“John Trumbull was an American painter, American diplomat, and a veteran soldier in our War of Independence from the greatest superpower on earth, the British empire led by Mad King George III.
He painted “The Declaration of Independence” that is set at the top of this column, and fills me and most every other patriot I know with a great sense of reverence. He was witness to pain and suffering and great American courage as an aide to George Washington, and you might as well call him “The Painter of the Revolution.” Others did. His painting “Declaration of Independence”—one of four of his paintings that hang in the United States Capitol rotunda—is often seen by Americans in documentaries of Independence Day.
The 56 brave men who signed it and their families risked certain death. And many did in fact, die as a result, their families risked torture and loss of fortune. And it also may have been first and the last time that the well-suited clique that we now refer to as the so-called “Washington political establishment” risked what the people risked—pain and suffering for our beliefs–and pain for demanding our liberty.
But they weren’t gods, though we treat them as such, with their images on our coin, great marble statues of them in our public squares and mythology about the cherry trees and honesty, in our monuments, obelisks and reflecting pools, their gigantic heads peering down on us from the Olympian heights of Mt. Rushmore.
Not gods but wise imperfect men who understood human nature, and to treat them as gods encourages the drooling iconoclasts who have no religious beliefs but their own power and topple old statues as they shriek their hatred of America.
At Independence Day celebrations this week, you’ll be encouraged to stuff yourselves with hot dogs and barbecue, corn and beer. You’ll wipe the rib sauce from your faces and maybe you’ll think about how Americans learned to catch the crafty and indominable wild pig. (hint: with the bribe of tasty government corn, that’s how.)
You’ll watch sports on TV and some of you will idly count the number of dead in urban mass gang shootings, you might also consider what our Founding Fathers would think of us.
And gods or not gods, I wonder what Trumbull and the Founding Fathers would think of the photograph below, of then Vice President Biden puckering his lips to loudly and publicly kiss the behind of China, and the benefactor of the Biden Crime Family. Would they see it as evidence of flannel mouthed grifters betraying everything they worked and risked their lives to build?
Xi Jinping is pictured–Biden held the festivities in his honor just as we’ve learned the Biden Grift Machine was working overtime–though other Biden Inc., benefactors including earthy players from Ukraine and Romania were not pictured. Coincidence? Or are the Bidens just lucky?
And what would Turnbull and Washington think of the Bidens?
There is a back story that makes this picture worth at least $40 million words, but if you get your news from members of the corrupt Washington Democratic Media Complex you might miss the true flavor. This involves Joe Biden’s crackhead son Hunter.
Hunter sounds as if he’d been fully hatched at Chicago’s City Hall, a spoiled child complete with a viper’s tongue, just a sneering Chinatown tough guy. All of his extortionate demands of Biden Crime Family corruption can be read in transcripts here, and were released the other day by the House Ways and Means Committee.
Credible IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley Jr. testified before a house committee. His testimony and Hunter Biden’s incriminating text messages were included in the transcripts. Predictably, Hunter’s attorneys and White House media suck-ups called Shapley a liar. The corrupt media from the New York Times to the flesh eating harpies of “The View” bleated and bleated that Joe was just a father who loved a troubled son. Really?
You decide.
Study the official photograph. There, smirking on the left, is China’s strongman, Communist leader Xi Jinping. China Joe Biden his glass raised, is oozing at those who fill his pockets, making with a grand toast in 2015. What isn’t mentioned is that Hunter Biden and his father Joe are thought to have reportedly picked up tens of millions of dollars in Chinese cash, not to mention other payments from from power players in Ukraine and Romania.
The text messages from Hunter to Chinese officials are quite damning, but sound rather like the son of a political boss threatening clout reprisals, backed up by his father’s army and corrupt Department of Justice.
“I’m tired of this Kevin,” Hunter told one of them. “I can make $5 million in salary from any law firm in America. If you think it’s about money, it’s not. The Biden’s [sic] are the best at doing exactly what Chairman wants from this partnership. Please let’s not quibble over peanuts.”
Of course you can, Hunter. You can easily make millions. Smoke some more dope. And you can make millions and millions more from selling the finger paints you pass off as “artwork.” It reminds me of what crooked Cook County judge was accused of, selling his wife’s “artwork” to lawyers hoping for an edge in his court. It all works, the corrupt Chicago Way becomes the Delaware Way becomes the American Way, allowing for Democratic grift and graft. And fortunes made at the expense of the people. Just take the audio of Biden’s cheap grifter’s toast to Xi Jinping and mix it with the sound of Chinese boots marching down Pennsylvania Avenue.
It will work as long as American people allow the Biden Department of Justice and the Democratic Media Complex in Washington to protect the Biden Crime Family’s every move. The other day, pundits in knee pads were saying all this drama is really only about a father’s love for his son. And that father is the president of the United States.”
“Attentive students of the journalistic arts can train themselves to recognize liberal media bias. When a politician breaks the law and the story doesn’t identify his party in the first paragraph, it’s a safe bet the offender is a Democrat. When Republicans “pounce” in the New York Times or the Washington Post, you can be sure the real story is that a Democrat has done something foolish or outrageous.
Consider how the big outlets have covered the Hunter Biden tax-investigation saga. The president’s son’s convoluted business dealings have been known for years. Now, Republican-controlled House committees are coughing up juicy details. These pages have covered them.
The mainstream press is reporting those details too—if grudgingly—but insists you remember one thing: Important elements of the story remain . . . unclear. This is journalese for, “Nothing to see here, folks!”
On June 22, in its first story on the recent testimony by a pair of IRS whistleblowers, the Times noted that “it was not immediately clear” whether Joe Biden was physically present when Hunter sent a WhatsApp message threatening a Chinese business associate to pay up or risk his father’s wrath. “It is unclear what specific commitment the message refers to,” the Post noted the same day. Whether Joe Biden knew Hunter was using his name in such a way was “also not clear,” the Times added. PolitiFact, a “fact checking” outfit hosted by the Poynter Institute, chimed in: “What the ‘commitment’ was, and whether Joe Biden was present, are unclear.”
As for the whistleblowers’ claims that the Justice Department sabotaged the investigation for political reasons, the Associated Press offered that “it was unclear whether the conflict they described amounted to internal disagreement or a pattern of preferential treatment.”
From a traditional journalistic perspective—that is to say an objective one—this is a concerning lack of clarity. You might think that seasoned reporters competing for scoops would sense opportunity in all this ambiguity. Yet more than a week has gone by since the bombshell WhatsApp message came out and things don’t appear to have gotten any clearer. On June 27 the Times acknowledged that “it remains unclear” why the Justice Department account of the Hunter Biden investigation differs so substantially from the tale the whistleblowers told.”
“For as long as I can remember, the Democratic Party has claimed to be a champion for all Americans, particularly for the working class, minorities and for those who are considered marginalized, oppressed or downtrodden.
But somewhere between fighting to keep slavery alive (Andrew Johnson); deliberately reducing the number of black civilian employees from the federal workforce and airing a film that glorified the Ku Klux Klan at the White House (Woodrow Wilson); throwing Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II (Franklin Delano Roosevelt); promoting a culture of government dependence, poverty and fatherlessness (Lyndon Johnson); creating racial tension by declaring cops racist—leading to further destruction of our inner cities, while mocking legitimate concerns of disgruntled blue collar midwesterners frustrated by decreasing wages, lack of employment opportunities—and an opioid epidemic hollowing out their communities (Barack Obama); the intentional failure to enforce our country’s immigration laws, contributing to a four decade high of inflation by spending trillions of taxpayer dollars on Democrat pet projects that mostly help special interest groups, referring to roughly half the country as violent extremists and weaponizing the Department of Justice—to throw his leading political rival in prison (Joe Biden); it seems fair to say the Democratic Party has fallen well short of being a champion for anyone, except for its own desperate attempt to stay in power at any and all costs.
