Witch-Hunt Continues

Pelosi and the Democrats are conducting their own ruthless form of McCarthyism against Trump and his followers.
Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony Branco

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Deficit will hit $3.6 Trillion in Fiscal Year 2021 as $7.27 Trillion of the National Debt will come Due in the Next Year Alone

by Robert Romano: The annual budget deficit has already hit $1.9 trillion and counting for the fiscal year that will end in September, according to the U.S. Treasury’s April statement, and it will reach as high as $3.6 trillion this year, says the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Comparatively, in 2020, the deficit totaled about $3.1 trillion for the entire year.

This comes amid the massive government spending in response to the Covid pandemic, including the $2.2 trillion CARES Act in March 2020, the $900 billion phase four legislation in Dec. 2020 and then President Joe Biden’s additional $1.9 trillion Covid stimulus bill in March 2020. Another $2.1 trillion infrastructure plan is in the works. And now, Biden is offering his $6 trillion budget, which will blow another $1.8 trillion hole in the deficit in 2022.

As a result, 33 percent of marketable national debt, or about $7.27 trillion of the $22 trillion of publicly held debt, will be coming due within the next year, according to the latest data by the U.S. Treasury. For perspective, that’s more debt than existed as recently as 2003.

During the Covid pandemic and ensuing recession, the U.S. Treasury temporarily increased shorter term bond issues from about 28 percent of the total debt to 33 percent as interest rates collapsed.

This occurred as overall interest rates collapsed and the Federal Reserve renewed quantitative easing, where of the more than $4.95 trillion of new debt since Jan. 2020, $2.7 trillion of it was purchased by the Fed and counting as it keeps buying $80 billion of treasuries a month, plus $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities.

The rest of new debt was purchased by U.S. financial institutions. Interestingly, foreign-held U.S. treasuries has barely budged during the Covid pandemic. In Jan. 2020, $7.027 trillion was held by foreigners including central banks, according to the Treasury. In March 2021, it is $7.028 trillion. Meaning, foreigners are not buying, but they’re not selling, either.

The years prior, during the Obama-Bernanke years and the last round of quantitative easing, and also during the Trump years, the Treasury was switching to longer-term bonds to lock in the lower interest rates that came in the wake of the Great Recession.

$7.27 trillion of the debt coming due in a year probably sounds like a lot, but in reality, 33 percent of the total debt coming due is certainly not unprecedented.

In fact, the amount of short-term paper held today is generally much lower than in the past. In the early 1980s, for example, when interest rates were in the double digits, nearly 50 percent of all treasuries were less than a year long, precisely to save taxpayers the cost of crushing interest costs at the time.

Meaning, because of the foresight of the prior two administrations to lock in lower long term interest rates, those longer term interest rates will likely continue to remain stable, and may even drop some more as quantitative easing wears on and the current bout of mini-flation gets past the Texas freeze and east coast pipeline price shocks.

The main driver behind the current short-term paper binge, of course, is the Federal Reserve itself. As the Fed restarted quantitative easing, the interest rate on 3-month treasuries for example dropped from 1.5 percent in Jan. 2020 to 0.09 percent by April 2020.

To give you an idea of how the Fed’s quantitative easing controls interest costs, just look at what happened beginning in 2016 when the central bank began hiking its short-term lending rate. After holding net interest owed on the debt (gross interest minus interest paid into the Social Security and Medicare trust funds) to about $220 billion from 2011 to 2015, in 2016 it rose to $240 billion, $262 billion in 2017, $324 billion in 2018 and $375 billion in 2019. In 2020, once the Fed went back to zero percent on its policy rate and renewed quantitative easing, net interest payments dropped to $345 billion, according to the latest data from OMB.

But with quantitative easing full speed ahead, what could happen is as the amount of short-term paper begins getting recycled into longer term paper — a process that has already begun — sales of 5-year bills, 10-year bills, etc. will gradually increase, which could temporarily cause rates to decrease. In the Great Recession, interest rates would continue collapsing through 2012 amid the Fed’s quantitative easing.

This is because of the inverse relationship between interest rates and demand for treasuries. The greater the demand, the lower the interest rate. And the Fed is doing a lot to artificially boost demand.

Consider, before Covid, 10-year treasuries were going for 1.8 percent in Jan. 2020. Then during the recession, they dropped close to 0.5 percent in July 2020, and have recovered back to about 1.6 percent as of this writing. They’re lower than before the pandemic started. If we were about to expect a massive inflation crunch, you’d expect to see interest rates going much higher. They may yet, but so far, it hasn’t happened yet.

