Comparisons can be useful to gain insight into human nature. That nature tends to make them formed or perceived as bigoted or rationalizing. Is it handwaving or is it fact based? That is one way to tell which is which. Eight Startling and Uncomfortable Ways the Democrat Party Emulates the Nazi Party (Steve McCann, American Thinker) — “An unemotional examination of the underlying philosophies and the tactics the Nazi Party used to gain and maintain power reveals not just the common impulse to weaponize the judiciary to eradicate one’s political opponents (e.g., Donald Trump) but numerous other similarities between the Nazis and the Democrat party that cannot be ignored.  Here are eight uncomfortable dimensions of that resemblance.”

Another insight is The Age of Conspiracy (Richard Fernandez, PJ Media) — “Perhaps the reason there are so many “conspiracy theories” is because individuals are seeking to explain phenomena that they find difficult to understand or accept. … It’s fair to say that the “conspiracy theories” go both ways. … Both sides are now bristling with extreme explanations.” — This is where Fernandez fails with the ‘both sides do it’ fallacy. In this, his classification — “Going forward there are likely to be three kinds of conspiracies history must deal with: 1) the cons, 2) the heresies that turn out to be wrong and 3) the heresies that turn out to be right.” — is tossed aside and he demonstrates the underlying problem, the inability to see, to face, and accept reality. There are lists of current ‘conspiracies’ that can be examined to see where they fit in his classification scheme and they can also be assigned to the sides promulgating them so see if ‘both sides do it’ really is a fair (accurate) assertion.

A more balanced and objective view of one of these conspiracies is the essay ‘Capitalism is responsible for environmental destruction and climate change’ (Rainer Zitelmann, BPR) — “Capitalist West Germany (the Federal Republic) and socialist East Germany (the GDR) make for a good comparison … Having considered the facts, many people will concede that socialism is worse for the environment than capitalism, but they are still left with reasonable doubts: Isn’t economic growth in general bad for the environment?”

“At no time in human history have planned economies been the solution to problems, but they have caused a host of problems, especially environmental problems. In contrast, capitalism with its manifold innovations has already solved so many problems, including and especially in the area of the environment. It is therefore absurd to assume that abolishing capitalism would solve the problems of climate change and environmental destruction. 

Back to the Nazi principles: The Censored Generation (Thomas Buckley, Issues & Insights) — “Incredulity. Astonishment. Disgust. Anger. – It is these feelings – amongst others – that describe the general reaction to the revelations of the Twitter Files and other egregious episodes of Big Tech censorship of the electronic public square. … But what is society to expect when those doing the censoring seem to see absolutely nothing wrong with it, that it didn’t even occur to them that what they were engaged in – often at the specific request of governmental agencies – was at all a problem?”

Other history comes in to register reality. The Iraq War: 20 Years Later (Stephen Green, PJ Media |restricted|) — “It’s never too soon to correct the historical revisionism that’s taken place on recent years” — he claims his biggest mistake was forgetting the “Iron Law of American Public Opinion” that if you’re pushing a war without a 3 or 4 year endgame, then don’t bother – no matter the merits.

On the DJT current derangement, check out Alvin Bragg’s End Run Around the Constitution – American Thinker, The Legally and Morally Flawed Case Against Trump, Donald Trump and the ‘Stormy’ Time Ahead for the Nation,  

on the banking problem via ZeroHege: How The Fed Broke The Banks (Joakim, Reason.com), Too Wrong To Fail (Thomas McArdle, The Epoch Times) 

J6 narrative busting continues. Capitol riot footage means we must ask what’s REALLY going on with Jan. 6 trials (NY Post). Some light here but it shows two grievous flaws. — “Yes, what happened that day was inexcusable. Yes, then-prez Donald Trump’s summoning and provoking of the rioters is utterly beyond the pale.” and  “House Republicans need to dig deep into these prosecutions — without falling into the error of painting the Capitol Riot as a “mostly peaceful protest.” — both of these presumptions are questionable and contrary to existing evidence but presented with authority of Truth. That illustrates the bigger problem we all face.

Many are beoming ever more cynical because they see Failing Accountability Leads to Chaos (John Green, American Thinker) — “It’s an engineering principle that systems need feedback to remain in control. … Accountability is the balancing of the ledger. It’s the checking of actual behavior against what’s required. … Unfortunately, our systems of accountability are failing us. … Our news media is intended to provide information to the public for sound decision making. Instead, it traffics in obvious falsehoods. But there is no penalty for false reporting. … Our politicians have racked up over $31 trillion of national debt. … Federal agents violate our constitutional rights with impunity. They then dodge accountability by refusing to comply with congressional oversight. … Judges reinterpret laws to suit their personal ideology. … Schools indoctrinate our children with leftist ideology. They use secrecy, lawsuits, and criminal arrest to prevent parents from knowing or protesting their actions. … Major corporations use their profits to push their ideology … Banks make questionable ESG investments (such as those by Silicon Valley Bank) with no accountability. … Criminals assault and steal from the law-abiding with impunity. They avoid accountability because liberal prosecutors consider them — not their prey — the actual victims.”

A lack of accountability will only go so far. Elections Have Consequences; Stolen Elections Have Catastrophes (J.B. Shurk, American Thinker) — “That resort to low-minded name-calling always seems like the “big tell” that they know that the people know that they’re full of it.” … “When those who run the government have no vision and those punished by the government have committed no crimes, then the blind won’t see what they’ve destroyed until it’s too late.  Trust is a tricky thing to restore.  Once it’s gone, systems just break.” — that’s why The Looming Reckoning for COVID Tyrants (William Sullivan, American Thinker) — “Many of the tyrants who promoted the COVID madness have been begging for amnesty for some time, and we should only expect that their numbers will grow as more evidence surfaces. … What we need in order to assure that outcome is something to rival the Nuremberg Trials in scope and sensationalism. … We need answers.  And we demand justice, which can only come from identifying and adequately punishing those involved.”

This is a target rich environment. January 6 Doesn’t Shine a Candle to COVID (Trevor Thomas, American Thinker) — “Following his election in 2016, what was perpetrated upon Donald Trump by the Democrats and their like-minded allies in the media, the FBI, et al. can rightly be described as the “greatest political scandal” in American history.  It was nothing short of an “attempted coup,” as Roger Kimball put it in February of 2019.” — but do they learn? House Democrats anoint ‘so-called’ member of Congress to sabotage hearings, whistleblowers (Miranda Devine, NY Post) — “Now that Democrats are in the minority in the House and unable to abuse their power as easily as they have for the last two years, they are resorting to shameless lies to sabotage oversight hearings and trash whistleblowers and other inconvenient witnesses.” — and then there’s another puzzle. Mike Pence destroys his remaining goodwill among MAGA Republicans (Rajan Laad, American Thinker) — “It’s hard to say if Pence is a useful idiot for the Democrats or if he was an establishment Republican pretending to be a MAGA Republican.”

And, on the banking slow fail process, Barney Frank busts the leftist narrative that Trump did it (Monica Showalter, American Thinker) — “Trump signed off on a 2018 bipartisan deregulation bill that exempted smaller banks with assets below $250 billion from the Dodd-Frank banking regulations that were so onerous that they were killing off smaller banks. … The facts, though, don’t seem to be stopping today’s Democrats.”

The questions center on the why. Why did J6 go down the way it did? Sundance caught something that helps to understand this. It’s about using procedure and parliamentary rules to achieve a desired result. The Parliamentary Motive Behind the J6 Fedsurrection – The Last Refuge — 

“Within the questions: the FBI and government apparatus had advanced knowledge of the scale of the J6 mall assembly yet doing nothing?  Why were the Capitol Hill police never informed of the FBI concerns?  Why didn’t House Speaker Nancy Pelosi secure the Capitol Hill complex, and why did she deny the request by President Trump to call up the national guard for security support?  Why did the FBI have agent provocateurs in the crowd, seemingly stimulating rage within a peaceful crowd to enter the Capitol building?  There have always been these nagging questions around ‘why’?