For a party that abhors the Founding Fathers and seeks to delegitimize their contributions, rejects and regards the principles of the Constitution as meaningless, and regularly criticizes the country for failing to live up to its stated goal of forming a more perfect union, perhaps it might be time for the Democratic Party to look itself in the mirror.
The entirety of the Democratic Party platform in 2023 is predicated on fear mongering and based on easily verifiable lies about the Republican Party. It typically sounds something like this: Republicans want to make it harder for minorities to vote, they only want to give tax breaks to the wealthy, they’re banning books and ignoring inconvenient aspects of American history, they don’t want poor kids to be able to go to college, they’re anti-immigration, they want to deprive Americans from receiving healthcare, they don’t believe trans people exist, they don’t think women have a right to make their own medical decisions, and police are writ large racist and randomly hunting down black people, etc.
Not a single one of those absurd claims, which are promulgated regularly in the pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other leftist propaganda outlets has one iota of credibility. But that hasn’t prevented Democrat politicians, Hollywood, academia and the legacy media from repeating these erroneous charges into ad nauseum.
Take, for instance, the ridiculous claim that Republican led states like Georgia want to make it harder for minorities to vote. Considering that the Peach State just set a record for voter turnout in the Midterms—in which over one million people voted—Republican leaders did a pretty poor job of discouraging citizens from casting their ballots.
It is hardly discriminatory to require every single American to present a valid form of ID that clearly verifies who the individual is. Nothing about that is inherently racist, but it certainly is racist to imply that black people for some reason either do not have an ID, or do not possess the means to obtain a driver’s license. If the DMV is suddenly denying licenses to black people—one would imagine the Biden DOJ would have started an investigation.
But I digress.
What about the Democrats’ fallacious charge that Republicans only want to give tax breaks to the wealthy? Once again, that is simply not borne out by any shred of evidence.
An analysis of IRS tax data showed that the Trump tax cuts disproportionately benefited those earning less than $50,000 per year. Those with an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $15,000 to $50,000 saw an average tax cut of 16 percent to 26 percent in 2018, while those who earned $50,000 to $100,000 received a tax break between 15 percent to 17 percent.
Those earning between $100,000 to $500,000 in AGI saw their personal income taxes decrease by around 11 percent to 13 percent and no one with an AGI of at least $500,000 received an average tax cut above 9 percent. The average tax cut for those in income brackets starting at $1 million was less than 6 percent.
In other words, under Trump’s tax plan, the more money an individual earned, the higher their income was effectively taxed. But don’t let the facts get in the way of the Democrats narrative.”
—-
A false narrative most of the media embraces and pushes as if it’s truth straight from God.
“On Sunday, the White House grounds were evacuated after an initially unidentified item was found. A United States Secret Service spokesperson confirmed the event, saying:
U.S. Secret Service Uniform Division Officers located an unknown item on the White House complex.
As a precaution, the White House grounds were evacuated, and the DC Fire Departments Hazmat team responded.
A hazmat team responded to the area of 18th St and Pennsylvania Ave, and the Secret Service blocked roadways around the White House. All roads have re-opened since, according to the spokesperson.
D.C. Emergency Medical officials later deemed the item to be “non-hazardous.” The substance is reported to be cocaine hydrochloride.”
The U.S. Secret Service has closed several roads near the White House due to the presence of unknown substances near the White House, the reason for this is not yet known.#WhiteHouse#UnitedStatespic.twitter.com/FTUvmT6g9Z
“Some media outlets and social media users have informed audiences that cocaine hydrochloride is a local anesthetic agent used by doctors in nasal mucous membranes prior to surgery… which is true — two FDA-approved products Numbrino and Goprelto, are nasal sprays in liquid form.
Since the reports coming from the White House don’t seem to indicate a lot of nasal spray was found, well before prepared into a solution, the substance comes in its solid form, and under those circumstances, cocaine hydrochloride is the technical name for… cocaine. In less formal settings, this may be called “a bag of coke.”
Even if the “medical product” story didn’t have the glaring issue that powdered cocaine doesn’t actually have FDA approval, the legal drugs available on the market are rarely used. The Drug Enforcement Administration published a fact sheet in 2020 stating that the FDA approved drugs are less effective than other products on the market and rarely used:
Which drugs cause similar effects? Other stimulants, such as amphetamine and methamphetamine, cause effects similar to cocaine that vary mainly in degree. What is its legal status in the United States? Cocaine is a Schedule II drug under the Controlled Substances Act, meaning it has a high potential for abuse and has an accepted medical use for treatment in the United States. Cocaine hydrochloride solution (4 percent and 10 percent) is used primarily as a topical local anesthetic for the upper respiratory tract. It also is used to reduce bleeding of the mucous membranes in the mouth, throat, and nasal cavities. However, more effective products have been developed for these purposes, and cocaine is now rarely used medically in the United States.”
“A major study into the impact of the pandemic on Amish communities has found that Covid death rates among the traditionalist groups of citizens are 90 times lower than for the rest of America.
The main difference, the study revealed, is that Amish communities completely ignored the guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Amish families did not get vaccinated or wear masks, nor did they engage in lockdowns, social distancing, or any other type of restrictions.
But the separated communities didn’t avoid catching the virus, however, as roughly 90% of the Amish have been infected with Covid.
The study was conducted by the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation (VSRF) and specifically focused on Amish people in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Lancaster has the world’s largest single community of Amish people with over 45,000 people.
Speaking to the Pennsylvania State Senate this week, Steve Kirsch, the founder of the VSRF, testified on his study.
Kirsch explained why Amish citizens died at a much lower rate than the rest of the country.
Kirsch first described talking with the family of the lone Amish man in Lancaster County who allegedly died from Covid.
Speaking to the family, Kirsch found out they actually didn’t know if he passed from the virus because the claim was made by the hospital where the man died.
“Maybe he died from the Covid hospital protocols,” Kirsch told the State Senate about the Amish man.
Kirsch said he had heard that five Amish people had died from Covid but he was unable to find any information on them and couldn’t confirm their identities or the deaths.
He said he “did the calculation” based on the assumption that he was able to confirm the identity of five.
Kirsch said the calculation reveals that the Amish died at a rate “ninety times lower than the infection fatality rate of the United States of America.”
“The Amish died at ninety times lower rate from Covid than the rest of America,” he said again.
He continued by suggesting the reason is that Amish families don’t vaccinate their children.
“And, because the Amish didn’t follow a single guideline of the CDC, they did not lock down, they did not mask, they did not social distance, they did not vaccinate and there were no mandates in the Amish community to get vaccinated.
“They basically ignored every single guideline that the CDC gave us.”
Later, Kirsch also noted that researchers were unable “find an autistic kid who was unvaccinated” in Amish communities.
He added that diseases like ADD, autoimmune disease, PANDAS PANS, or epilepsy basically don’t exist among Amish children.
Kirsch also said the federal government has studied Amish communities for decades without releasing a public report.
He alleged that publishing such information would “be devastating” to the CDC and expose their recommendations as harmful to Americans.”
“Environmental bureaucrats are out to save you from pizza.
The city government is set to restrict emissions from coal- and wood-fired pizza ovens in restaurants in the city.
New Yorkers are once again suffering at the hands of the unelected food police in the name of public health and climate change.
New Yorkers have already endured former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s attempts to ban soda sales of over 16 ounces for their own good and are facing Gov. Kathy Hochul’s gas stove and furnace bans in the state, all in the name of climate change.
And now, another one bites the crust as New York City officials are going after pizzerias using the century-old cooking methods, citing the ovens’ allegedly excessive carbon emissions.
But how many pizzas would you have to order to equal just one trip on John Kerry’s private jet?
In 2021, Kerry’s private jet emitted an estimated 116 metric tons of carbon in less than a year.
Private jets emit up to 40 times as much CO2 per passenger as commercial flights.