What this means is that, despite the record amounts of debt, the Treasury and Federal Reserve do not appear to have any trouble financing the debt at the moment. They’re only expecting foreigners to maintain and refinance their existing holdings, which so far is occurring. And then via lending to U.S. banks, they fill in whatever the Fed is not buying. Unfortunately for fiscal hawks, the easy money from the Fed will only likely encourage more spending binges, including Biden’s $6 trillion behemoth budget, from the Democratic-controlled Congress.
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Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.

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Tags: Robert Romano, Americans for Limited Government, Deficit, $3.6 Trillion in Fiscal Year 2021, $7.27 Trillion of the National Debt, will come Due, Next Year Alone To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

The Last Best Hope

Judd Garrett

by Judd Garrett: There is a lot of talk about privilege these days. There is “white privilege”, “male privilege”, “hetero-sexual privilege”, “socio-economic privilege”, “able-bodied privilege” and the list goes on and on. The definitions and validity of these categories of privileges are imprecise at best, and spurious at worst. Much of this talk around privilege has to do with “unearned privilege”. Proponents of classifying everything as privilege argue that “privilege isn’t about what you’ve gone through; it’s about what you haven’t had to go through” to get what you have.

Vice President Kamala Harris recently tweeted about Memorial Day saying, “enjoy the long weekend.” There is a reason why we have Memorial Day, and it is not so we can have a three-day weekend, or we can barbecue in our backyards. No, Memorial Day is exactly what its name means, to memorialize the men and women who fought and laid down their lives for our country, for our Constitution, for our rights, for our freedom, for our privilege to live in the United States.

That privilege of being an American, to many of us, is one of the greatest unearned privileges of all, not only because it bestows the greatest benefits, but because of what we did not have to go through to receive it. Most of us who will be enjoying our three-day weekend, and barbecuing in our backyards with the full rights and freedoms ensured by our Constitution did not fight at Valley Forge, or Gettysburg, or Belleau Wood. We didn’t storm the beaches at Normandy, or lay down our lives in Korengal Valley in Afghanistan.

Most of us were handed the privilege to live in the greatest country in the world has ever known because of others were willing to bleed and die for our privilege. The least we can do is acknowledge the sacrifice of the brave men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice so we could have the ultimate unearned privilege. But we should also be inspired by their courage and love of country to stand up, at least with our voices, and denounce the insidious infiltration of the far-left totalitarianism bent on destroying the United States. We can do at least that, and it starts with acknowledging the great gift that this country is, and showing appreciation to those who gave everything so we could have it.

Kamala Harris refuses to acknowledge her unearned privilege of living in the United States, and because of that, she is more than willing to allow the destruction the very country that spawns the greatest privilege of all by destroying our Constitution and corrupting our system of democracy to ensure her perverse power falsely believing that she is the one fighting the good fight because she refuses to acknowledge those who already have.

So Memorial Day is not solely about recognizing the sacrifice of the men and women who laid down their lives to create and defend this great country, but is also an acknowledgment of how great our country is because when we do, we will be that much more willing to defend it against the unending existential threats, foreign and domestic, designed to destroy it. And how we fight these battles will determine whether “we shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”
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Judd Garrett writes for Objectivity is the Objective. His most recent non-writing job was as Director of Advanced Scouting with the Dallas Cowboys. He is a frequent contributor on the topics of sports and politics to Real Clear Politics.

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The New Regressive Dark Ages

Arrogance, wealth, and received authority are always the super-spreaders and force-multipliers of false knowledge, and none more so than in the present age.

Victor Davis Hanson

by Victor Davis Hanson: Once upon a time long ago, we agreed there were certain immutable laws of human nature. These laws were based on facts, reality, and data.

In other words, we accepted common sense about the way the world worked according to logical and even “scientific” principles. That assumption defined us as “enlightened” rather than Dark Age reductionists and ideological- or myth-driven zealots.

Not now. “Progressives,” especially the media, are most often regressive, anti-Enlightenment, and intolerant people, who start with a deductive premise and then make the evidence conform to it—or else.

Regressives
For example, we used to believe that if the government printed more money without commensurate sudden rises in population or economic output, inflation followed. And money cheapened in value all the more so if the government simultaneously both incentivized labor non-participation through over generous entitlements, and promised or enacted higher taxes and more regulations. The latter inevitably would discourage production as demand from a stimulated economy rose.

In 100 days, we’ve either done all of those things or, at least sent messages to producers that we shall do so shortly. Why then are we surprised that monthly consumer prices are spiking after nearly 20 years of very low inflation? Why are our essentials such as lumber, gasoline, housing, appliances, and food skyrocketing? Is the current idea that there is no science of economics? Or is inflation good by “spreading the wealth” through decreasing the value of money for those who have too much of it?

Deterrence is also an ancient law. Humans make instant cost-benefit analyses and act accordingly—from nation states that weigh the advisability of war to potential criminals who gauge the chances of their arrest and punishment.