 … Those congressional floor challenges, known and anticipated well in advance of the morning of January 6, 2021, would have formed a legal and constitutional basis for ‘standing’ in judicial challenges that would have eventually reached the Supreme Court.  The certification during “emergency session” eliminated the problem for Washington DC.

… One member raises a motion (with another in waiting for his turn) those two motions were well known and advertised. These were motions to vote for a pause in the certification to examine electoral vote fraud and irregularities. I can’t speak to the veracity and substance of those motions. They were never allowed to even be floored. it was at that exact moment that the house chambers were suspended and 4 of the key members, Pence, Pelosi, Schumer and McConnell were escorted OUT right after initiating the end of the session.

Effectively, this resulted in that motion never being floored at all.  Then, when reconvened under special emergency rules, inexplicably those two motions (and perhaps more – we will never know – or will we?) were not even attempted to be motioned. That was not just peculiar to me.

It all started to make more sense when I did some study on constitutional law AND THE HISTORY of specific special authorities given to president of the congress, Pence in this case. Not only did he have the authority and power to suspend the certification, but the duty to address the motion in the same sense that it becomes vital to the debate clause.

The behavior of the Vice President has been a topic of discussion and awareness of his potential culpability and its implications keeps surfacing. As Jan. 6 Narrative Implodes, Pence Still Blames Bad Orange Man (Robert Spencer, PJ Media) — “Mike Pence is running hard to be the Mitt Romney of 2024, the controlled opposition establishment Republican nominee who will run for president and lose gracefully. Or if he somehow wins, he will do the Left’s bidding, but in a restrained, ostensibly conservative way. … For Pence to say that Trump’s criticism endangered him is to parrot a Leftist talking point that is designed to shut down all criticism of the Left. It’s irresponsible and short-sighted for Pence to aid and abet the destruction of the freedom of speech. … His new remarks are jarring and tone-deaf, but Mike Pence actually made his choice long ago.”

All of this tends to lend credence to ideas like Pathocracy and the Liberal Mind (Philip Ahlrich, American Thinker) — “Pathocracy can be defined generally as a condition of government under psychopathic domination, one in which a sufficient number of psychologically defective personalities have organized to subjugate a vulnerable and passive citizenry.  Pathocratic systems are not at all uncommon in the world’s history. … Certainly, this is evil.  There can be no agreement with its terms nor space provided for its instruction.  To tolerate evil is to give it sanctuary, but to bargain with evil is to give it legitimacy.” — and here’s and example where a well established pathology is still running rampant: Must-see TV: Mark Levin exposes ‘the scandal no one is talking about’ (Thomas Lifson, American Thinker) — “Mark exposed, with video excerpts, the appalling Jew-hatred visible in Louis Farrakhan’s February 26 “Savior’s Day” rally in Chicago.  The media have almost completely ignored the rally, which is itself a scandal.  This is a rally that Ticketmaster had no scruples, no second thoughts, about enabling (and profiting off of) by selling tickets for it online. … But Mark went beyond decrying the hate to document the shameful sucking up of the Democrats to Farrakhan. … Watch and weep for our country that this man wields so much influence in the party that commands our bureaucracy, no matter who sits in the White House.”

The propaganda machine is a critical part of this. The media sin of reporting and debating from false premises (Bookworm Room) — “My friend Nodrog sent me this righteous rant about arguments from false premises and said that I could publish it here.” — the 2020 election – Climate change – “White supremacy, gender fluidity, Jan 6th — all are reported from the standpoint that they are real.” — This may be a part of A massive but subtle sociological shift observed through the lens of a conservative mind (Olivia Murray, – American Thinker) — “when I watched the video above, something new occured to me: the likelihood that these women ever go back and watch what they’ve recorded is close to zero, if not completely. But what makes that so profound. — These means of documentation were once an art, and they were methods to capture a moment in time that was gone as soon as it happened. The byproducts of this art were family treasures, passed down through generations; they were priceless. – Now? Pictures and videos serve an entirely different purpose: they’ve largely become novelty items to score cheap virtue-signaling points and inflate one’s already exaggerated self-importance.” 

The family of pathologies includes climate paranoia. The empty suits of the climate activists (Bill Hansmann, American Thinker) — “Reviewing a half-century of “it’s going to get cold, and we did it; it’s going to get hot, and we did it; and the seas are going to rise because the polar icecaps are going to melt, and we did it,” shows just how off base these claims have been.” — This sort of irrational denial of reality leads some to notice the link back to Pathocracy. The Toxic Intersection Of Climate Alarmism And Communism – Issues & Insights — “For reasons that escape us, there is a sizable number of people across the world and across history who hate capitalism, which is nothing more than the free market at work, and want to terminate it with extreme prejudice. Too often they are the same people who believe humans are destroying their planet, that they are, as British crank David Attenborough, said “a plague on the Earth.”

A place to live? Zoning laws and artificial (woke driven) constraints plus the ‘rich slumlord’ fantasies all play a part. The Many Lies of the Housing Crisis Alarmists (Linda R. Killian, American Thinker) — “Under the rallying cry of a housing crisis in the New York metropolitan area, politicians have begun a double-barreled assault against affluent suburban communities and the owners of multi-family residential properties.  Their ideologically driven plans are based on false premises and designed to grant developers free rein over local zoning and state environmental laws.” — “Having destroyed civil society in Newark, New York City, and Hartford, these politicians are now pressing toxic interventions on the self-governing suburbs that function well on their own.  Albany, Hartford, and Trenton legislators should be focusing on reducing crime, taxes, and regulation instead of turning the successful suburbs into urban hellholes.”

Some folks aren’t happy because they think Tucker isn’t aggressive enough. Some will take what they can get as each step forward is a part of the march in the right direction. Sometimes there is nuance not well served by brute force and awkwardness. So, Tucker Carlson Defends Himself Against DC Attacks – “We are learning who the liars are”… (Sundance) — “Mr. Carlson responded again tonight to the vitriol from the apparatus of government for his airing of the January 6th CCTV tapes and the fallout from the sunlight.” — The insurrection that wasn’t, National Review, Tucker Carlson, and new video of January 6 (William Layer, BPR) — “Charles Cook (“January 6 Was at Least a Riot”) and Noah Rothman (“Tucker Carlson’s January 6 Revisionist History) writing in March 7th’s National Review Online take Tucker Carlson to task for showing newly released video of the January 6 riot and daring to disagree with the official conclusion. I’ve read both pieces and if they accuse Carlson of being disingenuous, they’re not far behind. … As the released tapes continue to unroll the truth will slowly emerge. That certain members of Congress have wanted them sequestered “to preserve democracy” proves they care little for democracy and have little respect for the judgment of American citizens.  What else are they hiding?” — Beware The Nonresponsive Response To Tucker Carlson (Chris Bray, American Greatness via ZeroHedge) — “I just realized what Tucker Carlson versus “the swamp” teaches us … When someone makes specific claims, and the responses are not specific, the response is not a response. It’s chaff, and it’s meant to cloud the air. … We didn’t do that; also, we did do that, but it was a tactic.”

There are other fronts in the denial of reality that plagues current issues. Facebook: Extending its legacy of science denial (Gregory Wrightstone, BPR) — “Facebook continues to reject any and all scientific data that does not support their “consensus” narrative of man-made catastrophic warming by rejecting an ad placed by the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. … the ad displayed publicly available data from government sources and suggested an interpretation of the information. Readers are free to dispute our analysis. However, to be denied access to it is contrary to the founding principles of the United States of America – mainly the freedom of speech and thought. … Attacks on those standing for honest scientific inquiry into climate issues have become so common that one might be inclined to shrug them off. However, the purveyors of climate doom are not likely to go away on their own as might some pesky gnats.” — Then there’s ‘reparations’ as Hinderaker explains: “Reparations for slavery is an idea that, at best, is idiotic. More often it is malicious. Why people who never owned slaves should write checks to people who never were slaves is inexplicable. But insanity has its degrees, and this one takes the cake” 

Where do these people come from? Various cults of leftism find well-groomed recruits thanks to the Girl Scouts (Olivia Murray, – American Thinker) — “The seeping infiltration of leftist ideology into hallowed and wholesome American institutions resulting in their pollution is nothing new, but as cookie season is in full swing, it’s time to remind conservatives why supporting the Girl Scouts of the USA is deeply troublesome at best. … I could go on and on, but you get the point: cute as those little girls are, and tasty as the confections might be, GSUSA is a petri dish of perversion and corruption, and they don’t deserve a dime.” — This sort of dishonesty is getting to people. Naomi Wolf apologizes to conservtives (The New Neo) — “my question is: why did she believe the narrative the left was pushing in the first place? … My answer: a mind is a difficult thing to change. Most people are resistant to change despite evidence. It takes some sort of critical mass of a certain type of evidence, and even then the majority of people will probably continue to resist it. … it is excruciatingly difficult to do what she’s doing – or beginning to do.”

