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comments, ephemera, speculation, etc. (protected political speech and personal opinion) - If this is your 1st visit to this page, please start at the bottom - 2023- 2023-05-31 a THE STATE OF THE DISUNION XII DEBT CEILING SCAM
GOES TO SENATE
Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 * * The Rules Committee Votes 7-6 to
Advance McCarthy-Biden Debt Ceiling Bill
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/05/house-rules-committee-votes-7-6-advance-mccarthy/ * * * * * * * * * * See also: https://www.based-politics.com/2023/05/30/nancy-mace-slams-debt-ceiling-deal-points-out-the-dangerous-precedent-it-sets/
*
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12136093/A-breakdown-Biden-McCarthys-deal-raise-debt-limit-35-trillion.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12139719/GOP-Rep-Nancy-Mace-joins-list-rebels-voting-NO-Kevin-McCarthys-debt-ceiling-debacle.html https://www.mediaite.com/news/mccarthy-tosses-bouquets-at-biden-white-house-amid-far-right-criticism-that-he-caved-on-debt-deal-very-professional-very-smart/ https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/05/house-rules-committee-votes-7-6-advance-mccarthy/ https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4026850-gaetz-passing-debt-deal-without-republican-majority-would-likely-trigger-an-immediate-motion-to-oust-mccarthy/ https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2023/05/30/rand-paul-releases-conservative-alternative-to-biden-debt-deal-n2623852 https://twitter.com/freedomcaucus/status/1661775828982562816/photo/1 https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/total-farce-real-spending-under-debt-ceiling-deal-actually-goes-next-year What About The Ceiling? The details are still a bit thin but….. There is no reduction in the debt on the table. That is, the government refuses to cut spending to less than what it can take in via taxes. The growth in “mandatory” programs, specifically CMS, is where the problem is as I’ve pointed out for 30 years, all the way back to long before this column was originated and when I was running MCSNet. Its a math problem when you get down to it, but that also means its a serious political problem because waving your arms around will do nothing. What makes it worse is that all of it is illegal. 15 USC Chapter 1 makes what our medical and pharmaceutical firms do on a daily basis federal felonies carrying 10 year prison terms — for each person screwed, and each occurrence. Two decisions, Royal Drug (440 U.S. 205 (1979)) and Maricopa County (457 U.S. 332 (1982)) both found that there is no immunity from anti-trust law for medical providers, medical “insurance” companies or drug companies. None. These decisions have stood unchallenged since 1982. No statute has modified them. The cited claim of immunity in the first (McCarran-Ferguson) was disposed of as not applicable, so that sort of claim regarding insurance firms is void too as res judicata (already decided.) Neither political party nor any of the States have in the 40 years since prosecuted anyone for these violations, nor sent anyone to prison — including those who got slapped for doing it in the cases that went to the court originally themselves. None have forced the end of discriminatory pricing practices. California has gone even further and claimed authority to enact same at a state level despite the Supreme Court throwing up all over what they did in the 1982 decision prior to the state’s act and nobody has gone after them either. We cannot resolve the fiscal mess in the United States without resolving this. 2023-05-30 c THE STATE OF THE DISUNION X (diversity entry) BLACK PRIVILEGE
MEANS STORE EMPLOYEES ARE
FIRED IF THEY REPORT BLACK SHOPLIFTERS
* BLACK PRIVILEGE
MEANS YOU CAN USE THE
RACE CARD WHEN YOU ARE FIRED AFTER BEING LATE FOR WORK 47 TIMES Black
Woman Who Was Fired From Equinox Gym After Being
Late 47 Times in 10 Months, Sues For
Discrimination – Jury Awards Her $11.3 Million
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/05/black-woman-who-was-fired-equinox-gym-after/ See also: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/equinox-racism-lawsuit-robynn-europe-11-3-million-award/
https://crumiller.com/equinox-hit-with-11-25m-jury-verdict-in-race-gender-discrimination-lawsuit/ * BLACK PRIVILEGE
CANCELLED IN A HIGH SCHOOL DEEP
IN THE COTTON-GROWING HEART OF TEXAS
* BLACK PRIVILEGE WON'T
KEEP
GHETTO LOTTERY WINNER OUT OF JAIL
* BLACK PRIVILEGE ISN'T
KEEPING
ONLY BLACK LIVES MATTER AFLOAT 2023-05-30 b THE STATE OF THE DISUNION IX FRAUDULENT ARIZONA
ELECTION UPDATE
BREAKING
New *video evidence* of Maricopa election officials illegally breaking into sealed election machines after they were tested, reprogramming memory cards, and reinstalling them 59% of these machines would shut down on election day in GOP areas They’ve been CAUGHT https://t.co/5jrtpWispS pic.twitter.com/5bokL4IMAP — DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) May 28, 2023 *On October 14th, 17th & 18th, Maricopa County performed secret testing on the tabulators This was AFTER the legally required Logic & Accuracy test 260 of 446 tabulators failed They were used on election day anyway. Where 59% failed This is the story of a sabotage. pic.twitter.com/e0TmIPKrZm — Kari Lake War Room (@KariLakeWarRoom) May 28, 2023 * See also: https://electionoversight.substack.com/p/maricopa-county-secretly-tested-the
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/05/dont-publish-just-yet-new-evidence-found-maricopa/ 2023-05-30 a THE STATE OF THE DISUNION VIII THE CLIMATE CON
*
*
* See also: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/05/3_damning_equations_to_defeat_global_warming_zealots.html
https://desertreport.org/a-costly-omission-in-planning-for-climate-change/ https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/05/30/plants-cause-global-warming-now-n554237 2023-05-29 a THE STATE OF THE DISUNION VII DEBT
CEILING SCAM
* * * * * * * *
* See also: https://www.dailywire.com/news/top-conservatives-slam-mccarthy-biden-agreement-with-republicans-like-these-who-needs-democrats
https://www.newsweek.com/steve-bannon-blasts-mccarthys-total-surrender-biden-debt-limit-1803070 https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/05/28/sunday-talks-kevin-mccarthy-makes-his-case-for-the-debt-ceiling-bill/ https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/hard-pass-heres-whats-debt-ceiling-deal-republicans-are-about-nuke Full legislative text of debt ceiling deal: https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20230529/BILLS-118hrPIH-fiscalresponsibility.pdf 2023-05-28 f THE STATE OF THE DISUNION VI (pride entry) KHAZAR BOLSHEVIKS
ARE BEHIND
*
THE SATANIC "TRANS" MANIA. It's one of their strategies to destroy America & facilitate their New World Order. TARGET FOLLOWS THEIR PROTOCOLS: PROTOCOL No.4. WE SHALL DESTROY GOD 3. But even freedom might be harmless and have its place in the State economy without injury to the well-being of the peoples if it rested upon the foundation of faith in God, upon the brotherhood of humanity, unconnected with the conception of equality, which is negatived by the very laws of creation, for they have established subordination. With such a faith as this a people might be governed by a wardship of parishes, and would walk contentedly and humbly under the guiding hand of its spiritual pastor submitting to the dispositions of God upon earth. This is the reason why IT IS INDISPENSABLE FOR US TO UNDERMINE ALL FAITH, TO TEAR OUT OF THE MIND OF THE "GOYIM" THE VERY PRINCIPLE OF GOD-HEAD AND THE SPIRIT, AND TO PUT IN ITS PLACE ARITHMETICAL CALCULATIONS AND MATERIAL NEEDS. PROTOCOL No. 14 WE SHALL FORBID CHRIST 2. At the same time we shall not omit to emphasize the historical mistakes of the GOY governments which have tormented humanity for so many centuries by their lack of understanding of everything that constitutes the true good of humanity in their chase after fantastic schemes of social blessings, and have never noticed that these schemes kept on producing a worse and never a better state of the universal relations which are the basis of human life .... 3. The whole force of our principles and methods will lie in the fact that we shall present them and expound them as a splendid contrast to the dead and decomposed old order of things in social life. 4. Our philosophers will discuss all the shortcomings of the various beliefs of the "GOYIM," BUT NO ONE WILL EVER BRING UNDER DISCUSSION OUR FAITH FROM ITS TRUE POINT OF VIEW SINCE THIS WILL BE FULLY LEARNED BY NONE SAVE OURS WHO WILL NEVER DARE TO BETRAY ITS SECRETS. 5. IN COUNTRIES KNOWN AS PROGRESSIVE AND ENLIGHTENED WE HAVE CREATED A SENSELESS, FILTHY, ABOMINABLE LITERATURE. For some time after our entrance to power we shall continue to encourage its existence in order to provide a telling relief by contrast to the speeches, party program, which will be distributed from exalted quarters of ours .... Target Promotes Garments with Satanic