By comparison, the carbon footprint of a wood-burning stove (a reasonable facsimile of a pizza oven) is barely measurable. The 8 Billion Trees project estimates that the “carbon footprint of wood-burning stoves” can be up to 15.6 grams an hour or 374 grams a day. This is measured in grams, not metric tons.
You would have to burn that stove for 310,160 days — that is, 849 years — to equal what hypocrite Kerry puts out in a year.
But wait, it gets better!
Physicist Dr. Will Happer, emeritus of Princeton University and the chair of the CO2 Coalition, told the New York Post that restrictions on wood- or coal-fired pizza ovens may increase the carbon footprint of pizza in New York City.
“To the extent that the wood-fired ovens are replaced by electrically heated ovens, which I suppose is what is intended, CO2 emissions will probably increase,” Happer said.
“Even for New York City, most of the electrical power probably comes from burning gas or coal. For a gas-fired pizza oven, all the heat of combustion is used to bake the pizza. For an electrically heated oven, you have to convert electrical power back to heat.
“It is hard to see how emissions could decrease if people want to continue eating the same amount of pizza,” he added.”
“The wanton destruction of priceless art and heritage sites across Europe by climate change activists is insane, and one would think we’ve reached peaked insanity with this unhinged community, short of acts of eco-terrorism. Nope. Sometimes, even banal actions, like a government study, can exhibit more ludicrousness than smearing paint on a Monet. The latest Biden White House-endorsed study into curbing global warming is not just a case study in wasteful spending; it’s a Rorschach test on mental health. And there’s a reason why they want to keep it a secret: it deals with trying to bend sun rays to prevent the Earth’s temperature from rising (via Politico) [emphasis mine]:
—
The White House offered measured support for the idea of studying how to block sunlight from hitting Earth’s surface as a way to limit global warming, in a congressionally mandated report that could help bring efforts once confined to science fiction into the realm of legitimate debate.
The controversial concept known as solar radiation modification is a potentially effective response to fighting climate change, but one that could have unknown side effects stemming from altering the chemical makeup of the atmosphere, some scientists say.
The White House report released late Friday indicates that the Biden administration is open to studying the possibility that altering sunlight might quickly cool the planet. But it added a degree of skepticism by noting that Congress has ordered the review, and the administration said it does not signal any new policy decisions related to a process that is sometimes referred to — or derided as — geoengineering.
“A program of research into the scientific and societal implications of solar radiation modification (SRM) would enable better-informed decisions about the potential risks and benefits of SRM as a component of climate policy, alongside the foundational elements of greenhouse gas emissions mitigation and adaptation,” the White House report said. “SRM offers the possibility of cooling the planet significantly on a timescale of a few years.”
Still, the White House said in a statement accompanying the report, “there are no plans underway to establish a comprehensive research program focused on solar radiation modification.”
[…]
The report, which was required by Congress in a policy report accompanying the 2022 appropriations bill, was released the same week that European Union leaders opened the door to international discussions of solar radiation modification. It also followed a call by more than 60 leading scientists to increase research on the topic.
As Politico noted, Biden opened the door to this nonsense, and, of course, he would; he thinks this is an existential threat to human civilization. But before that, it was white supremacy, right? This study reminds me of the scene in Armageddon, where NASA scientists think that by landing a shuttle on the asteroid that’s barreling toward Earth and deploying a canopy, solar winds could shift it off course and prevent an extinction-level event.
—
“This directive might not have been coming from the White House proper, but it might as well have given their quiet blessing of this boondoggle. Oh, and we haven’t even discussed the dangers of us messing with the atmosphere yet. Yes, let’s do that: the scientists who have been wrong about everything regarding global warming should screw around with the chemical composition of our shield against solar radiation.
We went from global cooling to global warming, from the Arctic Ice Cap will be gone by 2013 to it still there and roughly 533,000 square miles larger, and finally, everyone should cannibalize economic growth and trillions of dollars to appease these clowns who have been wrong about every prediction ever in this field. Now, we will give them the green light to mess around in the atmosphere on pie-in-the-sky theories about blunting solar rays. The people who want to curb the Earth’s supposed rising temperatures are tinkering with a way that could do that and get us all killed. That’s the punchline here, a real killer.”
“They can’t just keep blaming this on the pandemic, though they will certainly try. All branches of the American military are on track to miss their recruiting goals again this year except for the Marines and Space Force. Some will once again miss by significant margins. This is all happening at the same time that China has expanded its standing military to a force of more than two million. That’s more than half a million more than America’s forces. There are a variety of factors driving this slowdown in the United States, but as the Wall Street Journal reports this week, one of them is a “family affair.” Young people are not being encouraged to pursue military service, even by their own family members who are veterans in many cases. (Subscription required)”
—
“The children of military families make up the majority of new recruits in the U.S. military. That pipeline is now under threat, which is bad news for the Pentagon’s already acute recruitment problems, as well as America’s military readiness.
“Influencers are not telling them to go into the military,” said Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in an interview. “Moms and dads, uncles, coaches and pastors don’t see it as a good choice.”
After the patriotic boost to recruiting that followed 9/11, the U.S. military has endured 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan with no decisive victories, scandals over shoddy military housing and healthcare, poor pay for lower ranks that forces many military families to turn to food stamps, and rising rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide.”
—
“The Army is projecting that it will only field 50,000 recruits out of its target of 65,000. The Navy expects to fall 10,000 short of its goal of 38,000. Even the Air Force, normally an overperformer in this category, is projected to miss its goal of 27,000 by 3,000 recruits.
Currently, 80% of the new recruits coming into the armed services have a family member who is either currently serving or previously served. But that number is declining. The WSJ quoted a number of veterans who are not encouraging their own children to enlist. If you ask them why, the country’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan will be cited by more than a few.
But there are other factors involved. Some are rather mundane, such as the tight labor market that offers plenty of other opportunities for young people that don’t involve foreign adversaries trying to shoot you or blow you up. The low pay for enlisted people doesn’t help much either. The word has clearly gotten around that a significant percentage of military families are currently on food stamps or utilizing other supplemental programs to feed themselves. But there’s something more than that happening.
“It’s not like it used to be.” That’s what a friend and fellow veteran said to the teenage daughter of one of our neighbors last week. The military has simply changed. Part of it is the wokeness factor, no matter how much the current administration tries to deny it. Standards are being lowered. The whole idea of “Be All You Can Be” seems to have faded.”
Delaware US Attorney David Weiss exploded that fallacy when he slipped out a late Friday letter to the House Judiciary Committee, hoping to bury the bad news on the eve of the holiday weekend.
Added to the limp, over-long missive to Congress a few hours earlier from Hunter Biden’s fabled lawyer Abbe Lowell, whose big complaint was about a breach of the “spirit of the law,” it was not a good day for the Biden protection unit.
With Hunter Biden’s former “best friend in business” Devon Archer slated to testify this month before he goes to jail with nothing much left to lose, and other as-yet-unidentified whistleblowers emerging with more explosive evidence in coming weeks, a Houdini act by the Biden gang seems unlikely, even with the power of the White House, a complicit media and the best lawyers money can buy.
The legalese in Weiss’ Friday night letter was just cover for his ultimate admission on the second page that IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley was correct when he described sly obstruction from senior DOJ officials, which killed the five-year tax probe into the president’s son.
Weiss admits that he did not have the power to charge in the districts where Hunter allegedly evaded taxes and that the only way to override the refusals of the Biden-appointed US attorneys in Washington, DC, and the Central District of California to charge Hunter was with special powers granted by Attorney General Merrick Garland that he did not have.
Weiss admits in his letter, “my charging authority is geographically limited to my home district,” and that, if he needs to charge in another district, he must ask the relevant US attorney “if it wants to partner on the case.”
This is not hypothetical.
Weiss told his investigative team that US Attorney Matthew Graves in Washington, DC, declined to allow charges against Hunter for the 2014 and 2015 tax years, and US Attorney Martin Estrada in California declined for the 2016–2019 tax years, according to Shapley’s testimony, given under threat of prosecution for perjury.