The situation is not unknown. Life Among the Ruins (Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness) — “American society is facing three existential crises not unlike those that overcame the late Roman, and a millennium later, terminal Byzantine, empires. – We are suffering an epidemic of premodern barbarism. The signs unfortunately appear everywhere.”

There is deflation besides with currency. The truth tends to get out and can cause (or should cause) some embarrassment.  Another Pulitzer Prize discredited as propaganda (Monica Showalter, American Thinker) – the topic is the Vietnam false narrative and “the wickedness of America’s South Vietnamese ally and the importance of abandoning that country to the communists” — “It’s crude, rough, wartime justice, a picture of South Vietnamese Police Captain Nguy?n Ng?c Loan coldly executing Viet Cong Captain Nguy?n V?n Lém. The film is even harder to look at. … Just one problem, though: The context was missing, and that context mattered.” … “This is one sorry incident that the left got away with.  They showered their Pulitzers and watched the protests begin. One only wonders what the little kid who survived the massacre to become an admiral must have thought. Now that it’s out that he survived this psychopath, his life is living testimony to that reality.”

For more history, consider Roots of the Donbass Wars (Peter Nimitz, Nemets) — “History is a complex tapestry with many threads, and is constantly rewoven. Sometimes threads decay and disappear. Other times old threads are strengthened. Some threads are ripped out, and replaced with new threads. The shapes made on the tapestry are usually agreed upon, but the story they tell is usually disputed.” — and then there’s The Multi-Pronged Attack on Christianity (Raymond Ibrahim, American Thinker) — “All throughout Western school rooms, Greco-Roman civilization is presented as the West’s heritage, even though Christian civilization not only preserved it, but is the much more direct ancestor of the modern West.”

Ken Burns is sinking back into the muck where he is not alone. Television is making more documentaries than ever—but skipping the journalism (Danny Funt, – Columbia Journalism Review) — “this golden age of documentaries is defined, in part, by the blurring of what it even means to be a documentary. … Many of the twenty-plus industry leaders I interviewed for this story told me that conflicts of interest are now part of the cost of doing business.” —  Ken Burns Calls Ron DeSantis and Tucker Carlson ‘Huge Threat to Our Republic’ (Nick Arama, – RedState) — “He was a good filmmaker. Now he’s sold any credibility he ever had for his bias. It wasn’t a good trade.” — It’s all the Fault of Tucker and DeSantis.

Maybe this is a part of it? A lot of major Democrat donors have a couple things in common (Jack Hellner, American Thinker) – it’s lists and facts. Oh, My!

It was 1964 .. Unpopular, Polarizing, and Ineffective (Jason L. Riley, City Journal) — “Still, support for the equal treatment of blacks isn’t the same thing as support for racial quotas, statistical parity, or double standards, and lawmakers at the time made that clear. … No matter. In the aftermath of the law’s passage, this plain language would be turned on its head or ignored altogether to justify racial balancing not only in the workplace but also in higher education.” — in parallel The feminization of academia is a disaster for intellectual freedom (Andrea Widburg, American Thinker) — “I think it’s an objective fact that there’s a direct connection between the way American academia is falling off the leftist cliff (wokism, antisemitism, anti-white racism, anti-male sexism, and obsessions with transgenderism, White Privilege, critical race theory, etc.) and the rise of women in academia. While some may argue about that, there’s no doubt that women now dominate academia as both faculty and students and that they are the most fanatic members of the far left.” — 

The academic pot is simmering. Welcome to the Uncle Sam School of Law (Matthew G. Andersson, American Thinker) — “Our nation’s elite law schools otherwise want to stay elite, and equity is the new elitism. Government administrative bureaucracy is the new symbol of law school prestige, because government will accommodate the redefinition of law in personalized terms, and by personal, rather than objective values.  When that happens, there is no law, and when there is no law, the current political left can realize its fantasy of replacing law with absolute control.”

Accountability struggles. New Mexico Sued For Charging $5K To Access Public Voter Data (Victoria Marshall, Federalist) — “excessive charges are just another example of the barriers to government accountability and transparency faced by good government groups. As such, many are prevented from accessing state voter rolls.” –and also  Missouri, Florida, And West Virginia Ditch ERIC Voter Database — “ERIC doesn’t help states clean their rolls. Rather, it helps inflate them by requiring states to sent get-out-the-vote (GOTV) mailers to unregistered (and likely Democrat-leaning) residents.”

Then there’s the storm raised by the J6 video surveillance recordings.

• Tucker Carlson introduces some of the expanded January 6th footage – The New Neo
• Tucker Carlson Debunks the Democrat hoax of a deadly insurrection – American Thinker
• Tucker blows up sham J6 committee with new bombshell footage: ‘They are liars. That is conclusive.’
• YouTube Censors Tucker Carlson’s J6 Vids With Fake Fact Checks
• ‘They’re freaking out’: Kinzinger, Schumer spit fire over Tucker’s J6 footage, demand FOX stop the ‘lies’
• When it came to Tucker Carlson’s revelations about January 6, Democrats have come out swinging – American Thinker
• Panic in D.C.: Garland Tells Whopper of a Lie, Proving Why Tucker’s J6 Coverage Was So Important – RedState
• The Democrats’ strategy to dismiss the uncensored J6 videos evolves – American Thinker

There is deep dissonance. it is a gap between perception and record. The Senate minority leader exemplifies this as he is adamant about choosing who to believe – the record or the perception. What is being avoided is how the Democrats and their J6 committee has distorted the record and committed outright deceit and dishonesty. What is becoming clear is the Democrats efforts with J6 make the Salem Witch Trials look picayune.

but the hits keep coming (it seems they can’t help it)

The Georgia Grand Jury Trump Witch Hunt Project (Richard McDonough, American Thinker) — “the fact that the prosecutors would put someone like this on the jury, and that they picked other jurors who voted to make someone with her obvious prejudices and adolescent behavior the jury foreperson calls into question the integrity of the prosecutors themselves.”

“Does anybody think anymore, really think, about the consequences of this never-ending persecution of Donald Trump or is everything just an infantile partisan food fight now?

A January 6 Narrative? We Can’t Have That! (J. Hinderaker, Power Line) — “Where have they been for the last two years? Why haven’t they wanted to see the footage until now? To date, apparently, they have been happy with the isolated clips and spin provided by Nancy Pelosi. This is the hilarious part … The news organizations are saying that if more January 6 footage is released, it “risks…the legitimacy of…the various federal investigations and prosecutions of January 6 crimes.” Gosh, why might that be?” — 

Why the 2020 Election was Unverifiable (Joe Fried, American Thinker) — “Joe Biden is the legally-elected President of the United States. However, I believe he won several swing state elections that would not be certifiable if our elections were administered with credible election standards.” —

Putting The East Palestine Train Accident In Perspective (Josh BloomACHS) — here is  window through the hype and hyperbole with a bit about those diamond shaped color indicators in freight haulers there to guide first responders.