In deterrent terms along the border, what happens if the United States signals Latin America and Mexico that it will cease construction on an effective border wall, promise in advance blanket amnesties, reinstate “catch and release” rules, stop prior efforts to recalibrate easy “refugee status,” and pull back from detaining unlawful border crossers? Logically, would not potential illegal immigrants believe that the rewards of U.S. healthcare, safety, housing subsidies, entitlement support, education, and even affirmative action outweigh the increasing unlikelihood of meeting resistance at the border—or any later consequences for residing illegally in the United States?

The result is now true “chaos” at the border. Tens of thousands of unvetted immigrants illegally stream into the United States, in a fashion that is not diverse, not legal, not meritocratic, and not measured—the old foundations of rapid melting-pot assimilation.

Did the Biden Administration simply by fiat declare that such obvious human laws did not apply to their superior moral impulses? Or did it deliberately violate them to change the demography of the American southwest in ways that eventually will benefit the hard Left? Likewise, could it be that rising crime is due to efforts to defund or cut back police forces, or allowing criminals to be freed without bail, or district attorneys not prosecuting crimes deemed matters of social justice.

Nation-states, like people, acknowledge the laws of deterrence. Signal to the Middle East that crippling sanctions against Iran are ending. Assure the world that the United States will be cutting back on domestic fossil fuel development and thus inevitably will become more dependent on others who produce “dirty” oil and gas. Assume that America now trusts Iranian negotiators and thus will reenter the Iran nuclear deal. Attest that the Palestinians are again front and center in all Middle East diplomacy. Act as if Israel no longer enjoys the full support of the United States, as money pours into Palestinian coffers without audit. Deride the Abraham Accords. And, finally, treat Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas as if they are the Middle East intersectional counterparts to marginalized people of color in the United States (Israel playing Derek Chauvin to Hamas’s George Floyd). Is not all that logic assurance that there would be a war within 100 days?

Surely, even the woke Biden Administration knows something about deterrence. So was it naïve—or simply “leveling the playfield” to ensure Shiites and Persians were affirmed to receive their “fair share” of Middle East respect and influence, while Israel and the Gulf States surrendered their unearned privilege?

The War Against Science and Logic
To violate natural laws requires mocking empiricism, science, and data, or at least reducing them to irrelevance—for political, careerist, or ideological agendas.

Take the now infamous and pseudo-scientific “Steele dossier” and the “Russian collusion” mythography. From 2016 to 2018 Christopher Steele’s high school-like, jargon-filled, mish-mash folder was cited as near scientific “proof” of Trump’s perversions, treason, and various corruptions.

Steele, we were told, was a Russian “expert.” He was a “seasoned” British intelligence officer, albeit “retired,” with access to impeccable (though anonymous) sources.

CNN and MSNBC wheeled out all sorts of former FBI and CIA “professionals”—headed by ex-CIA chief John Brennan, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, both previously known for admitting to lying to Congress under oath.

All our experts periodically “confirmed” Steele’s impeccable “credentials.” And then suddenly, 22 months after Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was jump started in part by a leaked “dossier,” it folded. There was no evidence of actionable “collusion.” Abruptly, “expert” spy Christopher Steele offered no sources to substantiate his “data” or “revelations.” The cable news heartthrob quietly was reduced to the status of Ponzi-schemer Bernie Madoff. There were no more media “bombshells” and “walls are closing in” Steele dossier revelations.

Mueller, the architect of the dream team special investigation and himself a former FBI director, suddenly claimed under oath he had no idea who Christopher Steele even was, much less what his dossier said. James Comey, yet another revered ex-FBI director, whose leaks jump started the Mueller special counsel probe, claimed more than 250 times under congressional oath he could not remember, or did not know much of anything—often in reference to the information in or used as a result of the dossier. In the end, the sum total of the science, the dossier, the data, and the experts proved only to be what a group of corrupt bureaucrats, media ideologues, and Clinton partisans found useful for their own agendas.

Do we remember last year’s “science” behind the origins of the Wuhan virus? Our alphabetized bicoastal “medical professionals” followed the “science” in assuring us that the virus originated with bats—or were they pangolins?—in a “wet” meat market. The scientific chorus echoed the “impossibility” that the “viral sequencing” could ever have been altered by humans. To suggest so, was racist, xenophobic, Trumpian, and backward.

A lab origin theory was left only to Neanderthals and the-earth-is-6,000-years-old deplorables, of an “anti-science,” know-nothing sort. Yet just a short distance away from the supposed ground-zero wet market, there was coincidentally a Level-4 virology lab with ties to Chinese military. And it was known to engage in “gain of function” viral research of the most dangerous sort. The lab’s sloppiness had gained the attention of visiting U.S. medical professionals.