None of those charges were ever laid.
After the refusals by Graves and Estrada, without Weiss being granted special powers by Garland, “for all intents and purposes, the case was dead,” Shapley testified of the five-year tax probe of Hunter he had supervised.
Despite the obvious historical fact that Hunter never was charged in DC or California, Weiss continues with his convoluted hypothetical in his Friday night letter, explaining the next step “if” the relevant US attorneys refused to “partner” with him to bring charges: “If not, I may request Special Attorney status from the Attorney General pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 515. Here I have been assured that, if necessary, I would be granted § 515 Authority in the District of Columbia, the Central District of California, or any other district.”
Note that Weiss says he “may request.” Not that he “did request.”
And when he says he “would be” granted special powers to bring charges in other districts “if necessary,” he is employing a grammatical structure known as “Future Unreal Conditional,” which is used to talk about imaginary situations in the future.
He is not talking about a situation that occurred in the past.
In other words, Weiss did not have full authority, and the only way to get it was to ask Garland for special powers, something he might do in the future.
But, as he well knows, there is no future for these charges against Hunter.
He has a sweetheart plea deal that wipes the slate clean and will be signed off on July 26.
The most serious charges in the Hunter Biden case were dead in the water because Weiss did not have the authority to bring them. Let alone “ultimate authority.”
Shapley testified about a “red-line” meeting of the investigative team in Delaware on Oct. 7, 2022, at which Weiss dropped the “earth-shattering news that … Graves would not allow him to charge in his district [and] that he subsequently asked for special counsel authority from Main DOJ at that time and was denied that authority. … Weiss stated that he is not the deciding person on whether charges are filed.”
At least four other witnesses were present for Weiss’ remarks, which were memorialized by Shapley in an email endorsed by a supervisor who was present.
Weiss told the team that the government would not be bringing the most serious charges against Hunter, and the ones most risky to his father, for the 2014-2015 tax years.
The statute of limitations would expire the following month.
Shapley soon discovered that Estrada also had declined to bring charges for the 2016-2019 years in California.
Hunter — and Joe — were home free.
Now comes the messy business of covering up the cover-up.
Either Weiss lied to his team on Oct. 7, or Garland lied to Congress.
Garland, under oath on March 1, told Congress that Weiss “has full authority to … bring cases in other districts if he needs to do that.”
Weiss, in a letter to Congress on June 7, backed Garland, saying he had “been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges.”
Note he did not say “full authority.”
Three House committees have written to more than a dozen witnesses, including Weiss, to get them to explain the discrepancies.
There probably are several lawyerly methods they will use to weasel out of suggestions they lied.
“Someone (who needs to remain anonymous) was able to obtain the death certificates from Minnesota for all deaths that occurred from 2015 to the present, which presented the opportunity to see if the CDC is being entirely honest about the US death data. Unsurprisingly, the CDC is not.
As we shall document, the CDC is concealing references to a covid vaccine on Minnesota death certificates (that are exceedingly rare to begin with because of widespread medical establishment denialism of vaccine adverse side effects). In almost every death certificate that identifies a covid vaccine as a cause of death, the CDC committed data fraud by not assigning the ICD 10 code for vaccine side effects to the causes of death listed on the death certificate.
Background
When someone dies, there is a death certificate that is filled out for official/legal purposes. Death certificates contain a lot of information (some states include more than others), including the causes of death (CoD).
Causes of death refer to the medical conditions that ultimately played some role in the demise of the decedent. To qualify as a CoD, a condition only needs to contribute to the medical decline of the decedent in some way, but doesn’t have to be directly responsible for whatever ultimately killed the person. If someone had high blood pressure, and subsequently suffered a heart attack that led to cardiac arrest which killed them, all three conditions qualify as CoD. On the other hand, this unfortunate fellow’s ingrown toenail is not a cause of death, because it in no way contributed to their demise.
This is from the CDC’s own guidance explaining how to properly fill out CoD’s on a death certificate (you don’t need to understand the difference between Cause A, B, etc for this article):”
“The critical thing to keep in mind is that the person filling out the death certificate writes a text description of the CoD’s, but doesn’t assign the ICD 10 codes for the CoD’s.
That’s the CDC’s job.”
—-
“It is striking that 7/9 died before May 2021. This is odd – if anything, the deaths should skew later, not earlier. Vaccine adverse events were denied – with maximum prejudice and then some – for many months before the medical mainstream has finally (begrudgingly) started to acknowledge that the covid vaccines can trigger potentially lethal pathologies (in exceedingly rare instances to be sure).
The clustering of death certificates mentioning a covid vaccine at the beginning of the rollout suggests that ‘administrative’ interference likely played a role in discouraging coroners from mentioning a covid vaccine on death certificates.
Another noteworthy tidbit here is the age of the decedents: every single one is a senior citizen, and the average age of the decedents is 80. This is important to highlight because whereas young people “dying suddenly” stands out, there has been much less attention or acknowledgement of the covid vaccine’s devastating toll upon the old and frail, where deaths – even those that occur in close proximity to vaccination – are readily attributed to prior health conditions.
Finally, the actions of the CDC call into question whether the CDC is altogether qualified or trustworthy enough to be the steward of the nation’s epidemiological data. The CDC manages many of the datasets that underpin whole fields of study. If the CDC is willing to fraudulently alter data (or even if the CDC is just too incompetent to avoid corrupting data), all data under the aegis of the CDC is potentially suspect, especially if it relates to a controversial political or social issue. The implications of this are disturbing, to say the least.”
On Independence Day you could wonder what the founding fathers would think of Biden or better yet Trump. What would be more interesting is what would they think of Obama.
The Amish are for the most part far healthier than the average American (far healthier food) . Hence, the lack of Covid deaths. Those with co-morbidities tend to die first. Autism, ADHD, epilepsy, etc are all hereditary problems. Those with behavioural and mental health issues tend to leave the Amish community and their genetics go with them.
Pizza? All of I’ve seen is memes mocking right wing Trumpsters for protesting by throwing pizza. bizarre on both sides.
The war deaths in Ukraine is the highest since WWII on both sides. More Russians have died in Ukraine in one year than in a decade in Afghanistan back in the 80s. Depending on the source there’s been 20-40K Ukrainian deaths and 50 to 200K Russian deaths. From an American and NATO power perspective, the war accomplishes US policy aims with no body bags and for Europeans it keeps the Russians at bay with no body bags. A win-win. The only losers are the Russians. For the Ukrainians, they keep their independence if that’s important to them; thousands of Ukrainian draft dodgers in Europe might beg to differ (my daughter knows several in Berlin). But for Americans, this is a cheap and life saving way to accomplish foreign policy goals.
Wandering Views 
“On Independence Day, What Would America’s Founders Think of ‘China Joe’ Biden?”
https://johnkassnews.com/on-independence-day-what-would-americas-founders-think-of-china-joe-biden/
“John Trumbull was an American painter, American diplomat, and a veteran soldier in our War of Independence from the greatest superpower on earth, the British empire led by Mad King George III.
He painted “The Declaration of Independence” that is set at the top of this column, and fills me and most every other patriot I know with a great sense of reverence. He was witness to pain and suffering and great American courage as an aide to George Washington, and you might as well call him “The Painter of the Revolution.” Others did. His painting “Declaration of Independence”—one of four of his paintings that hang in the United States Capitol rotunda—is often seen by Americans in documentaries of Independence Day.
The 56 brave men who signed it and their families risked certain death. And many did in fact, die as a result, their families risked torture and loss of fortune. And it also may have been first and the last time that the well-suited clique that we now refer to as the so-called “Washington political establishment” risked what the people risked—pain and suffering for our beliefs–and pain for demanding our liberty.