Imagery for Transvestite Children
The New York Post ran a story yesterday headlined, “Target Loses $9B in Week Following Boycott Calls Over LGBTQ-Friendly Kids Clothing.” Well that was fast! The story broke early this week. Targets across the nation had been stocked and decorated preparing for so-called “Target Pride Month,” which is the store’s month-long gala, not just accepting but celebrating and encouraging atypical sexual behavior. But Target’s Pride Month activities annoyed lots of its customers, who’d just gotten over the retailer’s last woke-splosion: its attempt two years two to force shoppers into genderless bathrooms, giving ladies no option but sharing their intimate personal spaces with hairy, bearded, voyeuristic fat men wearing colorful strappy dresses and sandals. Although it’s only been about a week, and although Target took some items offline and moved some store merchandise around in southern states, Target’s sales have plunged, and its stock has plummeted about $9B in total value. You know, it used to be kind of difficult to get conservatives on board for boycotts, for a host of reasons, but — like a Clydesdale-led miracle — the phony Anheuser-Busch beer company and its hypomanic spokesman-slash-girl seem to have taught our folks how to do it.  It wasn’t so much that Target was pushing atypical, gay sexual choices on everybody. True, that’s pretty annoying, because most of us don’t feel like having divergent mating practices shoved in our faces while we’re shopping for a new toaster oven. But that wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was Target aiming the gay progaganda at children, and for promoting Target’s newest spokesman, the Lord of Evil, the Great Serpent: Satan. I’m going to carefully explain all this, even though I think no explanation is necessary, but for the people who still aren’t sure what Target did wrong. Number one, kids don’t need to know about gay sex. Period. Nobody needs rainbow-colored onesies, pajamas, or swim diapers. A dispute arose about whether Target was actually selling youth-sized swimsuits labeled “tuck-friendly,” or whether they were just for adults. But that argument misses the point. Whether the items were in the kids’ section to start with, or were kept in the adult section marked “extra-small,” alert moms — whose protective instincts are set on ‘high’ — knew exactly what Target was really up to. Activists will argue that kids SHOULD be groomed into accepting other gay kids, so that the gay kids will feel accepted and not suicidal. It’s a dumb argument, a manipulative emotional soundbite, but we don’t have to argue about that. Even if it were true: THAT IS NOT TARGET’S JOB. Stay away from the kids, Target! (And anyway, it’s NOT true.) A second problem for a lot of people was the Satanism. You don’t have to be religious to understand the problem, and I’ll tackle it from a secular perspective. But obviously, Christians will always have a pretty big problem with anything that celebrates the Prince of Lies, the destroyer of life, the literal manifestation of evil, whose own original sin, not coincidentally, was “Pride,” because he equated himself with the Most High. Before about ten minutes ago, when our Judeo-Christian culture apparently shot past its expiration date, being linked to Satan in any way was career suicide. But nowadays, according to Target and its newest designer Abpallen, Satan loves trans people.  The Abprallen designs, sold in Target stores, conflate LGBTQ with Satanism Forget about the Christians versus the atheists. The Satanists offer a third way: they’re not ‘worshipping’ Satan, not exactly, they’re only going through the motions because they want to show everyone how silly they think ALL religions are. All religions except, of course, their own non-religion religious tradition. It’s a NEW kind of Satanism, not that old blood-drinking, orgy holding, child-sacrificing kind. It’s a “Neo-Satanism.” Neo-Satanism’s devil-may-care followers say they are proudly anti-religious, or if you will, proudly irreligious. Proudly blasphemous, in other words. And gay.  It guess it IS a cult, after all But does this this silly excuse that Neo-Satanism is a “non-religion” make any sense? Even if they’re not being deceitful; even if they really DO offer a secular, logic-driven, intellectual, atheistic alternative to religion, if still doesn’t work. If that were true, why would they pick the most despised, most hated and feared symbol in human history as the name for their non-religion? First, think about it this way: If it would be crazy to name your brand-new secular religion after that devil Adolph Hitler, why is it less crazy to pick literal Satan? In other words, regardless of whether the Devil exists or not, why align themselves with everything that Satan REPRESENTS? In other words, ’Satan’ comes with baggage, thousands of years’ worth of baggage, baggage in the form of near-infinite awful imagery, the worst possible P.R., and don’t forget, he is completely triggering for Christians, Muslims, and even agnostics and ‘white witches.’ The Neo-Satanist project to ‘reimagine’ Satan as a free-thinking role model is lunacy, a Sisyphean task if ever there were one. So, why take on all that baggage? And, why would they confusingly recycle the name of an existing religion, the religion of devil worship, instead of coming up with a new name for their new non-religion? Why not just name their atheist non-religion after Charles Darwin or Albert Einstein or something? And … they sure use a lot of religious imagery for a strictly science-based group.  Unsurprisingly, Neo-Satanic themes encourage violence. The guillotine is a reference to the Antichrist who, according to the Bible, in the Last Days will behead folks who refuse to take the Mark of the Beast. A lovely image! But not science. Only two alternatives make any sense. Either Neo-Satanists are lying — and they WOULD lie, wouldn’t they? — and they really are just dollied-up regular Satanists who do worship Evil, or they are deliberately triggering believers, on purpose, to make some kind of a point, and are not actually peacefully minding their own business like they claim they are. Satan is not harmless. Not even if he’s only a concept. Satan is not cute. Satan is an insidious viper, hated and despised by billions, who has fully earned being chained in infinite darkness for 1,000 years following which he will be unceremoniously chucked into a lake of fire. Most sane people, religious or not, don’t want retailers of cheap, mass-manufactured, Chinese products peddling Satan to their kids as a goofy cartoon figure. And if you needed more evidence, here’s exhibit number two: Gavin Newsom, who criticized Target for removing the Neo-Satanic items from its catalog:  Target, we don’t care what kind of crazy stuff your owners and managers are up to in their spare time (just leave the animals out of it). Your sin was going after the kids. It only involved LGBTQ+ because you used gay folks as the excuse, and in doing so managed to offend nearly everyone, even Gavin Newsom. You Target people Bud-Lighted yourselves. So the best strategy is: buy nothing from Target. The sooner these woke corporations get the message that ESG scores are suicidal, the sooner all this nonsense will calm down. I enjoyed the Babylon Bee’s take:  See also: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/05/target_has_made_a_lot_of_enemies_this_week_but_only_one_side_stooped_to_terrorism.html 2023-05-28 e THE STATE OF THE DISUNION V KHAZAR BOLSHEVIKS ARE
BEHIND
THE CONCEPT OF WOKE. It's one of their strategies to destroy America & facilitate their New World Order. The Truth of 'Woke'