A Great Awakening Decades in the Making (J.B. Shurk, American Thinker)– “The thousands of responses to this simple question are a cornucopia of rich history, personal reflection, and insightful analysis. … What you will find is a compendium stretching all the way from before the Second World War to the present day, in which ordinary people describe jarring, face-to-face experiences with institutional corruption, malice, cover-ups, cognitively dissonant government propaganda, intimidation, sanctioned lies, and public betrayals.” — 

The election problems still fester. Scott Johnson illustrates the problem in describing the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News at Powerline by asserting a negative is proven. Lawyers should know this approach is flawed because it is why court outcomes say “not guilty” rather than “innocent.” Asserting that allegations of election fraud are false in general is asserting that a negative is proven and that is a logical fallacy. But – The Democrat War on Election Integrity Continues (David Catron, The American Spectator) — “in the late 1990s, the Democrats began pushing for a number of fundamental changes to this system. They insisted that it contained all manner of “flaws,” but the actual impetus for “reform” was their decreasing ability to win majorities in federal and state elections. … very bad news for election integrity. The combination of all-mail voting and ranked-choice voting will make the election process less transparent while rendering it unnecessarily complicated and protracted. It will increase opportunities for fraud while coercing Americans to “rank” fringe candidates they would never support under normal circumstances.” — It does appear that SCOTUS will reconsider the Brunson case (Paul Dowling, American Thinker) and this one could get interesting. — “Raland Brunson’s petition for a rehearing argues that oaths of office are binding and that, because of this fact, there has to be a penalty exacted upon each member of Congress who refused to honor his or her oath to protect the Constitution.”

On the racism propaganda front MIKE GONZALEZ: What The 1619 Project Is Really About | The Daily Caller — “One could easily argue that Hannah-Jones’s work is not journalism, historically accurate, nor very helpful to democracy. … She’s not the first person to distort history for Marxist ends. That title would probably go to Howard Zinn, and his malicious 1980 textbook” —  But not to be outdone, AMA’s ‘Racism in Medicine’ Course Is Unscientific Propaganda (Julio Gonzalez USMA president, Federalist) — “if pure propaganda were insufficient, she then engages in a series of unfathomable scientific misrepresentations” … “As Dr. Andy Borom, board member of the U.S. Medical Association, notes after learning of the AMA’s racism course, “The AMA has irretrievably left the building of physician advocacy, abandoning it in favor of radical leftist ideology. They have become a fringe organization that in no way helps physicians practice effectively.” 

Trust is an issue and the reasons why are being dissected. Did a Government Intel Asset Plant Key Evidence in Proud Boys Case? (Julie Kelly, American Greatness) — “Five members of the Proud Boys face the rare “seditious conspiracy” charge. Guilty verdicts—almost certain given the government’s near-perfect conviction rate for January 6 defendants—would build legal momentum for a similar indictment against Donald Trump. … much of the “evidence” amounts to nothing more than worthless trinkets, braggadocious group chats, and otherwise protected political speech. … It now appears that one key piece of evidence was not the work of any defendant in this case but rather written by a one-time government intelligence asset with unusual ties to both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, another group involved in January 6. … As evidence piles up to show how federal assets played an animating role before and on January 6, Armes’ weird account—and background in government intelligence—cannot be dismissed as coincidence.”

Another case where the suspect really isn’t the defense but the prosecution is GA Grand Jury Report Is Garbage Because DA Fed Them Garbage (Margot Cleveland, Federalist) — “The political targeting of Republicans was bad enough, but worse still was Willis’ blatant misrepresentation in a federal court filing about Donald Trump’s Jan. 2, 2021, telephone conversation with Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. … the grand jury’s view “that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it,” is meaningless without any context.” — Deja vu all over again – remember the Schiff rendition of the Ukraine phone call?

The result of this behavior needs some introspection by its purveyors. Constant Government Lies Spark Resistance Movements (J.B. Shurk, American Thinker) — “In the digital public square of social media, I have seen a noticeable uptick in biting memes and political cartoons calling out the U.S. government for its constant lies.”

“if we’re being honest, it should leave us with a shared understanding that the system as it exists today cannot hold.  We cannot be a nation whose rights and liberties are guaranteed by a governing constitution when lawmakers, presidents, bureaucratic agencies, and federal courts have redefined the Constitution’s plain meaning into a whole new document.  We cannot be a free people with a cherished Bill of Rights when freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, the right to self-defense, due process, and other supposedly secured rights are thrown out the window every time government agents declare a “health emergency” (especially now that “health” has been redefined to include everything under the sun, including “climate change” and “systemic racism”).  We cannot pretend to have representative government when two private corporations posing as political parties exclude most Americans from office while promoting their own lackeys.  We cannot feign to have a functioning Congress when most every member is a bought-and-paid-for stooge for some corporate special interest.  We cannot profess to be wed to “democratic” principles when millions of unelected bureaucratic agents defended by an authoritarian and secretive national security Deep State run the show.  We cannot make believe that we live with anything remotely like “free markets” when the value of the U.S. dollar continues to crumble, Congress spends more and more money it does not have, the private Federal Reserve bank of financial titans keeps printing currency, and the apologists for multinational behemoths claim that blue-collar towns across America must be destroyed in order to pay proper tribute to international treaties posing as bulwarks for “free trade.”  All these things are lies, and people of goodwill and conscience must call them out as such.

Then there’s Truth in Government (Brent Ramsey, American Thinker) — “Today telling the truth has largely disappeared from public discourse.  Let’s use basic history as an example. … liars are promoting false history for a political agenda to fundamentally change America into a totalitarian socialist state.  Lying about our history is the key to overthrowing America.  If the majority can be convinced that they are living in an evil country, worse than others and with a system that systematically harms Blacks and others, it will be easier to convince them to throw off our Constitution and replace it with socialism.” … “Lying about our history is just the start.  Whether it is the mainstream media, the social media giants, academia, Hollywood, or corporate America, these institutions lie about everything.  They lie that climate change is a mortal threat to civilization … that gun violence is out of control … about abortion involving women’s health … that the nation has secure borders … that the rich pay no taxes … about basic biology … about the police being murderous brutes”

The former president and anyone associated with him are’t the only ones under attack. First, They Came for the Confederates…. (William Sullivan, American Thinker) — “On Disney’s latest ultra-woke reboot “The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder”, the characters immediately roll into a litany of damnable lies about the history of this country.” — some good historical context is provided. An example for who is also in the line of fire is The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling (Megan Phelps-Roper, The Free Press) – you may have heard of this controversy and this article provides a good background to understand what is going on. There’s also professor Turley’s takedown in Risky Business: Government-Funded Group Targets Conservative Sites as “Riskiest Online News Outlets. — “Goodbye Disinformation Board, Hello Disinformation Index. … What is more troubling is the funding of the United States government for a group seeking to target conservative sites and deter advertisers from supporting them.”

Zuck Bucks are back! This is about the funding of nonprofits that ‘assist’ election authorities in selected districts. JASON SNEAD: The Left’s New Scheme That Threatens Free Elections (Jason Snead, The Daily Caller) — “Like a bad movie sequel, leftwing nonprofits like the Center for Tech and Civil Life (CTCL) are once again pumping millions of dollars in left-wing “dark money” into election offices across the country. Just like they did in 2020, these groups are looking for ways to skew elections and boost liberal turnout in battleground states. … the Alliance’s tactics are even more insidious than before. Using public records requests, the Honest Elections Project has revealed the Alliance as a bait-and switch operation meant to reshape election offices and thwart oversight and public accountability.”

The idea of holding people accountable for their behavior has been under assault on many fronts from prison reform to prosecutorial discretion. Libel and slander versus free speech is another field for a front in the war. The Supreme Court Is At The Heart Of America’s Racial Division (Wolf Howling, American Thinker) — “If you are trying to make sense of how our nation has become so toxic, a good starting point is the Supreme Court’s  1964 decision in New York Times v. Sullivan. That case radically altered existing law so that, for the first time in our history, it was impossible for any “public figure” to bring a successful defamation suit … What Graham has written could not be more divisive for our nation. She abandons reason and substitutes defamation posing as reasoned argument. This approach defines post-modernism. … This style utterly permeates all the victim’s studies programs in academia”

Consider a ‘squishy’ who has been making a name for herself lately by advocating an escape from accountability. GOP Congresswoman: Holding Democrats Accountable Is ‘Cancel Culture’ (Bonchie, RedState obnoxious warning) — “At a time when Republicans need to take no prisoners, this stuff (via Fox News) is incredibly frustrating. … I am begging people in politics who desperately want to be seen as above the fray, including Mace, to learn what “cancel culture” actually is. … Mace knows better and worse, I don’t even think she believes what she’s saying … Democrats never do this. They don’t constantly try to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. They play the game, and they play it well. Meanwhile, Republicans fight each other over the dumbest stuff, with some being willing to screw over the party if it means raising their profile. If you want to know why the GOP loses, that’s why they lose.”