But they weren’t gods, though we treat them as such, with their images on our coin, great marble statues of them in our public squares and mythology about the cherry trees and honesty, in our monuments, obelisks and reflecting pools, their gigantic heads peering down on us from the Olympian heights of Mt. Rushmore.
Not gods but wise imperfect men who understood human nature, and to treat them as gods encourages the drooling iconoclasts who have no religious beliefs but their own power and topple old statues as they shriek their hatred of America.
At Independence Day celebrations this week, you’ll be encouraged to stuff yourselves with hot dogs and barbecue, corn and beer. You’ll wipe the rib sauce from your faces and maybe you’ll think about how Americans learned to catch the crafty and indominable wild pig. (hint: with the bribe of tasty government corn, that’s how.)
You’ll watch sports on TV and some of you will idly count the number of dead in urban mass gang shootings, you might also consider what our Founding Fathers would think of us.
And gods or not gods, I wonder what Trumbull and the Founding Fathers would think of the photograph below, of then Vice President Biden puckering his lips to loudly and publicly kiss the behind of China, and the benefactor of the Biden Crime Family. Would they see it as evidence of flannel mouthed grifters betraying everything they worked and risked their lives to build?
Xi Jinping is pictured–Biden held the festivities in his honor just as we’ve learned the Biden Grift Machine was working overtime–though other Biden Inc., benefactors including earthy players from Ukraine and Romania were not pictured. Coincidence? Or are the Bidens just lucky?
And what would Turnbull and Washington think of the Bidens?
There is a back story that makes this picture worth at least $40 million words, but if you get your news from members of the corrupt Washington Democratic Media Complex you might miss the true flavor. This involves Joe Biden’s crackhead son Hunter.
Hunter sounds as if he’d been fully hatched at Chicago’s City Hall, a spoiled child complete with a viper’s tongue, just a sneering Chinatown tough guy. All of his extortionate demands of Biden Crime Family corruption can be read in transcripts here, and were released the other day by the House Ways and Means Committee.
Credible IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley Jr. testified before a house committee. His testimony and Hunter Biden’s incriminating text messages were included in the transcripts. Predictably, Hunter’s attorneys and White House media suck-ups called Shapley a liar. The corrupt media from the New York Times to the flesh eating harpies of “The View” bleated and bleated that Joe was just a father who loved a troubled son. Really?
You decide.
Study the official photograph. There, smirking on the left, is China’s strongman, Communist leader Xi Jinping. China Joe Biden his glass raised, is oozing at those who fill his pockets, making with a grand toast in 2015. What isn’t mentioned is that Hunter Biden and his father Joe are thought to have reportedly picked up tens of millions of dollars in Chinese cash, not to mention other payments from from power players in Ukraine and Romania.
The text messages from Hunter to Chinese officials are quite damning, but sound rather like the son of a political boss threatening clout reprisals, backed up by his father’s army and corrupt Department of Justice.
“I’m tired of this Kevin,” Hunter told one of them. “I can make $5 million in salary from any law firm in America. If you think it’s about money, it’s not. The Biden’s [sic] are the best at doing exactly what Chairman wants from this partnership. Please let’s not quibble over peanuts.”
Of course you can, Hunter. You can easily make millions. Smoke some more dope. And you can make millions and millions more from selling the finger paints you pass off as “artwork.” It reminds me of what crooked Cook County judge was accused of, selling his wife’s “artwork” to lawyers hoping for an edge in his court. It all works, the corrupt Chicago Way becomes the Delaware Way becomes the American Way, allowing for Democratic grift and graft. And fortunes made at the expense of the people. Just take the audio of Biden’s cheap grifter’s toast to Xi Jinping and mix it with the sound of Chinese boots marching down Pennsylvania Avenue.
It will work as long as American people allow the Biden Department of Justice and the Democratic Media Complex in Washington to protect the Biden Crime Family’s every move. The other day, pundits in knee pads were saying all this drama is really only about a father’s love for his son. And that father is the president of the United States.”
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“Hunter Biden and the Media’s Terms of Evasion”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-media-is-covering-for-hunter-biden-nyt-bias-tax-investigation-justice-irs-5ea08c29
“Attentive students of the journalistic arts can train themselves to recognize liberal media bias. When a politician breaks the law and the story doesn’t identify his party in the first paragraph, it’s a safe bet the offender is a Democrat. When Republicans “pounce” in the New York Times or the Washington Post, you can be sure the real story is that a Democrat has done something foolish or outrageous.
Consider how the big outlets have covered the Hunter Biden tax-investigation saga. The president’s son’s convoluted business dealings have been known for years. Now, Republican-controlled House committees are coughing up juicy details. These pages have covered them.
The mainstream press is reporting those details too—if grudgingly—but insists you remember one thing: Important elements of the story remain . . . unclear. This is journalese for, “Nothing to see here, folks!”
On June 22, in its first story on the recent testimony by a pair of IRS whistleblowers, the Times noted that “it was not immediately clear” whether Joe Biden was physically present when Hunter sent a WhatsApp message threatening a Chinese business associate to pay up or risk his father’s wrath. “It is unclear what specific commitment the message refers to,” the Post noted the same day. Whether Joe Biden knew Hunter was using his name in such a way was “also not clear,” the Times added. PolitiFact, a “fact checking” outfit hosted by the Poynter Institute, chimed in: “What the ‘commitment’ was, and whether Joe Biden was present, are unclear.”
As for the whistleblowers’ claims that the Justice Department sabotaged the investigation for political reasons, the Associated Press offered that “it was unclear whether the conflict they described amounted to internal disagreement or a pattern of preferential treatment.”
From a traditional journalistic perspective—that is to say an objective one—this is a concerning lack of clarity. You might think that seasoned reporters competing for scoops would sense opportunity in all this ambiguity. Yet more than a week has gone by since the bombshell WhatsApp message came out and things don’t appear to have gotten any clearer. On June 27 the Times acknowledged that “it remains unclear” why the Justice Department account of the Hunter Biden investigation differs so substantially from the tale the whistleblowers told.”
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The media is complicit too.
“Democrats Baseless Lies Are Responsible For Today’s Divisiveness”
“For as long as I can remember, the Democratic Party has claimed to be a champion for all Americans, particularly for the working class, minorities and for those who are considered marginalized, oppressed or downtrodden.
But somewhere between fighting to keep slavery alive (Andrew Johnson); deliberately reducing the number of black civilian employees from the federal workforce and airing a film that glorified the Ku Klux Klan at the White House (Woodrow Wilson); throwing Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II (Franklin Delano Roosevelt); promoting a culture of government dependence, poverty and fatherlessness (Lyndon Johnson); creating racial tension by declaring cops racist—leading to further destruction of our inner cities, while mocking legitimate concerns of disgruntled blue collar midwesterners frustrated by decreasing wages, lack of employment opportunities—and an opioid epidemic hollowing out their communities (Barack Obama); the intentional failure to enforce our country’s immigration laws, contributing to a four decade high of inflation by spending trillions of taxpayer dollars on Democrat pet projects that mostly help special interest groups, referring to roughly half the country as violent extremists and weaponizing the Department of Justice—to throw his leading political rival in prison (Joe Biden); it seems fair to say the Democratic Party has fallen well short of being a champion for anyone, except for its own desperate attempt to stay in power at any and all costs.
For a party that abhors the Founding Fathers and seeks to delegitimize their contributions, rejects and regards the principles of the Constitution as meaningless, and regularly criticizes the country for failing to live up to its stated goal of forming a more perfect union, perhaps it might be time for the Democratic Party to look itself in the mirror.
The entirety of the Democratic Party platform in 2023 is predicated on fear mongering and based on easily verifiable lies about the Republican Party. It typically sounds something like this: Republicans want to make it harder for minorities to vote, they only want to give tax breaks to the wealthy, they’re banning books and ignoring inconvenient aspects of American history, they don’t want poor kids to be able to go to college, they’re anti-immigration, they want to deprive Americans from receiving healthcare, they don’t believe trans people exist, they don’t think women have a right to make their own medical decisions, and police are writ large racist and randomly hunting down black people, etc.