It's a scam. But not the sort you think it is. Rather, it has appeared to be "ok" and even "what people want." It isn't, it never was, it was always a chimera and a lie. People are jumping on Disney's revelation that they are not going to move a cadre of "imagineers" (their term for the groups that come up with new idea for their parks and such) to the Orlando area from California. This, people say, is a reaction to DeSantis' feud with Disney, and some form of "corporate payback." I can't get into the Board's head but this much I can tell you: Either they're about to make a make a mistake that will cost them billions and might cut the company's value in half or more, or that's not what's going on. I'll take "that's not what's going on" for $1,000, Alex. Disney, like virtually every other corporation in the United States and indeed worldwide has feasted on negative real interest rates now for more than a decade, and artificially suppressed rates for more than two decades. So did Universities, Governments, think tanks, lobbyists and myriad others -- along with ordinary Americans. You probably think that a 3% mortgage is reasonable. It is not, except in a world where there is zero inflation -- that is, your $50,000 a year salary buys exactly the same amount food, fuel, electricity, insurance, bundles of shingles and cords of word 30 years from now -- or 30 years ago -- as it does today. You've never lived in that world and in fact nobody has since the turn of the last century. The people from the founding of America to roughly 1913 more-or-less did, however. There were fits and starts of inflation and deflation, but neither held sway. People point at fiat currency as an inherent evil but if it is, and is uncontrolled, then so is a metallic (or any other) standard because all can be corrupted and over time all have been corrupted. Those arguing for a return to that, or a new one (e.g. "digital encrypted currencies") have been and in every case are scammers; they hold it or some interest in it and want to use to abuse you up your rear-most exit. In a world of 2% inflation -- true 2% -- the price of everything doubles in about 35 years. The reasonable price of money over 30 years in a world of true 2% inflation is about 5%. 2% for the inflation, 3% for the risk that something terrible will happen to you over those 30 years and you won't be able to pay, and this assumes that when you take the loan you are both young and healthy. That's right: If you're older than your 20s, obese, have some chronic condition or simply were born with some sort of disability your loan should be more expensive -- by a lot -- because the odds rise precipitously that something bad will happen before the 30 years is up. Houses are not "assets"; they are in fact durable consumer goods much like a washing machine, car, lawn mower or similar. They are constructed out of things that require continual input or they turn to dust. Drive through rural America and you will see plenty of them in the process of being reclaimed by entropy as nobody is continually adding energy-based input to it anymore, a reality that nothing can escape -- including you personally. Of course that's not what you were sold. "Easy money" politics is like that. It allows all manner of uneconomic, stupid things to be done, for a while. It causes the cost of said uneconomic, stupid things to be paid by other people rather than those who did the stupid thing. The shifting of said costs is usually (but not always) diffuse, but in every case it happens. Stock prices go up not because of actual innovation but because there is no limit other than fear on deployed leverage; nobody has to actually make the numbers on a profit basis in real terms so long as the policy lasts. But in point of fact there is never a free lunch. As I've pointed out since beginning this column the laws of thermodynamics are not suggestions and they apply to economics -- not only on a large-scale level but personally too. You can simplify those laws down to three sentences.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people will try to argue that there is some exception to this -- especially those with a bunch of letters after their name working in think tanks and unversities. There is not. The end of "free money" has led firms like Disney to face reality: There is always loss in all endeavors but you must play or cease to exist and as a result doing things that make losses on top of the inevitable is stupid. Disney is shutting down their "Star Wars Experience" which was dreamed up by their "Imagineers." Why? Because a couple of days in that "experience" for a family of four costs roughly $5,000 and there simply aren't enough wealthy people when you actually must expend effort and pay for same out of your personal surplus after expenses to fork up the money and keep the place open. In short it is grandiose, kitchy and the market of available people willing and able to pay is too small given the price as soon as "free money" disappears, and it has. The entirety of "Woke" is utterly dependent on the capacity to shift cost from where it actually resides to someone else and make them pay it. The reason is simple: If you hire based on anything other than competence you get something less than 100% of what you could get in output. You are intentionally crippling yourself in order to score political tribal points. Absent coercion if you do this someone else will destroy you because they will refuse -- and outcompete you. The firm that produces 98% of its capacity for every dollar put in will lose, every time, to the one that produces 100% of its capacity for every dollar put in. It will take time before the first firm runs out of both customers and money but it will happen and as a result what inevitably comes with this sort of activity is the attempt to force everyone else down to that same production level. Contemplate the push for so-called "green energy." It is not cheaper and more-efficient. It is always more-expensive and less-reliable. If it wasn't everyone would choose it voluntarily for obvious reasons. Is there a trade-off between ecological sanity and maximum output? Sure! Dead humans don't buy things, do they? Poisoning your customers eventually leads to your extinction, so nobody will do that for very long unless of course you can force the customer to take the poison! Oh, we didn't do any of that in recent memory, did we? None of this nonsense happens except in a world where you pretend you can violate the laws of thermodynamics. Societies have often fell into this sort of nonsense and paid for it with their literal lives; Rome did, and ultimately collapsed. So have many others; Argentina is blessed with some of the richest natural resource deposits on the planet and yet they went from an incredibly vibrant and productive economy to a third-world hellhole with inflation rates approaching and in some cases exceeding 100% a year yet despite screwing basically everyone they have refused to abandon their delusions. Nothing -- other than a belief in getting something for nothing -- prevents Argentina from returning to a prosperous, productive society. Their damage is entirely self-inflicted and it has occurred over the last hundred years, despite the fact that the four out of ten citizens are in abject poverty and most of them have never known anything else. The refusal to stop deficit spending has led to one blow-up after another because the laws of thermodynamics are not suggestions and are not subject to modification, repeal or escape. You either conform to reality or you suffer the consequences, and suffer they have. For more than three generations, none of which have learned a single thing. DeSantis isn't "winning" on Woke, in short, nor is anyone else. Witness InBev which tried to play a game by bringing in a "marketing executive" who pronounced that their core constituency for Bud Light was "too fratty." Oh really? The last time I checked frat houses tend to buy beer by the keg and not one at a time either. Exactly how many of those customers can you afford to piss off? Zero, unless you live in a free money world. Well, we did -- we lived in a large-scale delusion for the last few decades. Its over. There are two choices: Either the deficit spending stops or we become Argentina, and by the way unlike Argentina we both have more guns per-capita (and not by a little either) and nuclear weapons. There never was an argument for "woke" anything. It was always predicated on intentional damage to score political points. That's stupid. It has always been stupid and will always be stupid. Now it is existential: Either it stops at all levels or our nation fails. (read more)2023-05-28 d THE STATE OF THE DISUNION IV FEDERAL BUREAU OF
EXAGGERATION, INTIMIDATION, INSURRECTION &
PREVARICATION
*
2023-05-28 c THE STATE OF THE DISUNION III "To save the Republic,
the federal government must be starved and
diminished.