No matter. The unlettered who do not read the New York Times or the Washington Post, or follow the fact-checkers, or listen to NPR were further roundly disregarded when they wondered why, if the virus sprung naturally from innocent meat peddlers, did the Chinese Communist government go to such great lengths to lie about the dates of the virus’s likely birth, and the nature of its transmission? Why were they ostracizing, censoring, or “disappearing” any of their own scientists capable of giving an accurate account of what, if any, might be the connections between the lab and the virus?

For good measure, our own “scientists” and “professionals,” from the mendacious Dr. Anthony Fauci to multibillionaire tech wizard Bill Gates, assured us that China was transparent. They had no reason to hide anything, they added. And, indeed, China was doing its best as a good global citizen to join in the global effort to stop this naturally occurring virus—albeit from time to time lying that the lab “hoax” was mostly either a racist Trump Administration talking point or a cover-up of the U.S. military’s creation of the virus.

Then suddenly . . . poof!

The faith-based “science” melted. Reason returned. The lab was suddenly seen as much more logically the birthplace of the SARS-CoV- 2 virus. Despite his protestations and denials from authority, Fauci, our epidemiological and virology “expert,” really did approve U.S. funds to be routed through Dr. Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance to help conduct gain-of-function research at Wuhan, despite Congress banning such funding.

We also learned, mirabile dictu, that Daszak had assembled an “international team of experts” to reassure the world that the Chinese research at the Wuhan lab—that he supported and had financially enhanced—had nothing to do with the COVID-19 pandemic. That “scientific,” explanation, a euphemism for an ideological and careerist-based cover story, is now inert. And Daszak has joined the likes of Fauci and WHO’s director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as those “experts” whose scientific judgment cannot be fully trusted because they proved all too human in their worries over careers, reputations, and politics.

The Dark Age Mind
What can learn from the rise of this new Dark Age mindset?

1) Ignoring reason is easier than abiding by it. Printing money, for example, is easier than paying it back later—but easiest of all when we swear that there is no longer a need to pay it back at all.

2) Falsifying knowledge is always justified by higher moral purposes—in our case progressivism substituting for religious doctrine. Laws of human nature and logic are merely constructs when it is a matter of welcoming in the oppressed from Latin America or substituting race-based quotas for meritocratic criteria, or comparing Israelis to racist 1980s apartheid South Africans or Nazis.

3) Modernism is a poor cloak of age-old ignorance. Living in the 21st century is no guarantee that humans will not act as if they are in the 16th. Our modern-day inquisitors share the same anti-science fury as those who put Galileo under house arrest for the crime of Copernicanism. Claiming that “white supremacists” are responsible for current epidemics of violence against Jews and Asian-Americans—when most data and evidence point, in the former case, to Hamas supporters, and, in the latter, most frequently to African-American males, is our version of institutionalized geocentrism.

4) “Authority” is often a construct, if it is not based on, and continually audited by, meritorious achievement. Letter combinations like B.S., M,S,, Ph.D., M.D., a string of alphabetically abbreviated agency affiliations, and name-dropped university ties are no substitute for humility, common sense, and a disinterested mind. Anthony Fauci is no more immune from Juvenal’s age-old warning “Who will police the police?” than is Derek Chauvin, or, for that matter, the Marxist real estate investor and her fellow grifters at Black Lives Matter.

5) Balzac’s famous platitude “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime” can be applied to false knowledge: “Behind all pseudoscience is an agenda.” Christopher Steele really did despise Donald Trump. Steele felt his lies were noble as long as they empowered Hillary Clinton and his firewall employers. Ditto the legions of his aiders and abettors. The decision of our international pharmaceutical companies, and their government enablers, to insist that those with acquired antibodies from a prior COVID infection still needed to be vaccinated promptly—when available vaccinations were scarce in January and February and Americans were still dying in droves—was not predicated by the “science,” but either by groupthink or financial considerations.

6) The scientific/unscientific establishment stymies outsiders and claims they pay no attention to “proven science.” In classics, some of the greatest breakthroughs in knowledge about the ancient world came from Heinrich Schliemann, George Grote, Milman Parry, and Michael Ventris. All were eccentrics, and often non-classicists. Take away the supposed “nuts” like Generals William Tecumseh Sherman, Curtis LeMay, George S. Patton, and Matthew Ridgway and the United States would have lost tens of thousands of more lives in its wars as we listened to their supposedly more sober and judicious betters.

7) The enemy of science is always dogma. In the medieval period, dogmas were often ossified Aristotelian concepts that were institutionalized by the Church on the theory they enhanced Christian exegesis and ritual, or, if lost, would eventually lead to an erosion of authority. In our era, the new religion is progressivism that prohibits free discussion of most of the major issues of modern life: When is life established in the womb? What is the degree of man-made climate change versus natural, cyclical climate change? Which groups are most likely to commit hate crimes? Is sex biologically determined or culturally constructed? What is the role of cultural attitudes in crime and social dependency?