Not a single one of those absurd claims, which are promulgated regularly in the pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other leftist propaganda outlets has one iota of credibility. But that hasn’t prevented Democrat politicians, Hollywood, academia and the legacy media from repeating these erroneous charges into ad nauseum.
Take, for instance, the ridiculous claim that Republican led states like Georgia want to make it harder for minorities to vote. Considering that the Peach State just set a record for voter turnout in the Midterms—in which over one million people voted—Republican leaders did a pretty poor job of discouraging citizens from casting their ballots.
It is hardly discriminatory to require every single American to present a valid form of ID that clearly verifies who the individual is. Nothing about that is inherently racist, but it certainly is racist to imply that black people for some reason either do not have an ID, or do not possess the means to obtain a driver’s license. If the DMV is suddenly denying licenses to black people—one would imagine the Biden DOJ would have started an investigation.
But I digress.
What about the Democrats’ fallacious charge that Republicans only want to give tax breaks to the wealthy? Once again, that is simply not borne out by any shred of evidence.
An analysis of IRS tax data showed that the Trump tax cuts disproportionately benefited those earning less than $50,000 per year. Those with an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $15,000 to $50,000 saw an average tax cut of 16 percent to 26 percent in 2018, while those who earned $50,000 to $100,000 received a tax break between 15 percent to 17 percent.
Those earning between $100,000 to $500,000 in AGI saw their personal income taxes decrease by around 11 percent to 13 percent and no one with an AGI of at least $500,000 received an average tax cut above 9 percent. The average tax cut for those in income brackets starting at $1 million was less than 6 percent.
In other words, under Trump’s tax plan, the more money an individual earned, the higher their income was effectively taxed. But don’t let the facts get in the way of the Democrats narrative.”
—-
A false narrative most of the media embraces and pushes as if it’s truth straight from God.
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Why is the WH calling it what it’s not, and was Hunter at the White House this weekend?
https://redstate.com/brutalbrittany/2023/07/03/hazmat-situation-at-white-house-leads-to-discovery-of-a-bag-of-cocaine-they-want-you-to-believe-is-something-else-n770615
“On Sunday, the White House grounds were evacuated after an initially unidentified item was found. A United States Secret Service spokesperson confirmed the event, saying:
U.S. Secret Service Uniform Division Officers located an unknown item on the White House complex.
As a precaution, the White House grounds were evacuated, and the DC Fire Departments Hazmat team responded.
A hazmat team responded to the area of 18th St and Pennsylvania Ave, and the Secret Service blocked roadways around the White House. All roads have re-opened since, according to the spokesperson.
D.C. Emergency Medical officials later deemed the item to be “non-hazardous.” The substance is reported to be cocaine hydrochloride.”
—
“Some media outlets and social media users have informed audiences that cocaine hydrochloride is a local anesthetic agent used by doctors in nasal mucous membranes prior to surgery… which is true — two FDA-approved products Numbrino and Goprelto, are nasal sprays in liquid form.
Since the reports coming from the White House don’t seem to indicate a lot of nasal spray was found, well before prepared into a solution, the substance comes in its solid form, and under those circumstances, cocaine hydrochloride is the technical name for… cocaine. In less formal settings, this may be called “a bag of coke.”
Even if the “medical product” story didn’t have the glaring issue that powdered cocaine doesn’t actually have FDA approval, the legal drugs available on the market are rarely used. The Drug Enforcement Administration published a fact sheet in 2020 stating that the FDA approved drugs are less effective than other products on the market and rarely used:
Which drugs cause similar effects? Other stimulants, such as amphetamine and methamphetamine, cause effects similar to cocaine that vary mainly in degree. What is its legal status in the United States? Cocaine is a Schedule II drug under the Controlled Substances Act, meaning it has a high potential for abuse and has an accepted medical use for treatment in the United States. Cocaine hydrochloride solution (4 percent and 10 percent) is used primarily as a topical local anesthetic for the upper respiratory tract. It also is used to reduce bleeding of the mucous membranes in the mouth, throat, and nasal cavities. However, more effective products have been developed for these purposes, and cocaine is now rarely used medically in the United States.”
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You don’t say…..
“Unvaxxed Amish Death Rates 90 Times Lower Than Rest of America”
https://slaynews.com/news/unvaxxed-amish-death-rates-90-times-lower-rest-america/
“A major study into the impact of the pandemic on Amish communities has found that Covid death rates among the traditionalist groups of citizens are 90 times lower than for the rest of America.
The main difference, the study revealed, is that Amish communities completely ignored the guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Amish families did not get vaccinated or wear masks, nor did they engage in lockdowns, social distancing, or any other type of restrictions.
But the separated communities didn’t avoid catching the virus, however, as roughly 90% of the Amish have been infected with Covid.
The study was conducted by the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation (VSRF) and specifically focused on Amish people in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Lancaster has the world’s largest single community of Amish people with over 45,000 people.
Speaking to the Pennsylvania State Senate this week, Steve Kirsch, the founder of the VSRF, testified on his study.
Kirsch explained why Amish citizens died at a much lower rate than the rest of the country.
Kirsch first described talking with the family of the lone Amish man in Lancaster County who allegedly died from Covid.
Speaking to the family, Kirsch found out they actually didn’t know if he passed from the virus because the claim was made by the hospital where the man died.
“Maybe he died from the Covid hospital protocols,” Kirsch told the State Senate about the Amish man.
Kirsch said he had heard that five Amish people had died from Covid but he was unable to find any information on them and couldn’t confirm their identities or the deaths.
He said he “did the calculation” based on the assumption that he was able to confirm the identity of five.
Kirsch said the calculation reveals that the Amish died at a rate “ninety times lower than the infection fatality rate of the United States of America.”
“The Amish died at ninety times lower rate from Covid than the rest of America,” he said again.
He continued by suggesting the reason is that Amish families don’t vaccinate their children.
“And, because the Amish didn’t follow a single guideline of the CDC, they did not lock down, they did not mask, they did not social distance, they did not vaccinate and there were no mandates in the Amish community to get vaccinated.
“They basically ignored every single guideline that the CDC gave us.”
Later, Kirsch also noted that researchers were unable “find an autistic kid who was unvaccinated” in Amish communities.
He added that diseases like ADD, autoimmune disease, PANDAS PANS, or epilepsy basically don’t exist among Amish children.
Kirsch also said the federal government has studied Amish communities for decades without releasing a public report.
He alleged that publishing such information would “be devastating” to the CDC and expose their recommendations as harmful to Americans.”
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Democrats want to stop you from eating pizza due to it’s “environmental effects” while they do far, far worse jet setting to lecture the world.
“Green madness: You’d have to burn a pizza stove 849 years to equal one year of John Kerry’s private jet”
https://nypost.com/2023/06/26/green-madness-youd-have-to-burn-a-pizza-stove-849-years-to-equal-one-year-of-john-kerrys-private-jet/amp/
“Environmental bureaucrats are out to save you from pizza.
The city government is set to restrict emissions from coal- and wood-fired pizza ovens in restaurants in the city.
New Yorkers are once again suffering at the hands of the unelected food police in the name of public health and climate change.
New Yorkers have already endured former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s attempts to ban soda sales of over 16 ounces for their own good and are facing Gov. Kathy Hochul’s gas stove and furnace bans in the state, all in the name of climate change.
And now, another one bites the crust as New York City officials are going after pizzerias using the century-old cooking methods, citing the ovens’ allegedly excessive carbon emissions.
But how many pizzas would you have to order to equal just one trip on John Kerry’s private jet?
In 2021, Kerry’s private jet emitted an estimated 116 metric tons of carbon in less than a year.
Private jets emit up to 40 times as much CO2 per passenger as commercial flights.