Anything less is like putting a Band-Aid on a cannonball's exit wound." The Union Is Not a Suicide Pact
Comey: I am the law. Fauci: I am the science. Deep State: We are your democracy. Federal Reserve: We are your freedom. This kind of authoritarianism does not belong in America. When tyrants pervert the law, distort scientific inquiry, abuse their power, and pilfer middle-class savings, they are American in name only. Now that Mr. Durham has gotten around to confirming what most of us have known for nearly seven years — namely, that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Brennan, Jim Comey, James Clapper, and the State-aligned press corps doing the Intelligence Community's bidding all conspired to push the fraudulent Russian collusion narrative in an attempt to take down a duly elected president — there are quite a few people calling for the FBI to be either reformed or disbanded. Surprisingly, some of these people now calling for the FBI's demolition are even elected officials. My response is simple: that should be just the beginning. The federal government is rotten to its core. By the terms of the U.S. Constitution, it has accumulated powers and authorities far beyond anything enumerated and vested to it. It funds a massive administrative state that should not exist. It not only ignores the Bill of Rights, but actively works to undermine those rights. In my estimation, any government official who engages in public censorship, religious discrimination, gun confiscation, or warrantless searches of private records, in violation of Americans' First, Second, and Fourth Amendment rights, has explicitly betrayed any constitutional oath taken before entering office. Anybody in any office attempting to implement some form of a "disinformation" board to monitor and modify Americans' speech should never hold office again. That so many elected and unelected federal employees not only disregard Americans' constitutional rights, but also vocally brag about infringing them demonstrates that a malignant cancer afflicts the central government from head to toe. So, yes, disband
the FBI, but don't stop there until all the powers
stolen by the federal government have been properly
returned to the states and the American
people. To save the Republic, the federal
government must be starved and
diminished. Anything less is like putting
a Band-Aid on a cannonball's exit wound. Some people look around at the task before us and find the job too great. Why? You own your physical labor. You have power over your mind. You possess personal agency. The federal government is insolvent, desperately printing money to survive, and is clinging to a pipe dream that it can successfully impose a future central bank digital currency upon Americans in order to continue this madness for another century. The D.C. Leviathan is busy punishing international rivals, prosecuting foreign wars, and recklessly threatening allies, as it watches the dollar's reserve currency status go up in smoke. While hundreds of trillions of dollars in mandatory entitlement spending remain entirely unfunded, blue cities and states across the country push for trillions more in racial reparations, climate "justice," and property redistribution. It is so obvious that the whole house of cards will soon be crashing down that government tyrants who specialize in buying the public's servitude by spending other people's money have thrown all caution to the wind. Does it seem like the federal government's future is on sound footing? Just last week, pretend-president Biden told the graduating class at Howard University that the biggest threat to the country is "white supremacy." The notion is so absurd that it came off like the kind of weak pandering that third-world dictators rhetorically vomit forth when they are eager to keep their citizens fighting one another and distracted from the government's primary role in their suffering. Given that Biden has a lifetime of racist behavior under his belt, I half expected Democrat presidents Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson to tap-dance out on stage and say, "America's most notoriously racist presidents approve this message." Leave it to the real white supremacists from the Democrat party to declare war on "white supremacy" outside the party! Does that brand of craziness sound like a government confident in its future stability? Because it sounds to me like the actions of a tin-pot tyrant desperately seeking a scapegoat. I don't look forward to the chaos ahead, but if the goal is to reclaim our personal freedom from a tyrannical beast that betrays both our natural liberties and the U.S. Constitution daily, I'd rather be living in this decade than during last century's monstrous growth of the administrative state. At least now we're on the verge of being able to do something about it. Surely, that's what Dementia Joe really means when he reads his Deep State handlers' script decrying "white supremacy." They're not fighting "whiteness." They're fighting rising calls for the federal government to answer for decades of heinous crimes, unconscionable power-grabs, and totalitarian tactics. Heck, Biden's leading Democrat challenger is openly calling out the CIA for having been involved in President Kennedy's assassination. What the Deep State fears most today is constitutional supremacy! I have no doubt that innumerable liberty-loving patriots from the past would relish being alive today. Think of all the Americans who have been warning about this looming catastrophe since before President Roosevelt's New Deal or even the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment's income taxing authority and the contemptible construction of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. Concerned Americans have been fighting expanding bureaucracy, runaway government debt, infringement of the individual states' sovereignty, and loss of personal liberty almost from the country's inception. During that time while sound money once tethered to precious metals was traded for worthless paper currencies and a regulatory nanny-State empowered private bankers to gobble up Americans' personal property, those who complained were shouted down. While George Orwell warned about governments' subversion of language, Ayn Rand warned that socialism was overtaking America, and numerous survivors of China's Cultural Revolution warned that the infestation of "political correctness" is how soft tyranny takes hold, the Deep State cancer festered without treatment. Now we stand as witnesses to what happens when so many decades of earnest warnings go ignored. An unwieldy, unconstitutional, un-American Leviathan gorging itself on the banks of the Potomac cannot sustain itself because it has destroyed free enterprise, declared its citizens "domestic enemies," and deprived Americans of the very freedoms and self-determination wholly responsible for having made the country strong. For some people, the accumulation of all this damage fosters in them a desire to curl up inside a dark hole. For others who cherish the opportunity to rectify decades of unconstitutional power hoarding from a corrupt and largely illegitimate federal government, the time for reclaiming lost liberties is here. From my point of view, never have so many Americans been so consciously aware that things must change. The federal government's response to the 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks has been endless war and the construction of a national security surveillance state that now targets Americans as "domestic enemies." Its response to mass communication through social media has been the implementation of State-sanctioned censorship. Its response to widespread calls for border security has been mass sponsorship of illegal immigration. Its response to Americans' rising demands for personal freedom has been COVID lockdowns, a centrally directed economy, and a declaration of war against "white supremacy." As Roman
emperor Marcus Aurelius pithily observed,
"the object of life is not to be on the side of the
majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks
of the insane." More Americans are
choosing sanity and refusing to go
away. That's the kind of progress I can
get behind. After all, the Union is not a
suicide pact. Either the federal
government should abide by the U.S. Constitution, or
it should go away. (read
more) 2023-05-28 b THE STATE OF THE DISUNION II THERE WERE NO "FAKE"
ELECTORS
The Left’s 2020 ‘Fake
Electors’ Narrative Is Fake News
The 2020 Georgia situation mirrors events of 60 years ago in Hawaii, revealing that everything the media have said about ‘fake electors’ is wrong. Headlines recently proclaimed that eight of Trump’s “fake” electors accepted immunity deals. Of course, in reporting the news, the corporate outlets all missed the real story — that the electors’ testimony failed to incriminate anyone, including Trump, and that the county prosecutors engaged in massive misconduct. Equally appalling, however, was the corrupt media’s continued peddling of the “fake electors” narrative. There were no “fake” electors. There were contingent Republican electors named consistent with legal precedent to preserve the still ongoing legal challenges to the validity of Georgia’s certified vote. Nor was appointing an alternative slate of electors some cockamamie plan devised by Trump lawyers. On the contrary, Trump’s election lawyers and the contingent electors followed the precise approach Democrats successfully used when the date Congress established for certifying an election came before the legal challenges John F. Kennedy had brought in Hawaii were decided. And that approach allowed Kennedy to be certified the winner of Hawaii’s three electoral votes on Jan. 6, 1961, even though the Aloha State had originally certified Richard Nixon the victor. The Hawaii scenario in 1960 mirrors in every material respect the facts on the ground in Georgia on Dec. 14, 2020 — the date both the Democrat and Republican presidential electors met and cast their 16 electoral votes for Joe Biden and Donald Trump respectively. Here’s What Happened in Hawaii Six-0Election day in 1960 fell on Nov. 8 and pitted Kennedy, a Democrat, against Republican Richard Nixon. The outcome remained unknown for some time, with a total of 93 electoral votes from eight different states undecided in the days following the election. Hawaii was one of those states. By Dec. 9 of that year, Kennedy had accumulated enough electoral votes to win the White House, but Hawaii’s winner was still in question. While the presidency did not depend on Hawaii’s three electoral votes, Democrats