It may seem a stretch to suggest that the Left is leading us back to the pre-Enlightenment, given its corporate wealth, academic monopolies, Silicon Valley technological wizardry, and progressive sanctimoniousness. But arrogance, wealth, and received authority are always the super-spreaders and force-multipliers of false knowledge, and none more so than in the present age.
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Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) is a senior fellow, classicist and historian and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution where many of his articles are found; his focus is classics and military history. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. H/T American Greatness.

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Virus Lockdowns: Speeds Up - Prices Down. Government Should Leave the Internet Alone

Seton Motley

by Seton Motley : The perpetual pattern:

Government gets a little involved in the private sector – and screws things up a little. Government then lies – and says the private sector screwed things up. Allegedly justifying the government getting more involved. Which screws things up more. Government then says the private sector screwed things up….

Lather, rinse, repeat….

Government failing – is just the way things are. It is immutable fact. People running their own lives – are better at it than other people running their lives for them.

Once government gets its giant proboscis into anything – everything quickly spirals downward and out of control.

We are only now emerging from the year-plus of titanic stupidity that was our government murdering our economy in fear of a flu. One of the sectors most tested by the artificial life circumstances government imposed – was the Internet.

Everyone was mandated to do much less in real life – so we all did much more in digital life. Internet traffic massively surged.

And the US Internet networks did better than…everyone else’s on the planet.

Nothing currently consumes more Internet bandwidth than video. When the lockdowns began, the European Union had to immediately downgrade all video from High Definition (HD) to Standard Definition (SD) – to prevent their networks from collapsing in a smoldering heap. The US had to downgrade…nothing at all.

Our networks being better than Europe’s – is more than a mite interesting. We have much greater connectivity challenges than they do. Their countries are tiny. Our land mass is titanic. We have 3,537,438 square miles – 97% of which is rural. Which means we have millions-of-square-miles of emptiness – which we must nevertheless fill with connecting cables and wires.

Yet our Internet crushed the virus lockdowns – and Europe’s got crushed. Why? Because they have much more government involvement than do we.

Stupid, all-encompassing regulations like Network Neutrality tighten the screws on their networks – strangling the speed and capacity out of them. Which means Europeans pay more – for less speed and capacity. Not just during the lockdowns – but each and every day.

Meanwhile, in the less-government-US….U.S. Sees Average Internet Speed Rise During The Covid-19 Pandemic

Decreasing Prices and Increasing Value for U.S. Broadband Service Over Time“Municipal broadband” – is government-run Internet. What’s worse than government over-regulating the Internet? Government BEING the Internet.

Nothing says “First Amendment” and “free speech” – like government being the Internet.

Speaking of history, we’ve already tried government broadband. A LOT. Government broadband is such a dead horse – it is a Hyracotherium. Which was extinct 50 million years ago.

More than 450 different US government entities – state governments, county governments, city governments,… – have tried being the Internet. They have all been disastrous failures.

Biden is ignoring the fabulous lockdown success of our less-government-Internet. And is instead going to massively increase the government imposed upon our Internet.

And not just that. Biden is going to ignore history, bypass all the intermediate steps – and massively increase government BEING the Internet.

Which is exactly for what our domestic Marxists have long been plotting:

“At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies. We are not at that point yet. But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.”

Why is Biden giving Marxists exactly what they’ve long wanted?

Because Biden is such a moderate.
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Seton Motley is the President of Less Government and he contributes articles to ARRA News Service.

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Tags: Seton Motley, Red State, Virus Lockdowns, Speeds Up, Prices Down, Government, Should Leave the Internet Alone To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Faith Under Siege, Biden's COVID Whiplash, Biden's Bloated Budget, Patriot Graves, Goodbye, Foster

Gary Bauer

by Gary Bauer: Patriot Graves
Monday marks Memorial Day, a national observance first known as Decoration Day. The first Memorial Day was observed on May 30, 1868, on the orders of General John Logan, commander of the Grand Army of the Republic. Flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.

Initially ment as a time to remember those who fell during the bloody battles of our brutal Civil War, the holiday's significance has been extended to honor all those who paid the ultimate price for our nation.

As they have done every year since 1948, soldiers of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment placed flags at more than 200,000 gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery. They will remain at Arlington National Cemetery throughout the holiday weekend, making sure that the flags remain upright.

Of all the dangers facing our country, perhaps the greatest is the one that doesn't make many headlines -- our collective national amnesia.

Our history textbooks are sanitized to be politically correct and give our children little sense of the greatness of the nation they live in. The Founders are seldom mentioned unless it is part of a controversy about slavery or some other scandal.