By comparison, the carbon footprint of a wood-burning stove (a reasonable facsimile of a pizza oven) is barely measurable. The 8 Billion Trees project estimates that the “carbon footprint of wood-burning stoves” can be up to 15.6 grams an hour or 374 grams a day. This is measured in grams, not metric tons.
You would have to burn that stove for 310,160 days — that is, 849 years — to equal what hypocrite Kerry puts out in a year.
But wait, it gets better!
Physicist Dr. Will Happer, emeritus of Princeton University and the chair of the CO2 Coalition, told the New York Post that restrictions on wood- or coal-fired pizza ovens may increase the carbon footprint of pizza in New York City.
“To the extent that the wood-fired ovens are replaced by electrically heated ovens, which I suppose is what is intended, CO2 emissions will probably increase,” Happer said.
“Even for New York City, most of the electrical power probably comes from burning gas or coal. For a gas-fired pizza oven, all the heat of combustion is used to bake the pizza. For an electrically heated oven, you have to convert electrical power back to heat.
“It is hard to see how emissions could decrease if people want to continue eating the same amount of pizza,” he added.”
—-
They suck.
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Which leads us to this one….
“Why the Biden White House Will Try to Keep Their Latest Global Warming Study a Secret”
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2023/07/03/why-the-biden-white-house-is-trying-to-keep-their-latest-global-warming-study-a-secret-n2625236
“The wanton destruction of priceless art and heritage sites across Europe by climate change activists is insane, and one would think we’ve reached peaked insanity with this unhinged community, short of acts of eco-terrorism. Nope. Sometimes, even banal actions, like a government study, can exhibit more ludicrousness than smearing paint on a Monet. The latest Biden White House-endorsed study into curbing global warming is not just a case study in wasteful spending; it’s a Rorschach test on mental health. And there’s a reason why they want to keep it a secret: it deals with trying to bend sun rays to prevent the Earth’s temperature from rising (via Politico) [emphasis mine]:
—
The White House offered measured support for the idea of studying how to block sunlight from hitting Earth’s surface as a way to limit global warming, in a congressionally mandated report that could help bring efforts once confined to science fiction into the realm of legitimate debate.
The controversial concept known as solar radiation modification is a potentially effective response to fighting climate change, but one that could have unknown side effects stemming from altering the chemical makeup of the atmosphere, some scientists say.
The White House report released late Friday indicates that the Biden administration is open to studying the possibility that altering sunlight might quickly cool the planet. But it added a degree of skepticism by noting that Congress has ordered the review, and the administration said it does not signal any new policy decisions related to a process that is sometimes referred to — or derided as — geoengineering.
“A program of research into the scientific and societal implications of solar radiation modification (SRM) would enable better-informed decisions about the potential risks and benefits of SRM as a component of climate policy, alongside the foundational elements of greenhouse gas emissions mitigation and adaptation,” the White House report said. “SRM offers the possibility of cooling the planet significantly on a timescale of a few years.”
Still, the White House said in a statement accompanying the report, “there are no plans underway to establish a comprehensive research program focused on solar radiation modification.”
[…]
The report, which was required by Congress in a policy report accompanying the 2022 appropriations bill, was released the same week that European Union leaders opened the door to international discussions of solar radiation modification. It also followed a call by more than 60 leading scientists to increase research on the topic.
As Politico noted, Biden opened the door to this nonsense, and, of course, he would; he thinks this is an existential threat to human civilization. But before that, it was white supremacy, right? This study reminds me of the scene in Armageddon, where NASA scientists think that by landing a shuttle on the asteroid that’s barreling toward Earth and deploying a canopy, solar winds could shift it off course and prevent an extinction-level event.
—
“This directive might not have been coming from the White House proper, but it might as well have given their quiet blessing of this boondoggle. Oh, and we haven’t even discussed the dangers of us messing with the atmosphere yet. Yes, let’s do that: the scientists who have been wrong about everything regarding global warming should screw around with the chemical composition of our shield against solar radiation.
We went from global cooling to global warming, from the Arctic Ice Cap will be gone by 2013 to it still there and roughly 533,000 square miles larger, and finally, everyone should cannibalize economic growth and trillions of dollars to appease these clowns who have been wrong about every prediction ever in this field. Now, we will give them the green light to mess around in the atmosphere on pie-in-the-sky theories about blunting solar rays. The people who want to curb the Earth’s supposed rising temperatures are tinkering with a way that could do that and get us all killed. That’s the punchline here, a real killer.”
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Biden’s plan is working, and I’m sure his Chinese overlords are pleased as well.
“The military recruiting crisis continues apace”
https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2023/07/01/the-military-recruiting-crisis-continues-apace-n561931
“They can’t just keep blaming this on the pandemic, though they will certainly try. All branches of the American military are on track to miss their recruiting goals again this year except for the Marines and Space Force. Some will once again miss by significant margins. This is all happening at the same time that China has expanded its standing military to a force of more than two million. That’s more than half a million more than America’s forces. There are a variety of factors driving this slowdown in the United States, but as the Wall Street Journal reports this week, one of them is a “family affair.” Young people are not being encouraged to pursue military service, even by their own family members who are veterans in many cases. (Subscription required)”
—
“The children of military families make up the majority of new recruits in the U.S. military. That pipeline is now under threat, which is bad news for the Pentagon’s already acute recruitment problems, as well as America’s military readiness.
“Influencers are not telling them to go into the military,” said Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in an interview. “Moms and dads, uncles, coaches and pastors don’t see it as a good choice.”
After the patriotic boost to recruiting that followed 9/11, the U.S. military has endured 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan with no decisive victories, scandals over shoddy military housing and healthcare, poor pay for lower ranks that forces many military families to turn to food stamps, and rising rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide.”
—
“The Army is projecting that it will only field 50,000 recruits out of its target of 65,000. The Navy expects to fall 10,000 short of its goal of 38,000. Even the Air Force, normally an overperformer in this category, is projected to miss its goal of 27,000 by 3,000 recruits.
Currently, 80% of the new recruits coming into the armed services have a family member who is either currently serving or previously served. But that number is declining. The WSJ quoted a number of veterans who are not encouraging their own children to enlist. If you ask them why, the country’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan will be cited by more than a few.
But there are other factors involved. Some are rather mundane, such as the tight labor market that offers plenty of other opportunities for young people that don’t involve foreign adversaries trying to shoot you or blow you up. The low pay for enlisted people doesn’t help much either. The word has clearly gotten around that a significant percentage of military families are currently on food stamps or utilizing other supplemental programs to feed themselves. But there’s something more than that happening.
“It’s not like it used to be.” That’s what a friend and fellow veteran said to the teenage daughter of one of our neighbors last week. The military has simply changed. Part of it is the wokeness factor, no matter how much the current administration tries to deny it. Standards are being lowered. The whole idea of “Be All You Can Be” seems to have faded.”
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Some pigs are more equal than others.
“Blowing the lid off the cover-up of Hunter Biden’s cushy plea deal”
https://nypost.com/2023/07/02/blowing-the-lid-off-the-coverup-of-hunter-bidens-cushy-plea-deal/
“So much for “ultimate authority.”
Delaware US Attorney David Weiss exploded that fallacy when he slipped out a late Friday letter to the House Judiciary Committee, hoping to bury the bad news on the eve of the holiday weekend.
Added to the limp, over-long missive to Congress a few hours earlier from Hunter Biden’s fabled lawyer Abbe Lowell, whose big complaint was about a breach of the “spirit of the law,” it was not a good day for the Biden protection unit.
With Hunter Biden’s former “best friend in business” Devon Archer slated to testify this month before he goes to jail with nothing much left to lose, and other as-yet-unidentified whistleblowers emerging with more explosive evidence in coming weeks, a Houdini act by the Biden gang seems unlikely, even with the power of the White House, a complicit media and the best lawyers money can buy.
