the private Kew-Forest School in Queens, where his wealthy father was a member of the school’s governing board, and where the current tuition is about $40,000 per year.  Due to unruly behavior, he was then sent to the New York Military Academy (NYMA) in Cornwall-On-Hudson in upstate New York, where the current annual tuition and fees for boarding students total $53,000.

Trump went on to get a degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

He certainly knew how to operate the levers of power in New York City, a city awash in Heinerscheids.  Leveraging his inherited wealth and connections, he built a real estate empire, and, knowing how to play the Heinerscheids in the media, he got his own TV show and nearly constant media coverage locally and nationally.  In a very real sense, he is a product of Heinerscheids.

Now they hate him, not for being narcissistic and obnoxious, but for being a traitor to his caste. Instead of playing the Heinerscheid game, whether on the side of the right or left, he violated the rules of the game and exposed the Heinerscheids for the hypocrites and phonies they are.

There’s nothing like a scorned Heinerscheid.  They won’t rest until they get him.

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Voting Machine Printer Company Says Maricopa Election Day Report ‘Inaccurate,’ Seeks Correction thumbnail

Voting Machine Printer Company Says Maricopa Election Day Report ‘Inaccurate,’ Seeks Correction

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By Natalia Mittelstadt

The printer company said Maricopa County did not contact them during the investigation into Election Day printer issues.

A printer company says a report by Arizona’s Maricopa County on errors at voting centers on Election Day 2022 is “factually inaccurate” and is seeking a correction from the county attorney’s office.

Ballot printer issues at more than 70 vote centers in the county on Election Day last year resulted in long lines because tabulator machines could not read some of the voters’ ballots.

The county commissioned former Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth McGregor to investigate the matter and write a report, which directed some of the blame on Japan-based printer company Oki Electric Industry Co.

The report, which was released in April, found that between the August primaries and the November general contest last year, the county expanded the length of ballots from 19 to 20 inches to include all of the required information for the races.

The increased ballot size in combination with the use of 100-pound ballot paper, the report concludes, was too great a strain on the printers.

“We concluded that the combined effect of using 100-pound ballot paper and a 20-inch ballot during the 2022 general election was to require that the Oki B432 printers perform at the extreme edge of their capability, a level that could not be reliably sustained by a substantial number of printers,” the report reads.

OKI responded late last month to the report by saying it was never contacted by county officials and investigation teams working on their behalf. Furthermore, the company said, neither election services providers nor “any other parties associated with the investigation” contacted OKI….

*****

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