I am often struck by how many American kids have nothing good to say about their own country. Their knowledge of the sacrifices made to establish and preserve their freedom is virtually non-existent. They are the recipients of the greatest freedom and opportunity that any society has ever produced, yet they are unaware of the price that was paid for it.

At my father's table, I learned love of country in a way that only a Marine could teach it. Dad taught me that patriotism wasn't a theory -- it was flesh and blood, real sacrifice and pain.

You are your children's most important teacher. They are listening.

Explain to your children the price that was paid to stop the evil of fascism and the cancer of Soviet communism. Tell them why there was a Berlin Wall, what happened at Okinawa, on the beaches of Normandy, at Ground Zero and over the fields of Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Take a moment to teach your children and grandchildren to love the things we love and to honor the things we honor. Finally, let's remind ourselves that liberty is a gift from God and that each generation has paid in flesh and blood to preserve it.

As General George Patton said: "It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived."

All of these things – from these patriot graves and the memorials that honor them to the values they died for – are bound together, as Abraham Lincoln said, by the chords of memory. But they are also under tremendous assault from the radical left.

We are enjoying the weekend, as you are. But I pledge to you that when we return we will redouble our efforts in defense of Faith, Family and Freedom! I hope and pray you will stand with us at this most critical time in America's history.

Goodbye, Foster
America, the conservative movement and I all lost a great friend yesterday when the news came that Christian, patriot, successful businessman and philanthropist Foster Friess passed away at the age of 81.

I first met Foster at a Focus on the Family retreat, sponsored by Dr. James Dobson, at the Elk Canyon Ranch in Montana. We remained friends and stayed in contact over the years.

Foster supported many Christian and conservative organizations, and he was a visionary leader. He was also known for his incredible kindness and generosity to average people whose paths he happened to cross -- folks with no power or the ability to throw big galas to honor him. Just the people we see every day who open doors, carry packages and wait tables.

Foster truly lived a Christ-like life. Heaven's gain is our loss.

Please join Carol and me in praying for his wife, Lynn, their four children and 15 grandchildren.

Faith Under Siege
Last week, as a wave of anti-Semitism swept the country, a debate broke out among American Jews about the fear gripping their communities. The debate got really lively when Aaron Keyak, the Jewish Engagement Director for Joe Biden's presidential campaign, tweeted:

"It pains me to say this, but if you fear for your life or physical safety take off your kippah and hide your [Star of David]."

Keyak should be banned from speaking to any Jewish audience!

This is the United States of America in 2021. Not 1930s Germany. No Jew in America should ever feel they must hide their Jewish identity.

Breitbart's Joel Pollak responded, "The only thing you should conceal (legally) is your firearm. The Second Amendment protects the First." He's right!

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Turner, a Christian high school student in Michigan, was chosen to give the valedictory address at her school's graduation ceremony. Turner had planned to say that her future is built on her relationship with Jesus.

But Principal Amy Goldsmith tried to muzzle Turner's faith, telling her, "You are representing the school in the speech, not using the podium as your public forum."

That's not exactly how it works. The valedictorian isn't representing the school. People want to know what's unique about her and her values that resulted in her success. It's her speech, not the school's speech.

No Christian in America should be forced to hide their faith!

America was built on Judeo-Christian values. But today Jews and Christians are under assault by thugs on the streets and bureaucrats who want to silence religious expression in the public square.

My friends, we're going into Memorial Day weekend. Please find a way in your family and community to fight back and protect the liberties that so many have sacrificed so much to give us.

Biden's COVID Whiplash
The pressure to expose the truth about the origins of the coronavirus is clearly getting to the Biden Administration.

Amid mounting evidence that the virus likely leaked from a communist Chinese lab, news broke that the Biden Administration canceled the only U.S. investigation into the origins of the virus.

Consider this Tuesday headline: "Biden Team Shut Down State Dept. Inquiry Probing Possible Lab Link To COVID."

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki stonewalled at the White House microphone all the way until Tuesday night. She constantly deferred to the World Health Organization, which everyone knows is hopelessly compromised by communist China.

As Sen. John Kennedy put it, "If you took [Chinese] President Xi Jinping and turned him upside and shook him, the World Health Organization would fall out of his pocket."

New polling shows that 68% of voters believe it's likely that the virus came from a Chinese lab. Only 16% believe the propaganda – whether it's coming from the Chinese Communist Party or the American media – that the virus originated in nature.

It seems the Biden Administration is aware of that polling. Within 24 hours, their entire tone changed, and Jen Psaki didn't lead yesterday's White House press conference.

The president who abolished the only American investigation into the origins of COVID-19 suddenly demanded that U.S. intelligence agencies produce a report within 90 days on the origins of the virus.