The legalese in Weiss’ Friday night letter was just cover for his ultimate admission on the second page that IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley was correct when he described sly obstruction from senior DOJ officials, which killed the five-year tax probe into the president’s son.
Weiss admits that he did not have the power to charge in the districts where Hunter allegedly evaded taxes and that the only way to override the refusals of the Biden-appointed US attorneys in Washington, DC, and the Central District of California to charge Hunter was with special powers granted by Attorney General Merrick Garland that he did not have.
Weiss admits in his letter, “my charging authority is geographically limited to my home district,” and that, if he needs to charge in another district, he must ask the relevant US attorney “if it wants to partner on the case.”
This is not hypothetical.
Weiss told his investigative team that US Attorney Matthew Graves in Washington, DC, declined to allow charges against Hunter for the 2014 and 2015 tax years, and US Attorney Martin Estrada in California declined for the 2016–2019 tax years, according to Shapley’s testimony, given under threat of prosecution for perjury.
None of those charges were ever laid.
After the refusals by Graves and Estrada, without Weiss being granted special powers by Garland, “for all intents and purposes, the case was dead,” Shapley testified of the five-year tax probe of Hunter he had supervised.
Despite the obvious historical fact that Hunter never was charged in DC or California, Weiss continues with his convoluted hypothetical in his Friday night letter, explaining the next step “if” the relevant US attorneys refused to “partner” with him to bring charges: “If not, I may request Special Attorney status from the Attorney General pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 515. Here I have been assured that, if necessary, I would be granted § 515 Authority in the District of Columbia, the Central District of California, or any other district.”
Note that Weiss says he “may request.” Not that he “did request.”
And when he says he “would be” granted special powers to bring charges in other districts “if necessary,” he is employing a grammatical structure known as “Future Unreal Conditional,” which is used to talk about imaginary situations in the future.
He is not talking about a situation that occurred in the past.
In other words, Weiss did not have full authority, and the only way to get it was to ask Garland for special powers, something he might do in the future.
But, as he well knows, there is no future for these charges against Hunter.
He has a sweetheart plea deal that wipes the slate clean and will be signed off on July 26.
The most serious charges in the Hunter Biden case were dead in the water because Weiss did not have the authority to bring them. Let alone “ultimate authority.”
Shapley testified about a “red-line” meeting of the investigative team in Delaware on Oct. 7, 2022, at which Weiss dropped the “earth-shattering news that … Graves would not allow him to charge in his district [and] that he subsequently asked for special counsel authority from Main DOJ at that time and was denied that authority. … Weiss stated that he is not the deciding person on whether charges are filed.”
At least four other witnesses were present for Weiss’ remarks, which were memorialized by Shapley in an email endorsed by a supervisor who was present.
Weiss told the team that the government would not be bringing the most serious charges against Hunter, and the ones most risky to his father, for the 2014-2015 tax years.
The statute of limitations would expire the following month.
Shapley soon discovered that Estrada also had declined to bring charges for the 2016-2019 years in California.
Hunter — and Joe — were home free.
Now comes the messy business of covering up the cover-up.
Either Weiss lied to his team on Oct. 7, or Garland lied to Congress.
Garland, under oath on March 1, told Congress that Weiss “has full authority to … bring cases in other districts if he needs to do that.”
Weiss, in a letter to Congress on June 7, backed Garland, saying he had “been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges.”
Note he did not say “full authority.”
Three House committees have written to more than a dozen witnesses, including Weiss, to get them to explain the discrepancies.
There probably are several lawyerly methods they will use to weasel out of suggestions they lied.
The definition of “ultimate authority” is one. “
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The wheels of war are a profitable endeavor for politicians and lobbyists alike…
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Nothing to see….
Move along…..
“CDC Altered Minnesota Death Certificates that List a Covid Vaccine as a Cause of Death”
https://brownstone.org/articles/cdc-altered-death-certificates/
“Someone (who needs to remain anonymous) was able to obtain the death certificates from Minnesota for all deaths that occurred from 2015 to the present, which presented the opportunity to see if the CDC is being entirely honest about the US death data. Unsurprisingly, the CDC is not.
As we shall document, the CDC is concealing references to a covid vaccine on Minnesota death certificates (that are exceedingly rare to begin with because of widespread medical establishment denialism of vaccine adverse side effects). In almost every death certificate that identifies a covid vaccine as a cause of death, the CDC committed data fraud by not assigning the ICD 10 code for vaccine side effects to the causes of death listed on the death certificate.
Background
When someone dies, there is a death certificate that is filled out for official/legal purposes. Death certificates contain a lot of information (some states include more than others), including the causes of death (CoD).
Causes of death refer to the medical conditions that ultimately played some role in the demise of the decedent. To qualify as a CoD, a condition only needs to contribute to the medical decline of the decedent in some way, but doesn’t have to be directly responsible for whatever ultimately killed the person. If someone had high blood pressure, and subsequently suffered a heart attack that led to cardiac arrest which killed them, all three conditions qualify as CoD. On the other hand, this unfortunate fellow’s ingrown toenail is not a cause of death, because it in no way contributed to their demise.
This is from the CDC’s own guidance explaining how to properly fill out CoD’s on a death certificate (you don’t need to understand the difference between Cause A, B, etc for this article):”
“The critical thing to keep in mind is that the person filling out the death certificate writes a text description of the CoD’s, but doesn’t assign the ICD 10 codes for the CoD’s.
That’s the CDC’s job.”
—-
“It is striking that 7/9 died before May 2021. This is odd – if anything, the deaths should skew later, not earlier. Vaccine adverse events were denied – with maximum prejudice and then some – for many months before the medical mainstream has finally (begrudgingly) started to acknowledge that the covid vaccines can trigger potentially lethal pathologies (in exceedingly rare instances to be sure).
The clustering of death certificates mentioning a covid vaccine at the beginning of the rollout suggests that ‘administrative’ interference likely played a role in discouraging coroners from mentioning a covid vaccine on death certificates.
Another noteworthy tidbit here is the age of the decedents: every single one is a senior citizen, and the average age of the decedents is 80. This is important to highlight because whereas young people “dying suddenly” stands out, there has been much less attention or acknowledgement of the covid vaccine’s devastating toll upon the old and frail, where deaths – even those that occur in close proximity to vaccination – are readily attributed to prior health conditions.
Finally, the actions of the CDC call into question whether the CDC is altogether qualified or trustworthy enough to be the steward of the nation’s epidemiological data. The CDC manages many of the datasets that underpin whole fields of study. If the CDC is willing to fraudulently alter data (or even if the CDC is just too incompetent to avoid corrupting data), all data under the aegis of the CDC is potentially suspect, especially if it relates to a controversial political or social issue. The implications of this are disturbing, to say the least.”
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On Independence Day you could wonder what the founding fathers would think of Biden or better yet Trump. What would be more interesting is what would they think of Obama.
The Amish are for the most part far healthier than the average American (far healthier food) . Hence, the lack of Covid deaths. Those with co-morbidities tend to die first. Autism, ADHD, epilepsy, etc are all hereditary problems. Those with behavioural and mental health issues tend to leave the Amish community and their genetics go with them.
Pizza? All of I’ve seen is memes mocking right wing Trumpsters for protesting by throwing pizza. bizarre on both sides.
The war deaths in Ukraine is the highest since WWII on both sides. More Russians have died in Ukraine in one year than in a decade in Afghanistan back in the 80s. Depending on the source there’s been 20-40K Ukrainian deaths and 50 to 200K Russian deaths. From an American and NATO power perspective, the war accomplishes US policy aims with no body bags and for Europeans it keeps the Russians at bay with no body bags. A win-win. The only losers are the Russians. For the Ukrainians, they keep their independence if that’s important to them; thousands of Ukrainian draft dodgers in Europe might beg to differ (my daughter knows several in Berlin). But for Americans, this is a cheap and life saving way to accomplish foreign policy goals.
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