there had challenged the initial returns that gave Nixon a 141-vote edge, or 0.08 percent margin of victory. Based on the original count in favor of Nixon, the acting governor of Hawaii, Republican James Kealoha, certified the Republican electors on Nov. 28, 1960. On Dec. 13, over the objections of the state attorney general, state circuit court Judge Ronald Jamieson ordered a recount. Then, on Dec. 19, both the Nixon and Kennedy electors met, “cast their votes for President and Vice President, and certified their own meeting and votes.” In casting their electoral ballots for Kennedy, the three Hawaiian Democrats certified they were the “duly and legally qualified and appointed” electors for president and vice president for the state of Hawaii and that they had been “certified (as such) by the Executive.” The Hawaii electors further attested: “We hereby certify that the lists of all the votes of the state of Hawaii given for President, and of all the votes given for Vice President, are contained herein.” Two of the three Democrat electors were retired federal judges, William Heen and Delbert Metzger, and Heen personally mailed the Democrat electoral votes to Congress on Dec. 20. In fact, the envelope containing the certificates, further attested: “We hereby certify that the lists of all the votes of the state of Hawaii given for president … are contained herein.” Ten days later, on Dec. 30, 1960, Judge Jamieson held that Kennedy had won the election. In so holding, Jamieson stressed the importance of the Democrat electors having met on Dec. 19, as prescribed by the Electoral Count Act, to cast their ballots in favor of Kennedy. That step allowed the Hawaii governor to then certify Kennedy as the winner of Hawaii’s three electoral votes and, in turn, Congress to count Hawaii’s electoral votes in favor of Kennedy. The Peach State RepeatThe Georgia situation in 2020 mirrored the events of 60 years ago in Hawaii. Election day in 2020 fell on Nov. 3, although by then many ballots had already been cast, given the adoption of mass mail-in and early voting. Trump held a lead in Georgia until the morning of Friday, Nov. 6, when Biden overtook the incumbent. With the margin remaining tight, on Nov. 11, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced a statewide audit. Following the audit, Biden remained in the lead by approximately 12,000 votes, leading Raffensperger to certify the election results on Friday, Nov. 20, 2020. Republic Gov. Brian Kemp signed the certification the same day. Then on Nov. 21, Trump requested a recount, as allowed under Georgia law given the closeness of the count. On Dec. 4, 2020, then-President Trump and Republican elector David Shafer filed suit in a Fulton County state court against Raffensperger, arguing tens of thousands of votes counted in the presidential election had been cast in violation of Georgia law. While Trump’s lawsuit was still pending, on Dec. 7, 2020, based on the recount, Raffensperger recertified Biden as the winner of Georgia’s 16 electoral votes by a margin of 11,779. Trump and Shafer’s Fulton County lawsuit contesting the election results remained pending on Dec. 14, 2020, the date the presidential electors were required by federal law to meet. Thus, while the Democrat electors met and cast their ballots for Joe Biden, the Republican electors met separately and cast their 16 votes for Trump. At that time, Shafer made clear the Trump electors had met and cast their votes to ensure Trump’s legal battle in court remained viable. Nonetheless, following Biden’s election, Fulton County Prosecutor Fani Willis targeted the Republican electors as part of her criminal special purpose grand jury investigation. While the grand jury has since issued a report and been disbanded, Willis agreed to grant immunity to eight of the electors, likely to push them to implicate the other electors. However, their lawyer confirmed in a court filing that none of the electors implicated anyone in criminal activity. Since then, Shafer’s attorneys, Holly Pierson and Craig Gillen, wrote Willis a detailed letter reviewing the Hawaii precedent. The attorneys noted they had made three prior written requests to meet “to discuss the factual and legal issues” relevant to Shafer’s role as a contingent Trump elector but had “not yet received any response to those requests.” The 11-page, single-spaced letter then proceeded to detail both the Hawaii precedent for Shafer’s actions following the 2020 election and the legal advice the Republican elector received that “he and the other contingent presidential electors should meet at the state capitol building on December 14, 2020, and perform the duties of a presidential elector to preserve potential remedies in the event Trump et al. v. Raffensperger, et al. was successful.” In addition to detailing the Hawaii precedent from 1960, Shafer’s lawyers highlighted the fact that in contesting the 2000 election, lawyers for then-Democrat presidential candidate Al Gore cited that very precedent to support his position that two elector slates could be appointed. In fact, Democrat Rep. Patsy Mink of Hawaii suggested the 2000 Florida electoral dispute be resolved based on that Hawaii precedent too. And three Supreme Court justices in Bush v. Gore cited the Hawaii precedent as a basis for allowing the Florida recount to proceed. As the letter and Hawaii precedent make clear, Shafer and the other Trump electors not only did nothing wrong, but they acted prudentially to ensure that if the state court lawsuit resolved in the president’s favor, Georgia’s electoral votes would be properly counted on Jan. 6, 2020. Here we see one of the only differences between Trump’s legal challenge and Kennedy’s: The Hawaii state court promptly resolved the merits of Kennedy’s legal challenge, while in violation of the Georgia Election Code that requires lawsuits contesting elections to be heard within 20 days, the Fulton County court delayed assigning a judge to hear Trump’s election dispute and then delayed the first scheduled hearing until Jan. 8, 2021 — two days after Congress certified Biden the winner of the 2020 election. Now you know the
rest of the story. There were no fake electors. The
question now is whether Willis will charge Shafer
and others with fake crimes. (read
more) 2023-05-28 a THE STATE OF THE DISUNION I
A Century of Censorship The turn of the last century brought an age of revolutions, industrial warfare and nearly instantaneous communications across long distances. With these developments came an emphasis on another method of war: information war. This was the type of fight waged with what World War II Deputy Director of the Office of Censorship, Theodore F. Koop, called “Silent Weapons,” in a wartime memoir he published in 1946. Wrote Koop:
Koop would go on to run CBS News in Washington, DC. Well-known as a powerful media figure, he was also a trusted one, the man who hired Walter Cronkite. Less well-known was that in 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower asked him to run a secret national censorship program intended for use in Cold War emergencies. He accepted the offer while still a network news executive, serving in that contingency role under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. The methods of censorship had changed over time, matching changes in the communication technology. During World War I, the United States Government used the Postal Service, the Comstock laws and the reliance on publications reaching subscribers by mail as a wedge. When radio and television broadcasts became pre-eminent, the newly formed Federal Communications Commission began using its authority as stewards of the public airwaves to watch over content. Under the FCC Act of 1934, ostensibly private corporations like CBS, ABC and NBC were allowed to use the public airwaves only under license, acquiring revenue and learning the power of shaping the discourse from the nascent field of advertising. Though it all, one thing has been remarkably consistent. Government targeted for special attention journalists who reported accurately on the ugly truth of American foreign policy, such as John W. Powell. Powell was an American journalist based in Shanghai who wrote a series of articles for the China Monthly Review (later, the Weekly Review), which said the Chinese government claimed the United States was using biological weapons in the Korean War. He was put on trial for sedition in 1959. The case dragged on in federal court in San Francisco for five years before the charges were dropped. It was enough to make him leave journalism forever. The impulse to use censorship, and call all information that doesn’t square with the official narrative “disinformation,” is a bipartisan impulse, at least historically. Both Republican and Democratic administrations during the Global War on Terror sought to expand and refine the power of what we now call the Censorship-Industrial Complex. The latter was built, piece by piece, over a century of legislation, executive action, and regulation. A little less than a century after the passage of the Espionage Act, Barack Obama’s administration used it aggressively to target leakers. By that time, computers, the internet, and social media were all new platforms for communication and ripe targets for information suppression. In an era where cultural memory is short and resources for learning about the inconvenient past are becoming more scarce, it’s useful to look at this century-plus progression in chronological order. A CENTURY OF CENSORSHIP June 15, 1917: As the United States enters World War I, the Espionage Act of 1917 is enacted by Congress and signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, the first academic to become President, prohibiting “obtaining information, recording pictures, or copying descriptions of any information relating to the national defense with intent or reason to believe that the information may be used for the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.” The Act also made obstructing enlistment in the armed forces or causing insubordination or disloyalty in military or naval forces an illegal act. Wilson’s administration also decided that any publications violating the act were “non-mailable matter,” and this rationale was used to suppress dissenting views by aggressively enforcing the postal codes so no subversive publications could reach their subscribers. At least 74 newspapers were denied mailing permits at this time.  May 16, 1918: The Sedition Act of 1918 extended the Espionage Act of 1917 to cover more offenses, making it a crime to:
As the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee
State University notes, “The targets of prosecution
under the Sedition Act were typically individuals who
opposed the war effort, including pacifists,
anarchists, and socialists.” May 24, 1936: Roosevelt assigns J. Edgar Hoover to investigate “subversive activity.” According the FBI’s own historical timeline, “President Roosevelt called Director Hoover to a morning meeting to discuss his concerns about subversive activity in the United States. He asked Hoover to report on the activities of Nazi and communist groups. The FBI made these investigations at the request of the Secretary of State for the President.” In 1939, according to the same document, Roosevelt formally assigned responsibility for investigating “espionage, sabotage, and other subversive activities” to a series of agencies and departments, including the “FBI, the Military Intelligence Division of the War Department (MID), and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI).” May 26, 1938: The House Un-American Activities Committee is formed. Created as part of a special investigative committee, and reorganized from previous incarnations as the Fish Committee and the McCormack-Dickstein Committee, HUAC had license to “investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of America’s private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having Communist ties.” Because of its investigations of prominent intellectuals, entertainers, and politicians, HUAC is one of the few bodies on this list that has become a fixture in American pop culture, featured in movies like The Front and Trumbo.  June 9, 1938: The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) is enacted by Congress and signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt. June 29, 1940: The Alien Registration Act, a.k.a. the Smith Act, is enacted, setting criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government by violence or force, requiring all non-citizen adult residents to register with the government. Hundreds of communists in America would later be tried under this act. 1940-43?: FBI begins to liaise with an NSA predecessor agency, the U.S. Signals Intelligence Service, which in 1943 was re-named the Signal Security Agency, later became the Army Security Agency, and eventually was absorbed into the NSA. Again according to the FBI’s own internal timeline, the Bureau sometime before 1947, when the NSA would be formed, began a working relationship with the Signals Intelligence Service. This association would bear fruit in the late forties:
July/August 1940: Captain John V. Grombach publishes “The Invisible Weapon” in the United States Army’s Infantry Journal on the covert applications of radio technology in warfare and espionage. Previewing ideas that would become popular in the future, Grobach wrote of mass communication as a weapon:
 December 19, 1941: Twelve Days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issues Executive Order 8985, Establishing the Office of Censorship under the War Powers Act. February 16, 1942: U.S. Army intelligence creates a secret spying outfit called “The Pond,” to compete with and spy on the newly commissioned Office of Strategic Services. The aforementioned Grombach is selected to direct the new organization, which operates primarily through commercial cover enterprises like insurance agencies.  April 14, 1942: The Second Class Mail permit for Social Justice, a weekly newspaper founded by fascist and anti-semitic radio personality Father Charles E. Coughlin, was suspended by Postmaster General Frank Walker on the recommendation of Attorney General Francis Biddle. “Social Justice reproduces, in this country,” Biddle said, “the lines of the enemy propaganda war being waged against this country from abroad. The Espionage Act of 1917 is designed to defeat this attack.” February 1, 1943: The VENONA Project, a secret high level code-breaking program run by the Army and later the National Security Agency in cooperation with FBI, commences. It is kept secret from the President by the Army Chief of Staff, Omar Bradley. 1946: The Assistant Director of the Office of Censorship, Theodore F. Koop, publishes Weapon of Silence: Secrets, Censors, and Spies. In it, he notes that then-Director of the Office Byron Price’s “assurance that press and radio were reverting to peacetime freedom” had proved to be premature.” Focused now on clamping down on discussion of the development of the atomic bomb, the department issued a manifesto:
Koop wrote, “The censors’ shears were bayonets that not only formed a rear-guard national defense but also struck hard at the enemy in all three phases of warfare—military, economic, and psychological.” Then, in a mildly chilling preview of what was to come, he added:
August 1946: Congress passes the Atomic Energy Act. Henceforth, the FBI is responsible for investigating the backgrounds of persons who were to access restricted nuclear data and for investigation of criminal violations of this act. January 1, 1947: the civilian Atomic Energy Commission takes over Manhattan Project operations. One result is a decision to “keep information on the plutonium injections secret,” for reasons not pegged to national security, but “public relations and legal liability concerns.”  March 21, 1947: President Harry S Truman issues Executive Order 9835, a.k.a. “Prescribing Procedures for the Administration of an Employees Loyalty Program in the Executive Branch of the Government.” A key provision of the latest loyalty-oath scheme is the creation of a Central Master Index:
Another key provision is the formation of a “Loyalty Review Board,” under which the Department of Justice would “furnich” the names of “each foreign or domestic organization, association, movement, group or combination of persons which the Attorney General, after appropriate investigation and determination, designates as totalitarian, fascist, communist or subversive.” Truman’s own administration would eventually be targeted by his bureaucratic creation. The DOJ was also responsible for supplying names of people identified as “having adopted a policy of advocating or approving the commission of acts of force or violence to deny others their rights under the Constitution of the United States,” or as “seeking to alter the form of government of the United States by unconstitutional means.” July 26, 1947: The National Security Act of 1947 is signed into law by President Harry S Truman. Among other things, the Act establishes the United States Air Force as a separate branch of the military, and the Central Intelligence Agency as a separate government entity, under the executive branch. January 27, 1948: The US Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948, better known as the Smith-Mundt Act, is passed. The Act is designed to regulate the broadcasts of propaganda to foreign audiences under State Department guidance, while prohibiting that same propaganda on domestic broadcasts. The ban on domestic propaganda would be repealed in 2013. June 18, 1948: President Harry Truman approves “NSC 10/2,” which creates the Office of Special Projects, the brainchild of George Kennan, director of State Department’s Policy Planning Staff and author of the famed “Long Telegram,” considered a foundational document establishing decades of Cold War policy. The office name is later changed to Office of Policy Coordination and Frank Wisner is chosen as the Director. This Office, staffed mostly by OSS veterans, will be the center covert branch of American political action, until it is incorporated into CIA. 1950s: The Term “Disinformation” begins to be widely used in American and British circles, formed on the pattern of Russian dezinformatsiya. February 9, 1950: Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin gives his infamous “Communists in Government Service” speech. In a Lincoln Day address to the Republican Women’s Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, McCarthy produced a piece of paper and announced:
April 1951: Truman establishes the Psychological Strategy Board. They will prove instrumental in funding the 1954 Hollywood Production of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. January 10, 1953: Mary Dublin Keyserling, wife of former Truman economic adviser Leon Keyserling, is cleared after a Loyalty Review Board case was brought against her by McCarthy. January 22, 1953: Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is published, one of what would become a long series of artistic/metaphorical commentaries on dangerously controversial topics. It’s rumored that the character of Elizabeth Proctor is based in part on Mary Keyserling.  August 24, 1954: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs “The Communist Control Act of 1954.” Eisenhower explains:
Eisenhower complained of witnesses who invoked “Constitutional privilege against self-incrimination” and boasted his law would provide a new “means of breaking through the secrecy which is characteristic of traitors, spies and saboteurs.” April 5, 1955: Koop, now Director of Washington News and Public Affairs for the Columbia Broadcasting System, writes President Eisenhower to say he’s, “honored to accept the Censorship assignment measured in your letter of March 21. I greatly prize your confidence in me. I can assure you that I shall do my utmost to prepare for an eventuality which I hope will never arise. I would deem it a privilege to talk with you at your convenience, as you suggested.”  June 26, 1958: The construction of DC-01, the first SAGE NETWORK (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) building in the United States, is completed at Maguire Air Force Base in New York. The SAGE NETWORK would be a series of large computers and networking machines that coordinated data from Radar Sites to produce a single image of airspace. The funding and construction of the SAGE network cost more than the Manhattan Project, and was the backbone of American Air Defense networks until the 1980’s. Connected by modems, telephones and fax machines, the SAGE NETWORK laid the groundwork for the ARPANET and Internet. January 26, 1959: American journalist John Powell is charged with sedition for a series of articles in the The China Monthly Review, where he wrote that the US military used biological warfare against North Korean and Chinese soldiers, incorporating lessons learned from Imperial Japan’s Unit 731. The case would drag on for five years, the government would drop all charges, and Powell would be blackballed from American journalism forever. March 28, 1960: The current Special
Envoy and Coordinator of the Global Engagement Center, U.S.