Consider this headline from yesterday afternoon: "Biden Orders Deep Investigation Into COVID-19 Origins."

Needless to say, I have little faith in the Deep State. They are reportedly divided over the origin of the virus, and they won't get any cooperation from Beijing. Meanwhile, communist China is telling the world that COVID-19 originated in an American lab.

Will Big Tech use its power to censor that communist disinformation?

Biden's Bloated Budget
The Biden White House is getting ready to release a budget and it's a whopper. It will reportedly total $6 trillion, a third higher than anything Donald Trump proposed.

Among other things, it balloons the debt to 117% of America's gross domestic product, exceeding the debt record set during World War II. Defense spending is largely flat, while domestic spending grows by 16%.

As one left-wing media outlet put it, Biden's budget "is an unabashed call for a bigger role for government in the U.S. economy, [making spending] larger than any level before the pandemic."

By the way, there are reports that communist China has rejected three requests for top level military meetings between Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and his Chinese counterpart, General Xu Qiliang.

Just like the diplomatic fiasco in Alaska, this is another example of Beijing pushing Joe Biden around, and it's not surprising. Communist China believes America is well on the way towards cultural and economic collapse.

The GOP's Future
Rep. Liz Cheney clearly thinks quite highly of herself. She declared that her primary election is a referendum on the future of the Republican Party.

At last, there's something Cheney and I agree on! But we part ways on what the outcome of her election means. She believes that her victory will be a sign that the party has a future. I think if she wins her victory would be a sign that it has no future.

If you can savage a Republican president while serving in leadership and insist that a major principle of the party is fighting endless wars that we can't fight to win, the GOP has no future.

Unfortunately, at least eight candidates have lined up to challenge her. That's a prescription for disaster as they will cannibalize the conservative vote, allowing Cheney to prevail. (I suspect a couple of those candidates are pro-Cheney decoys who are only running in order to further split the populist conservative vote.)

Meanwhile, former Speakers Paul Ryan and John Boehner are holding fundraisers for Cheney and other weak-kneed Republicans. GOP candidates should think twice about asking Ryan for help. He's reportedly going to attack Donald Trump tonight during a speech at the Reagan Library.

And when he's not lobbying for the marijuana industry, John Boehner seems to spend his time attacking conservatives like Ted Cruz rather than going after Democrats.

Good News

• Former President Donald Trump and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich are working to develop a .
• A judge has ordered , to audit 145,000 absentee ballots.
• Alabama Gov. signed legislation banning vaccination passports.
• Florida Gov. signed legislation cracking down on Big Tech censorship.
• Tennessee Gov. signed legislation banning critical race theory in public schools.
• President Trump's is still meeting, in spite of Joe Biden's attempt to shut it down. This week, it issued a call for parents to fight critical race theory.
• Congressional Republicans are introducing legislation to fight the surge of .
• The Senate approved banning taxpayer-funding of "gain of function" research and banning U.S. tax dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
• Fifteen Republican are warning that they will aggressively push back against efforts by the Biden Administration to pressure banks into canceling loans or investments in fossil fuel projects.
• A judge issued against COVID-19 restrictions that shut down church services in California. The judge also ordered the state to pay $1.35 million in attorney's fees to Harvest Rock Church, which spent a year fighting Gov. Gavin Newson's assault on religious liberty.
• , declared itself a "sanctuary city for the unborn."

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Gary Bauer (@GaryLBauer)  is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

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On Reparations: John F. Kennedy vs. Robert F. Kennedy

by Larry Elder: When did the civil rights movement go off the rails?

The answer is when proponents went from justly demanding equal rights to unjustly demanding equal results. As to exactly when this occurred, that’s more difficult to answer. But consider statements, made five years apart, from the Kennedy brothers, John F. and Robert F.

Neither brother was asked about nor used the word “reparations.” But during an August 1963 press conference, a reporter asked President John Kennedy about “special dispensation” for Blacks: “Mr. President, some Negro leaders are saying that, like the Jews persecuted by the Nazis, the Negro is entitled to some kind of special dispensation for the pain of second-class citizenship over these many decades and generations. What is your view of that in general, and what is your view in particular on the specific point that they are recommending of job quotas by race?”

JFK replied: “I don’t think that is the generally held view, at least as I understand it, of the Negro community, that there is some compensation due for the lost years, particularly in the field of education.

“What I think they would like is to see their children well educated so that they could hold jobs and have their children accepted and have themselves accepted as equal members of the community. So I don’t think we can undo the past. In fact, the past is going to be with us for a good many years in uneducated men and women who lost their chance for a decent education. We have to do the best we can now. That is what we are trying to do. I don’t think quotas are a good idea. I think it is a mistake to begin to assign quotas on the basis of religion or race or color, or nationality.