Gun Control mania is another front in the accountability wars. As is typical, ignorance, deceit, and a lack of integrity are hallmarks of the effort. The silly argument that Asian mass murderers are assimilated Americans (Andrea Widburg, American Thinker) — “One of the defining hallmarks of leftism is that America invariably suffers compared to other cultures. … There are some countervailing facts Yang might want to consider before concluding that America’s gun culture infected these Asian killers. murders are the fault of America’s gun culture. … Back in the 1960s, leftists taunted those who showed a pro-American patriotism that expressed itself in the idea of “my country, right or wrong.” But there’s a flip side to this: Yang represents Marxist “hate-triotism,” which boils down to “my country, always wrong”—and that’s the case even when the facts fail to support his arguments.”

Another tactic goes back to 1934. The ATF’s New Pistol Brace Rule Is A Cluster Of Enforcement Traps (D. Parker, American Thinker) — “Let’s start, though, by breaking the latest horrible developments into manageable bites. … All of this harkens back 89 years ago to the National Firearms Act of 1934 (“NFA”). During its initial legislative sausage-making stages, the act was going to ban handguns. … At this point, with an administration proudly boasting about its desire to crack down on privately owned weapons, everyone should be mindful of the quote from Atlas Shrugged … Because the precedent the leftists gain by banning something ‘dangerous’ will be all too attractive to our homegrown socialists. They’re going to look around at what else they can do to make progress toward their authoritarian Utopia.”

The topic today is trust, like in “can you trust your government?” Consider REPORT: Putin Wants to Buy U.S. Weapons Left in Afghanistan — But There’s Even More (Stephen Green, PJ Media) – looks like the U.S. is providing supplies to both sides. — “The Department of Defense estimates the total value of the gear Biden left behind at a whopping $7.12 billion, and now Putin is reportedly offering to buy whatever he and the battered Russian Army need.” … “this would be more of a weapons swap than a cash deal. The Taliban would give up its Western gear in exchange for diplomatic recognition and Russian weapons. Undoubtedly, ammo, spares, and replacements for Russian equipment would be easier for the Taliban to get hold of than for the Western stuff they have now.”

The pandemic is doing its part: Deborah Birx Openly Admits to Lying About the COVID Vaccines to Manipulate the American People – RedState obnoxious warning. — “One of the strangest parts of the COVID-19 pandemic has been all of the public health “experts” who openly lied to the American people while expecting to be lauded as heroes in response. Certainly, most have witnessed Dr. Anthony Fauci’s grotesque level of arrogance over the years, with numerous examples of the good doctor admitting to lying in order to get the outcome he desired from the public. For his efforts, he’s got magazine covers and million-dollar awards.” — That’s Science? Congress Must Probe The Rationale For COVID Mask Mandates (Robert E. Moffit via RealClear Wire, |ZeroHedge) — “the subcommittee must concentrate more on “The Science” than on Dr. Fauci. Throughout the pandemic, federal officials who claim to represent “The Science” gave mixed messages. This left citizens eager to follow “The Science” frightened and confused.” … “a word of caution. A scattershot, highly inflammatory process of congressional investigation will not serve the American people well. Lawmakers should not allow themselves to transform these necessary probes into tiresome “gotcha” political theater—a powerful temptation in our polarized political environment. Rather, House and Senate investigators need to target the specific rationale for each of the major federal policy recommendations over the past three years, with a view toward forging positive legislative changes that would enable the federal government to perform better when the next pandemic hits America’s shores.” — CDC Officials Who Spread Misinformation Apologized To Source Of False Data But Not To Public: Emails (Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times, ZeroHedge) 

Election integrity cannot be left out of this parade, either. How Democrats Stole Pennsylvania in 2020 (Emerald Robinson) — “Despite Congress’s failure to act, Pennsylvania could well go down as the worst case of election theft in our country’s history.” — “These findings show a shocking disregard for accuracy in our most important democratic process, our elections. While a very small fraction of error is expected, a 37 percent anomaly rate is entirely too high. 52 percent is mind-boggling.” — Then there’s The Real Differences Between the Biden and Trump Document Troves (Victor Davis Hanson, RealClearPolitics) which provides a ten point list to consider. One should also not forget the committee selection brouhaha, which centers on dishonesty and rationalization and has the Santos epic for a distraction.

At American Thinker, integrity is the theme. The Judge Goes Awry Analyzing Gov. DeSantis’s Firing Of A Rogue Prosecutor gets into a proper decision but a wrong basis. — “It’s important to understand why “prosecutorial discretion” in the hands of leftists gravely threatens our federal and state constitutions, with the latter tracking on the former in relevant part. … When a prosecutor (who works for the Executive branch of government) refuses to enforce a law on ideological grounds—an act that defines every prosecutor who has entered office with George Soros’s support—he is effectively nullifying those laws with which he disagrees … Hinkle’s opinion evinces a level of bias and gaslighting one should never see coming from a federal judge. In a sane world, Hinkle should be impeached on the ground that he has failed to uphold and defend the Constitution.”

This one hits Nevada. Do You Trust the Integrity of Our Elections? If Not, Here Are the Steps We Must Take. The issue is about the idea of national standards for elections. — “Achieving election integrity in states like Nevada (or California, Oregon, Washington State, Colorado, etc.) will be exceedingly difficult, but some actions may be possible” — but there are some things you can do. Removing Phantoms With Technology and ‘Gentle’ Persuasion has some ideas, too. — “Before November 4, 2020, almost nobody in America looked at voter rolls — at least not anyone normal.  Now voter rolls in every state are being evaluated, line by line, by tens of thousands of concerned citizens.” — It’s about holding the state accountable. On this, Nevada Ends Qualified Immunity in Landmark Decision. — “In a landmark decision, possibly one of the most impactful in Nevada’s history, the justices upheld the long-standing legal principle that a right does not, as a practical matter, exist without any remedy for its enforcement.” — this has been a big issue in those seeking redress for election fraud as qualified immunity and no defined remedy are rationales used by judges to dismiss cases on procedural grounds.  

Murray and Herrenstein, where are you? The War on Competence (Clarice Feldman, American Thinker) — “A Massachusetts congresswoman,  Ayanna Pressley (who represents, inter alia, most of Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts), plainly revealed what is the basis for the war on intellectual achievement: “IQ is a measure of whiteness.” It isn’t, of course. It’s a combination of genetics (dare we say this?), home environment, including familial respect for achievement, personal interests and motivation, and to a certain extent, the caliber of the education received. This is not just a K-12 excrescence. For some years now it has metastasized to higher education.” — The Bell Curve (1994) was about defining intelligence and the fact that people are different individually and by many of the criteria used to identify groups in the aggregate. It is aggregate differences in groups such as defined by race or sex that stimulate some to covetousness or dissonance or greed for power. Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is a story about where society is going on this chimera of equity. 

On the media front Familiarity breeds contempt (Johnson, Power Line) — “Kerr’s story is based on photos and other information extracted from Hunter Biden’s laptop. … The story is highly reliable. By contrast, the Washington Post relies on “person[s] familiar with the matter” … The story is highly unreliable.” …  “How familiar can you get? This familiar: “Biden’s top aides were determined that the legal process would override any political moves or public messaging, not the other way around. They did not want to be seen as trying to shape the investigation’s outcome, according to people familiar with their approach.”