Department of State’s James Rubin, is born in New
York City to Harvey Rubin, who would go on to be
an executive at the Satra, the Soviet American Trade
Corporation, and Judy Rubin, an art therapist who
would make regular guest appearances on Mister
Rogers’ Neighborhood.
March 12, 1963: BROADCASTING MAGAZINE features an item in the “Closed Circuit” section about how the U.S. government is thinking of re-opening a World War II-style office of censorship, after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The item reads:
1965: Then-Director of Central Intelligence, Vice Admiral W.F. Raborn, who’d made his name in the Government by delivering the Polaris nuclear missile system three years early and under budget using the “program evaluation and review technique,” writes a letter to Clark Clifford, then the head of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, warning of a major foreign disinformation operation whose aim is the “destruction, break-up and neutralization of CIA:
Raborn writes that a purpose of the unit is to “sow distrust” and “create grounds for subversion and revolt against the U.S. in the Western Hemisphere and among the new nations of Africa and Asia… These purposes and objectives, it must be emphasized, have been established by the highest elements of Party and Government in the Soviet Union.” April, 1967: Ramparts magazine reports that the National Student Association received funding from CIA. September, 1968: Following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Prague to suppress the Czech Spring, Major Ladislav Bittman, former deputy head of head of Czech Intelligence’s Department ‘D’ for ‘active measures,’ (their Secret Service department in charge of “Black Propaganda and disinformation” defects to the United States by way of West Germany. Bittman later changed his name to Lawrence Martin and taught journalism at Boston University. He founded the “Program for the Study of Disinformation” in the mid 1980’s, this is the first academic center in the US to focus on disinformation. December, 1968: The Stanford Research Institute (SRI) issues a report “A Study of Computer Network Design Parameters” to the Advanced Research Projects as part of the development of ARAPANET, the forerunner to the internet. June 30, 1971: In a 6-3 Ruling, the Supreme Court rules in favor of the New York Times in New York Times Co. v. United States, which allowed the newspaper to publish extracts from a purloined classified Pentagon history of the Vietnam war. The case is a landmark verdict on press freedom and the burden of government prior restraint.  January 15, 1977: SATRA, The Soviet American Trading Company where Harvey Rubin is vice president, is awarded broadcast rights to the 1980 Moscow Olympics January 4, 1978: The ARPANET Completion Report is published, signaling the birth of the modern Internet. 1981: The Reagan administration founds the “Active Measures Working Group,” an interagency detail led by Department of State official Mark Palmer. Shedding a years-long disinclination to discuss “disinformation” openly, the new group begins to publish papers “countering” Soviet propaganda and Soviet-tied rumors, beginning with a paper in 1981 purporting to debunk stories about U.S. responsibility for the the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the killing of a Panamanian leader, and other tales.  September 20, 1983: The Director of Central Intelligence, William Casey, briefs the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence:
Casey warns that “Soviet active measures” include “media manipulation” and “disinformation,” as well as “agents of influence” and “other subversive activities.” July 24, 1985: The CIA Delivers a report on its “Conference on Contemporary Soviet Propaganda and Disinformation,” writing:
In another past example of media cooperation with intelligence goals, the former editor of Commentary Magazine and US Information Agency adviser Norman Podhoretz is mentioned. Podhoretz “delivered the keynote address to a CIA Dis-information conference,” an address titled, “Causes of Western Vulnerability due to semantic manipulation.” 1985: As a result of a series of high profile espionage arrests, 1985 is characterized in media as the “Year of the Spy.”  February 8, 1996: President Bill Clinton signs the Communications Decency Act of 1996, an attempt to regulate internet pornography. October 21, 1998: The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) is signed into law by President Bill Clinton. This is one of the earliest legislative efforts to regulate the transmission of web content:
October 26, 2001: Shortly after 9/11, President George Bush signs into law the “Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act,” a.k.a. the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001. This sweeping law would provide the foundation for a generation of essentially extralegal anti-terrorist interdiction, and would eventually serve as a template for other, broader efforts to regulate information and conduct surveillance. January 2002: The Pentagon Military Analyst program developed by Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke quietly launches “to spread the administration’s talking points on Iraq by briefing retired commanders for network and cable television appearances,” without disclosing their active Pentagon connections. Analysts were known as “message force multipliers.” March, 2003: The Department of Defense begins a policy of “embedding” reporters within military units for the War in Iraq, provided the embedded reporters agree to ground rules and basic military censorship. March 9, 2006: President Bush signs the USA Patriot Improvement and Reauthorization act of 2005, in the East Room of the White House. House Speaker Dennis Hastert is present at the signing. The Act allows “Internet service providers to disclose customer records voluntarily to the government in emergencies involving an immediate risk of death or serious physical injury and permits victims of hacking crimes to request law enforcement assistance in monitoring trespassers on their computers.” March 21, 2006: Jack Dorsey sends the first message on twitter at 9:50PM PST. “just setting up my twttr.” The Non-Fungible Token (NFT) for that tweet will later sell for $2.9M.  August 2, 2007: S-1959, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 is introduced and defeated in the Senate, after passing the house as H.R. 1955 on April 2007. The Bill was Co-Sponsored by Rep. Bennie Thompson, who would later have a prominent role on the January 6 committee. An Opinion piece in SF Gate in 2008, “Rule by fear or rule by law?” by Lewis Seiler and Dan Hamburg, notes the following: Some media commentary wonders at a law that labels as terrorists people who “engage in sit-ins, civil disobedience, trespass, or any other crime in the name of animal rights” as terrorists. The ACLU, at the time still keenly interested in such issues, releases a statement saying:
January 4, 2011: Tunisian street vendor Tarek al-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi self-immolates in Ben Arous, Tunisia, after harassment by municipal officials. This will be seen as the inciting event of the Arab Spring, a series of social media fueled popular uprisings across the Middle East . September 27, 2011: Michael Furlong, a retired Army psyops colonel, resigns from his SES position in the Air Force after it comes to light that his “INFORMATION OPERATIONS CAPSTONE” program in Afghanistan is cover for a private spy ring operating in “The Grey Zone” of legality, especially since it was run since 2009 by pardoned Iran Contra conspirator and CIA legend Duane “Dewey” Clarridge March 2, 2012: USA Today, which later will become an enthusiastic partner of “anti-disinformation” operations, publishes “US ‘info ops’ programs dubious, costly”:
May 18, 2012: My former colleague Michael Hastings publishes a piece in now-defunct Buzzfeed, titled, “Congressmen Seek to Lift Propaganda Ban: Propaganda that was supposed to target foreigners could now be aimed at Americans, reversing a longstanding policy.” Hastings would prove prescient:
 January 2, 2014: CNN’S Jake Tapper notes, accurately: “the Obama administration has used the Espionage Act to go after whistleblowers who leaked to journalists ... more than all previous administrations combined.” November 16, 2018: President Donald Trump signs into law the “Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act of 2018” establishing CISA as a subagency within Department of Homeland Security with a multibillion dollar budget. November 17, 2020: Inaugural CISA Director Christopher Krebs is fired by President Trump via tweet for remarks he made about the security of the presidential election.  May 18, 2022: The Department of Homeland Security’s ill-fated “Disinformation Governance Board” is “paused” after just three weeks. Papers like the Washington Post blame “right-wing attacks” for its closure.  Sept 08, 2022: The RAND Corporation publishes “INFORMATION WARFARE: Methods to Counter Disinformation” which advocates “developing counter-strategies and we specifically identify the concept of kill chains as a useful framework to assist in the disinformation challenge,” essentially incorporating the assassination doctrine of JSOC in Iraq and Afghanistan to domestic publications. December 2, 2022: Twitter Files #1 is published,
beginning a series of reports that will disclose
wide-ranging “anti-disinformation” efforts under the
Departments of State and Homeland Security, in
addition to the FBI, the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence, and an as-yet-undetermined
number of civil society organizations. See also: https://www.racket.news/p/report-on-the-censorship-industrial-74b 2023-05-27 a SEXUAL PREDATORS & GROOMERS ENCOURAGE CROSS DRESSING
TARGET
CREATES THEIR OWN
BUD LIGHT SITUATION * * * * * * * * * * Target yeets Satan's underpantsFox News ran a story recently headlined, “Target CEO Says Woke Capitalism ‘Great’ for Their Brand and ‘The Right Thing for Society’.” The sub-headline, which should have been the top headline, explained “Some Target stores have been forced by the corporation to move LGBTQ merchandise from the front of the store amid outrage.”How about that? It might be one of the fastest turnabouts in the company’s history. As recently as May17th, Target CEO Brian Cornell told Fortune’s “Leadership Podcast” that the company’s new Pride-themed clothing lines were “just good business decisions, and it’s the right thing for society, and it’s the great thing for our brand,” Cornell said. I wonder if he really thought that. Then yesterday, after widespread public outcry over Target’s new Pride collection of clothing for kids, and “tuckable” outfits for adults, news broke about “emergency meetings” corporate had with retail store managers, directing them to remove some of the items and move other items to the backs of the stores. Fox quoted a Target insider who said the corporation was hoping to avoid a “Bud Light situation.” The insider explained, “We were given 36 hours, told to take all of our Pride stuff, the entire section, and move it into a section that’s a third the size. From the front of the store to the back of the store, you can’t have anything on mannequins and no large signage.” And that’s not all. Users reported that the entire Satan-themed Abprallen collection was rudely deleted from Target’s website without notice. The Washington Post ran a related story yesterday, headlined “Target Removes Some LGBTQ Merchandise From Stores Ahead of June Pride Month After Threats to Workers.” Haha, threats to workers. Sure. Let’s see the police reports. The “threats” they really mean are threats to PROFITS, which the struggling retailer can’t afford right now. Anyway, of more interest is WHICH items were removed — WaPo called them “LGBTQ” items. The article wasn’t specific about which ones were removed, but I was pleasantly surprised at how accurately WaPo described the devil-worshipping Abprallen line:
It does look like the Abprallen items were the ones removed. The brand still shows up in Target’s typeahead search suggestions:  But they’re not in the catalog, not anymore:  Now, I wonder how normal gay Americans feel about the Washington Post describing these occult- and satanic themed clothing as “LGBTQ clothing.” Attention gay Americans! You really need to start getting “loud and proud,” because the Left is doing a better job of linking you guys to the Devil than the Christians are. Anyway, Target was just trying to nip this thing in the bud light. The company’s prompt corrective response would never have happened without the Budweiser boycott. Thanks, Bud drinkers who changed brands. * See also: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12116323/Target-CEO-DEFENDS-marketing-tuck-friendly-womens-swimwear.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12115573/Target-facing-boycott-Pride-collection-Satan-loving-designer.html https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2023/05/24/boycott-target-memes-take-over-twitter-amid-lgbtq-merchandise-outrage/ https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2023/05/24/boycott-target-trend-goes-viral-amid-pride-kids-merch-and-collab-with-trans-designer/ https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2023/05/24/what-is-the-meaning-of-abprallen-target-pride-designer-dismisses-satanism-claims/ https://assets.infowarsmedia.com/videos/927964a3-bdf3-4daa-b833-46647f2a4c0b.mp4 https://www.newsweek.com/walmart-lgbtq-boycott-target-pride-merch-1802394 https://nypost.com/2023/05/25/target-loses-8b-in-week-since-boycott-calls-over-pride-collection/ https://nypost.com/2023/05/23/target-partners-with-satanist-brand-for-pride-collection/ https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/target-remove-some-lbgtq-merchandise-after-facing-customer-backlash-2023-05-23/ https://rumble.com/v2pqxio-boycott-target-woke-retailer-suffers-massive-backlash-after-gay-themed-clot.html https://www.target.com/c/girls-clothing-kids/lgbt-pride/-/N-5xtwaZt4bgn https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/22/target-partnered-with-satan-supporter-who-wants-to-eradicate-critics-of-transgenderism/ https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-internal-email-to-target-employees-reveals-9-billion-in-losses-for-one-week-pivot-to-george-floyd-anniversary https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1661794171944878080 https://www.zerohedge.com/political/terrified-bud-light-situation-target-pulls-pride-month-products-certain-stores-amid HRC https://www.advocate.com/business/2022/1/27/record-842-employers-get-perfect-score-hrc-corporate-equality-index https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/organizations/human-rights-campaign-hrc/ https://www.hrc.org/resources/corporate-equality-index Launched in 2002, the HRC Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index has become a roadmap and benchmarking tool for U.S. businesses in the evolving field of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer equality in the workplace. The HRC Foundation is committed to keeping the criteria for the CEI rigorous, fair and transparent by identifying emerging best practices that improve the experiences of LGBTQ employees of participating businesses. Equally important, we are committed to providing the resources and consultation that enable each business to attain a 100 percent rating. https://www.hrc.org/resources/corporate-equality-index-criteria ______________________ Permission is hereby granted to any and all to copy and paste any entry on this page and convey it electronically along with its URL, http://www.usaapay.com/comm.html ______________________ 2023 ARCHIVE
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The Debt Schlemieling
Another deal to extend the debt limit of the U.S. government appears to have been reached. If that’s a surprise to you, then I guess you haven’t been paying attention over the years.
The farce of the “debt ceiling” is simple political theater and nothing more. For decades, cynical politicians have used the imagined “catastrophe of default” as a tool to stoke division and score political points, usually just before major elections. Both sides of The Uniparty will ultimately claim victory, allowing their partisans to rejoice while the public at large gets fleeced.
Completing the absurdity is the fact that the U.S. is now back to a “date certain debt ceiling”. This means that, going forward, there is no hard dollar debt cap. Instead, the U.S. Congress can now simply borrow and spend until January 1, 2025…with no restrictions! And why do these hypocrites do this? Because if they set the new debt limit at just $1T higher, the politicians will blow through that first $1T like crap through a goose, and then we’ll be right back at the “ceiling” by early 2024…and next year is an election year. NO WAY, NO HOW they can allow that! The peasants and sheep might actually notice just how quickly $1T gets flushed down the toilet these days. So, instead, you get this shameful date certain deal. (read more)