The Bergeron handicap is expressed in other ways as well. How the ‘vaccine lies’ will play out (Susan D. Harris, American Thinker) — “The rise of adverse reaction concern is a good and bad thing.  It’s good for obvious reasons.  It’s bad because the powers-that-be are doubling down on their push to keep the universal vaccination agenda going for as long as possible. … Ultimately, Rucker says, they can’t be allowed to perpetuate their lies.  The truth must come out now in order to stave off whatever they have planned for us next.” — The concern is blame shifting, which has been so successful. A budget battle is on the agenda so Republicans are pushing granny over the cliff and destroying Medicare. Covid shots are turning sour so it’s time to go after the ‘anti-vaccers’ and then to blame Trump. This is quite a contrast to the Lab Leak theory of the pandemic or the recent national election malfeasance where evidence actually supported what was blamed as conspiracy theories.

What’s the ruckus is often not as important as why the ruckus these days. The Media’s Embarrassing George Santos Fixation — Explained – Issues & Insights — “Unlike Santos, Biden is a person of some importance. The scandal he’s currently embroiled in doesn’t involve lying about his background – although Biden has done that repeatedly – it involves the mishandling of highly classified documents, which Biden kept in his possession for six years. … every once in a while the legacy media depraves itself in an entirely new way. The comparative way they are treating scandals involving a congressman of no importance and the leader of the free world is one such example.” — Here’s a novel idea: maybe the media should be honest and its journalists investigative (Jack Hellner, American Thinker) — “Most people pretending to be journalists are just appendages of the Democrat party, pushing the radical leftist agenda.  Facts haven’t mattered for a long time. … What a tragedy that expecting Democrats to represent their constituents (the American people) and members of the media to objectively report facts is a lot to ask of these two institutions.  But their agenda succeeds only in an emotional environment, so it’s really no surprise they’re defined by a unique aversion to truth and reality.” — Un-Scientific Un-American (A.J. Rice, BPR) — “We live in a craven time of opportunism, in which facts no longer matter and principles and truth don’t exist.” 

As for conspiracy theories that turn out to be conspiracies, period: January 6 Was an Inside Job (Albin Sadar, The Stream) — “what’s critical about the forthcoming deep-dive into the unjust, immoral, and unconstitutional jailing of hundreds of January 6 “trespassers” at the Capitol, is a look into how that event ties explicitly into what transpired in the presidential election of 2020. … in the weeks, months, and now years, of intense and thorough investigations by teams of true journalists and computer-hacking experts, and with affidavits by eye-witnesses to massive fraud, the proof of the obvious backs up the truth of the steal. … America must get to the bottom of the misdirection created by the Left about January 6, 2021.” — More revelations about Biden’s mishandling of classified and top-secret documents (Rajan Laad, American Thinker) — “the Washington Post reported on how Biden’s lawyers, the White House, and the Department of Justice colluded to hide vital information from the public. – Since the WaPo is a Democrat mouthpiece, there was abundant spin. … Despite a potential national security threat, all involved were more concerned about managing public perception. … The House Oversight Committee must investigate the mishandling, and the subsequent coverup and monitor the progress of the special counsel.”

Then there’s the behavior. Good-Faith Reading vs. Adversarial Reading – Cafe Hayek – “When someone who has engaged in a thorough good faith reading of author A encounters someone who has engaged in an adversarial reading of author A, it can be quite disorienting. What’s more, to a debate audience the adversarial reader can often sound better informed about A’s views than the good faith reader (hence why so many people choose adversarial reading). But in the end, adversarial reading is just a shallow word game and is the antithesis of genuine scholarship. It mistakes cleverness for knowledge and wit for wisdom.” — To see this, read A Critical Examination of the Six Pillars of Climate Change Despair (Doug R Rogers, Watts Up With That?) — “Why does CC have such deeply negative connotations and harmful effects on people’s mental well being? Because we are constantly reminded of the six dark and destructive consequences of CC:” … ” The activists do it because they think they are saving the planet; the media do it because bad news gets more clicks than good news. Plus, they both do it to appear virtuous. They both keep ramping up the rhetoric so that with each passing year the predictions about each of these consequences become even more frightening and apocalyptic.” … “But is it in any way justified?  What is the truth (if any) behind these catastrophic predictions? That’s what I want to examine here. The fact is, every one of these pillars is made of sand, and crumbles apart when subjected to the slightest critical scrutiny.”

It’s Home Cooking (Doomberg) — “This “research” is little more than flimsy propaganda. The entire episode – from how the research was conducted, where it was published, and how the media’s fear machine was kicked into overdrive – is a quintessential example of all that is wrong with the modern academia-media-government complex, a behemoth where actual science is rarely practiced but the word itself is cynically abused in the name of raw politics.” — that’a about the rationale for banning gas stoves. It is a part of a larger phenomenon. Why Deception Is Essential to the Left (Steven Hayward, Power Line) — “the language police and the gas stove-grabbers will be back, you can be assured. The left never accepts defeat. But it also knows it must conceal and deceive to get what it wants, because it knows it does not have the support of the American people. ” — Ateven likes pictures! Another of the questionable research efforts is described as Good data showing why the mRNA shots may seem to work even if they don’t (Alex Berenson) — “Just a reminder that the only truly bias-free data comes from large, properly run randomized clinical trials matching a control group and a treatment group. We had those for Covid, but the vaccine companies ruined them in early 2021 (with government approval). Now we have lots of questions – and death rates that remain far above normal.” — but back to Stanford and what they do when the ‘research’ doesn’t fit in the comfort zone. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya Blasts Stanford University’s Shameful Attempts to Silence Him on COVID (RedState may not like you to see this)

Same thing, different theater: A classified document found in a garage is no accident, it is a crime (Mark Hewitt, American Thinker) — “People are missing the point and the media are purposely distorting the facts about the discovery of classified documents in Joe Biden’s possession. The unsecured classified documents found in Biden’s garage is not only a crime scene, it is evidence of espionage.” — The FBI Pulls Out the Hillary Clinton Playbook in Dealing With Joe Biden’s Classified Documents Scandal (RedState may not like you to see this, either) which is condoned as Most of the media don’t mind a president who rules like a dictator, so long as he is a leftist (Jack Hellner, American Thinker) — “We didn’t see the media call him a dictator or talk about abuse of power, and separation of duties, so Joe got away with it. … The American media is far more guilty in interfering in our elections than Russia, China, or any other country.” — Others are raising questions the media should be after. The Unclassified Docs Biden’s Lawyers Were Searching May Be The Key To The Real Scandal (William A. Jacobson, Legal Insurrection) — “The classified documents may be a distraction, stumbled upon inadvertently as part of a search to grab unclassified evidence of Biden scandals before Republican-led House committees issued subpoenas to the Biden Center.” – Then there’s Turley on Fox: Hunter Biden laptop-denier now admits emails are real. Don’t let him get away with it but you might need to wait untill he re-posts it on substack to read it.

Strange behavior is being noted. The Manic Methods of Mad Democrats (Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness) — “it is the Democratic Party that has far more radically changed. It is descended into a woke, neo-socialist, radically green party.” — election warping, projection, suppression, rules changes, asymmetries, — “Conservatives should be aware that they are not dealing with the party of JFK and LBJ. The Democratic Party has nothing in common with the agendas of a slick Bill Clinton and is well beyond the “fundamental transformations” of arch-narcissist Barack Obama.” — Besides this catalog of behaviors, here are observations of one recent leader. The Dignity of the House of Representatives (Robert Merz, American Thinker) — “There is so much material to work with here that it’s hard to know where to start.” — “First, of course the fight for the speakership wouldn’t have happened under Pelosi.  It wouldn’t have happened under Stalin, Hitler, or Mao, either.  As my dad said about the Democrat party, the Bolsheviks never break ranks (or they’re never allowed to).  For instance, a recent report says that less than 40 percent of Democrats approve of the Democrats’ new House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries — but ordinary Democrats are never asked for their opinions.”

The tie in with the deep state illustrates that the behavior is knowing and willful. Fmr. intel chief admits they all knew key parts of Hunter laptop were ‘real’, but signed ‘disinfo’ letter anyway (Terresa Monroe-Hamilton, Business & Politics) — “Wise told The Australian, “All of us figured that a significant portion of that content had to be real to make any Russian disinformation credible.”- The intel officer also claimed that he was “not surprised” that the laptop was authenticated. … Intelligence officials coming out more than two years after the letter was signed and claiming that they knew all along that a significant portion of the laptop information was real, reeks of damage control on their part.” — And also Elon Highlights ‘Concerning’ Process to Destroy Secret Instructions from FBI to Twitter (Nick Arama, RedState) — “first of all, it was a violation of the First Amendment if they were pushing censorship, but on top of that, they weren’t even being transparent about it … it’s almost like the cover-up part of this crime.”

The Biden lawyers role raises questions. All The President’s Men: Biden’s Use of Lawyers Raises Additional Concerns Over Handling Classified Material – JONATHAN TURLEY — “Not only did President Joe Biden enlist lawyers to clear out his private Washington office; he then used them — rather than security officers or the FBI — to search for additional classified documents. … why was a legal team sent in six years after Biden took the documents on leaving as vice president? Were the lawyers specifically selected because they had clearances, an acknowledgment there might be classified material unlawfully housed in the office? … It remains unclear which lawyers were involved in which discoveries, whether they had clearances and (if so) at what level. In fact, it seems to suggest Biden continued to use uncleared lawyers after his team found highly classified documents … That itself could be viewed as gross mishandling of classified information … The answer appears the same as in the case of Hillary Clinton’s emails: control.”

Then there is Trump. Was the Mar-a-Lago Raid a Biden Insurance Policy? (David Catron,The American Spectator) — “it is difficult to believe that the timing was apolitical. There is another question about the timing, however, that no one seems to have asked: Why were classified documents that had been in Biden’s possession since 2017 suddenly found less than 90 days after the FBI raid on former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound? … it’s probable that the Mar-a-Lago raid was just a preemptive exercise in damage control designed to make “Car-a-Lago” appear more innocuous than it really is. … As to the special counsels assigned to each case, it couldn’t be more obvious that Jack Smith and Robert Hur are insurance agents.” — BUT — Nolte: Unlike Trump’s, Biden’s Classified Document Scandal Is Real. So Donald Trump Bashes Special Counsel Jack Smith as ‘Trump Hating THUG’ supplying a lot of background resume to support his claim. That gets into Republicans Are Investigating Corruption, Not Hunter Biden (Margot Cleveland, Federalist) — “While the media frame the planned investigations as Republicans targeting Hunter Biden to taint his father, this burgeoning narrative ignores the reality of the situation — and the evidence. … The matters meriting investigation are many and complicated”

For similar insanity on other issues, see SF Reparations Committee proposal demonstrates the greed and unreality behind demands for slavery reparations (Thomas Lifson, American Thinker) or About those overcounted COVID-19 deaths… (Jack Hellner, American Thinker) — “The media, especially the social media, say they are very strict about reporting misinformation but that is a lie. -They willingly repeat talking points to push agenda, whether it is about Russian collusion, climate change, or COVID without asking questions when they are pushing an agenda. They are essentially propagandists. … Now they’ve changed their story.” — next is Too Wet? Too Dry? It’s All Climate Change! (Brian C. Joondeph, American Thinker) — “It is amazing that before humans burned fossil fuels two centuries ago, it was only natural cycles that changed the climate, not backyard barbecues, gas stoves, and SUVs. … Democrats, the left, and the media have an uncanny ability to balance two contradictory propositions in their minds, believing both can occur simultaneously due to the same cause … Is this really about “saving the planet” or is the climate movement about money and control, similar to the COVID pandemic, the new homes of communism and tyranny?”

so much.

There are consequences when we do not heed the caution signals. Wind, Wolves, and Wrath (Deanna Chadwell, American Thinker) — “Many of us don’t even seem to realize that we’re heading toward a bridge that collapsed ages ago. We have taken ten wrong turns…” – “We are, in fact, lost on a vast plain of wind, wolves, and wrath. Circumstances — i.e. flood, and storm, and economic disaster will go a long ways in correcting our confusions. But each of these silly assumptions will have to be corrected before we are once again America the Beautiful.”

Sundance was curious. UPDATE – So, You Did Not Take the COVID-19 Shot, Why Not? – The Last Refuge — “the responses have reasserted my belief in the scale of our national assembly.  There are far more of us, ordinary, hardworking, commonsense, pragmatic and smart people, than the self-described intellectual elites would ever admit.” — for this one, scan the comments with answers to the question. For many, the numbers just didn’t add up. 

 Then there’s the lies. Some focus on Trump as a liar but the need is to focus on lies of consequence and that leads to the current collection. Start with Gaslighting the Republicans (Greg Irwin, American Thinker) — “Denver Riggleman, who most recently worked for the January 6 select committee analyzing the message traffic that led up to the rush into the Capitol, has written a book treating the matter as an attempted coup.” — it’s a catalog of deceit, dishonesty, and dellusion that has consequence — “Our country is increasingly insane, and we on the right can’t afford the sloppy thinking that characterizes the left.   The problems we face are serious enough.”

From here, there is For Biden Supporters, No Lie Is Too Much To Break The Faith (Jeff M. Lewis, American Thinker). Who is getting gas-lit? –“Through it all, media members and other Biden supporters keep getting played for fools, but they always come back for more.” … “dumbfounding is that these people can be relied upon to rush to any Democrat party official’s or politician’s defense, no matter the charge, without fail. It can be scientifically established as consistent, predictable, repeatable behavior.” — There is a strain. The Corvette Files (Clarice Feldman, American Thinker) — “For Merrick Garland, who oversees the FBI, the discoveries were not a joke. He’s now in the crosshairs of those who, like me, think we are once again seeing a double standard of justice on his watch.” … “Garland, Wray, and the national archivist are not the only ones squirming right now. Don Surber masterfully establishes on the record the two-step the major media is dancing right now, comparing how they viewed the many fruitless investigations and charges against Trump and how they are reporting the planned investigations of Biden”

Those who think the numbers didn’t add up are now finding better numbers that tend to confirm their skepticism. Riggleman may never figure things out but he now has a book that is demonstrably fiction. The top secrets document fiasco is telling the truth about a politically corrupt DOJ. Other issues like election integrity and climate alarmism continue to reveal the difference between many claims and reality. People are suffering the consequences, the wind, the wolves, and the wrath, and becoming aware that sitting passive is no longer a viable option.

Things are popping. In Arizona, the appeals court is looking to expedite the election fraud appeal. The latest classified documents scandal is registering. The pandemic panic is being revealed.

And now there is What The January 6 Videos Will Show (Julie Kelly via AmGreatness at ZeroHedge) — “one of the government’s own witnesses confirmed under defense cross-examination that “agents provocateur” were heavily involved in instigating the events of January 6. ,,,It was a stunning admission, representing the first time a top law enforcement official stated under oath (to my knowledge) that a coordinated, experienced group of agitators engaged in much of the mischief early that day.” … “The recordings, Gaetz said in an interview this week, “would give more full context to that day rather than the cherry-picked moments that the January 6 committee tried to use to inflame and further divide our country.” … “More importantly, the footage will indicate which cameras were disabled before the protest.”

“Not only is it necessary to expose the truth of January 6 but to exonerate innocent Americans whose lives have been destroyed in the aftermath.

The reason given for withholding the video is security. –“Thomas DiBiase, general counsel for Capitol police, the technical owner of the video trove, signed an affidavit in March 2021 objecting to the widespread dissemination of footage “related to the attempted insurrection.” DiBiase claimed the agency wanted to prevent “those who might wish to attack the Capitol again” from accessing interior views of the building. – The Department of Justice subsequently labeled the footage as “highly sensitive government material” subject to strict protective orders in court proceedings.”

Security is a ‘go to’ excuse for avoidance of transparency. This is seen from boarding up windows at election centers to censoring video. The Freedom of Information Act requests have been one avenue to find out what is being swept under the rug as well as revelations such as the Biden laptop and the current Twitter document release. It is one of several tools being used to avoid culpability. The Arizona case provides an example of another: denial. The problem with trying to deny reality is that when it catches up with you it can be merciless.

Normality seems lost. What Caused the Political Hysteria? (Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness) — “the Republicans retaking control of  the House of Representatives once again raises the question whether they should reply in kind.” — “Somehow supposedly worldly and sophisticated partisans in their self-righteousness ignored ancient laws of what goes around comes around, of Karma, of Nemesis, of payback’s a bit—h, and all that stuff.” — First They Came For My Showerhead And I Did Nothing, Then They Came For My Light Bulbs And I Did Nothing, Now They Want My Gas Stove And …. (I & I Editorial Board) — “In recent decades, regulators have wormed their way into every corner of our lives – banning some products, ruining others, and pricing others out of reach of working families – all allegedly for our benefit. The only thing that’s surprising is that they hadn’t targeted gas stoves earlier.” — “this is junk science, pure and simple. Yet, instead of attacking this flagrant display of misinformation, the ignoramuses in the mainstream press are all too happy to amplify it.” Other stories report that 9 states have now passed firearms restrictions in a knee-jerk ‘up yours’ to SCOTUS and the U.S. Constitution. The Left seems to be hung up on bans for the common man.

“f you don’t like the idea of the government banning something incredibly useful, efficient, and safe when used properly, hoping for the best isn’t enough.

Taking back control over our lives and regaining the ability to make choices about the products and services we buy will require taking an ax to the regulatory state. It will require the public putting unrelenting pressure on Congress to take back the unlimited power it’s been handing unelected bureaucrats.

Until that happens, nothing in your home will be safe from the regulatory Leviathan.

Then there’s the latest where the reporting is on a par with the scandal at issue. Shameless media immediately make excuses for Biden’s mishandled classified documents (Richard McDonough, American Thinker) — “Quite surprisingly (or maybe not), the reaction to this from just about everybody in what passes for our “news” media was completely different from the reaction to Trump’s classified and top-secret documents at his guarded compound in Mar-a-Lago” — a catalog of excuses is presented and debunked. Is this really the strategy Biden wants to use to explain the ‘classified documents’ fiasco? (Maker S. Mark, American Thinker) — “The focus and framing, the talking points, has been that Biden did not know that the documents were there, the lawyers did the right thing in calling the national records group to retrieve the records, and he is not asking what’s there on advice from his lawyers. – IMO, this framing is being done to mask the real issues here.  Let me summarize” — “The spin makes it seem as though Biden does not take possessing, handling, or storing classified documents seriously.” 

The smell from the election lingers: ¡No Pasarán!: 2020: an almost totalitarian effort by the national political and social media to suppress and ridicule any doubt of the accuracy of the election result — this one goes after Peggy Noonan expressing TDS at the WSJ. — “he real problem for Noonan is that she begins to realize Trump’s support is not fading; the Republican Party is his party now, and she and the other NeverTrumpers have lost everything: they were useful idiots for the Democrats and must now wear their responsibility for the probably dishonest election of the most incompetent administration in American history.”

Another issue, same old story: Climate change: What’s in a word? (Harold A. Elkins, American Thinker) — “First and foremost, words, written or spoken, are symbols with meanings.  Sometimes that meaning is skillfully or nefariously crafted.” — ozone holes and warming provide examples. A contrast is provided by explaining why It’s absurd to think carbon dioxide and methane are our enemies (Douglas J. Cotton, American Thinker) — “It is truly a sad reflection on education in the last few decades that so many politicians, academics, and even research scientists have been utterly fooled by what is nothing but fictitious, fiddled physics supposedly proving that water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane can, because of their radiating properties, raise the global mean surface temperature.” But it’s what they want and what thehy don’t want it to be called to think about it. 

Denier is diversion. Conspiracy Fact: Something Was Seriously Wrong With the 2020 Election (Tom Gilson, The Stream) — “Was it stolen? I don’t know. Is there room to wonder about it? Absolutely yes. Is there something seriously wrong about the lack of any serious investigation? Definitely. There’s corruption going on so plainly and out in the open, you can ask your brother-in-law across the table to pull it up on his cell phone, and he’ll have the proof right there in his own hands. – You must aim for the right objective in this discussion, though.” — “Remember: You don’t need to prove the election was stolen. You only need to show them there’s something wrong with anyone who doesn’t see the problems. Or doesn’t think it matters. Or doesn’t care.”

1. If they call you an “election-denier,” show them it’s an empty label, a self-serving rhetorical trick.
2. If they say it was crazy to question the election in the first place, you can show it was more sensible than not questioning.
3. You can show that the whole business of telling “election-deniers” to shut up is corrupt and a threat to democracy.

It seems the grandmothers have an outsized role in the 1/6 outrage. Ashli Babbitt murdered, mother arrested, U.S. now a police state (Eric Utter, American Thinker) — “Witthoeft was part of a small group peacefully protesting Ashli’s death while walking down the side of a street. Police claim they were blocking traffic.” — “This is beyond disgusting, beyond repulsive, beyond sickening. It is sheer in-your-face evil, the state bludgeoning those it rules over because it can—and desires to intimidate anyone thinking of disobeying it in the future. Killing a petite, unarmed, female veteran? That’s okay if she was a Trump supporter and you are protecting the establishment. Guilty of “wrong-think?” Then you must pay the price.”

Well. Here’s another example. Trump says something reasonable – that taking an absolute and fanatical binary position is not a good way to sell a point of view – and the usual suspects go bonkers. The headline claims are that he flip-flops his position or that he abandons his based or downhill from there. American Thinker has two essays about this phenomenon. Trump pokes a hornet’s nest with comment on abortion and midterm results (Rajan Laad) — “The knee-jerk reaction is that Trump was attacking his pro-life base.” — “The GOP certainly failed in countering the media narrative and delivering a coherent message on abortion. They failed to expose the Democrat position which isn’t pro-choice but pro-abortion. They failed to reveal that most blue states have unrestricted abortions on demand until the point of birth.” — Trump’s statement on abortions was wise, effective, and prudent (Monica Showalter) — “According to Newsweek, this passsage from Trump’s post-midterm statement “proved” that Trump had done an about-face” … “Trump was basically going where the American people are going, which is for some restrictions on abortion at this point, but not an immediate full-scale ban at one swoop, when the voters aren’t ready for it.”

This is about principle versus reality and growth of an idea. Principles Are A Grand Thing – A Guest Post – by John Ringo – According To Hoyt but — “I’m going to use Dien Bien Phu as an example” — “The Left has been ‘boiling the frog’ for a long time and it has mostly been by weaponizing empathy around ‘cultural issues.’ The Dems have always been win/lose against Republicans but the Left has taken over every major cultural high ground. Academia. Media. Entertainment. Now major corporations.” — “The PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! crowd has been a Conservative Surrender Chorus for as long as I can remember.” — In light of his view, consider America’s Persecuted Political Prisoners (Jeff Crouere, Townhall)) — “The conditions in these prisons are so horrific that 34 January 6th (J6) prisoners asked for a transfer to the military terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay” — “The harsh treatment of the J6 prisoners is in sharp contrast to the rioters who burned and looted in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd” — “The unrelenting abuse of President Trump by his enemies is obvious.” — principles have a low priority on the Left where identification and destruction of the enemy always comes first.

Then there’s the The Baleful Cargo of Woke Diversity Worship (Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness). — “What do all our notable fabricators—George Santos, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Barack Obama—have in common? — Well, quite like the Ward ChurchilIs or Rachel Dolezals of the world, one way or another, they lied about their identities. Or they sought fraudulent ways of suggesting their ancestries were marginalized. Or they had claims on being victims on the theory their constructed personas brought career advantages.” — “There are warning signs all around us of our fate to come if we do not stop this nihilism” — “The old 1970s cynical canard that racial quotas would not extend to pilot training or neurosurgery is no longer true.” — “We forget that what once separated the Western world from the rest was not race, climate, or natural bounty, but its gradual creation of meritocracies replacing the pre-civilizational rule of the clan, the tribe, or the race.” — “we are headed, dangerously so, into an historically ugly, hateful, and volatile place—all the more so because we lie that it is utopian when it is pre-civilizational and reactionary.”