“I think we get into a good deal of trouble. Our whole view of ourselves is a sort of one society. That has not been true. At least that is where we are trying to go. I think that we ought not to begin the quota system. On the other hand, I do think that we ought to make an effort to give a fair chance to everyone who is qualified, not through a quota, but just look over our employment rolls, look over our areas where we are hiring people, and at least make sure we are giving everyone a fair chance, but not hard and fast quotas. We are too mixed, this society of ours, to begin to divide ourselves on the basis of race or color.” (Emphasis added.)

That same year, National Urban League Executive Director Whitney Young proposed a 10-year “domestic Marshall Plan” for Blacks to make up for past discrimination. His board of directors opposed it. The president of the Pittsburgh Urban League chapter said the public would ask: “What in blazes are these guys up to? They tell us for years that we must buy (nondiscrimination) and then they say, ‘It isn’t what we want.'”

Five years later, Sen. Robert Kennedy announced his candidacy for president. He said: “I run to seek new policies — policies to end the bloodshed in Vietnam and in our cities, policies to close the gaps that now exist between Black and white.”

“Policies to close the gaps that now exist between Black and white”? In 1940, 87% of Blacks lived below the poverty level. By 1960, that number dropped to 47%, a 40-point dropped in 20 years, the greatest 20 years of economic growth for Blacks in American history. Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down “separate but equal,” was not decided until 1954. This sharp decline in Black poverty preceded the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

John Kennedy was right. We cannot undo the past. But by teaching Blacks to see themselves as victims deserving of “reparations” from today’s white “oppressors,” we can certainly make the present and future worse.
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Larry Elder writes for Larry Elder.

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Does Our Diversity Portend Disintegration?

by Patrick Buchanan: After nine people were shot to death by a public transit worker, who then killed himself in San Jose, the latest mass murder in America, California Governor Gavin Newsom spoke for many on the eve of this Memorial Day weekend.

“What the hell is going on in the United States of America? What the hell is wrong with us?”

Good question. Indeed, it seems that the country is coming apart.

In May, Congress, to address a spate of criminal assaults on Asian Americans, enacted a new hate crimes law to protect them.

May also witnessed a rash of assaults on Jewish Americans to show the attackers’ hatred of Israel and support for the Palestinians in the Gaza war.

The terms “racist” and “racism” are now commonplace accusations in political discourse and a public square where whites are expected to ritually denounce the “white privilege” into which they were born.

In the year since the death of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter “Defund the Police!” campaign, the shootings and killings of cops and citizens in our great cities have skyrocketed.

In March, and again in April, 167,000 immigrants were caught crossing our southern border illegally. The invaders are now coming not only from Central and South America but also from Africa, the Islamic world and the largest and most populous continent, Asia. And their destiny may be to replace us.

For as the endless invasion proceeds, native-born Americans have ceased to reproduce themselves. Not since the birth dearth of the Great Depression and WWII, when the Silent Generation was born, has the U.S. population experienced such a birth decline as today.

At the same time, a war of all against all in America seems to raise the question, to which recitation of the cliche — “Our diversity is our greatest strength” — no longer seems an adequate response:

Is there no limit to the racial, religious, ideological, political, cultural and ethnic diversity the nation can accommodate before it splinters into its component parts?

In professions of religious belief, atheists, agnostics and secularists have become our largest “congregation,” followed by Catholics and Protestants, both of which are in numerical decline.

Diversity of faiths leads to irreconcilable, clashing opinions about morality on the most divisive social issues of our era: abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, etc.

Racial diversity, too, is bringing back problems unseen since the 1960s.

America was almost 90% white in 1960, but that figure is down to 60% and falling. In 25 years, we will all belong to racial minorities.

Are we Americans still united in our love of country? Do we still take pride in what we have done for our own people and what America has done for the world in the 400 years since Jamestown?

Hardly. Part of the nation buys into the academic and intellectual elites’ version of history, tracing America’s birth as a nation to the arrival of the first slave ship in Virginia in 1619.

We not only disagree about our history; some actually hate our history.

That hate can be seen in the statues and monuments destroyed, not just of Confederate military heroes but of the European explorers who discovered America, the Founding Fathers who created the nation, and the leaders, from Thomas Jefferson to Andrew Jackson to Teddy Roosevelt, who built the America we became.

Yet, tens of millions from all over the world still see coming to America as the realization of a life’s dream.

Some look at Western civilization as 500 years of colonialism, imperialism, genocide, slavery and segregation — practiced against people of color. This is the source of the West’s wealth and power, it is said, and that wealth and power should be redistributed to the descendants of the victims of Western rapacity.

For many, equality of opportunity is no longer enough. We must make restitution, deliver reparations and guarantee a future where an equality of rewards replaces an equality of rights.

Meritocracy must yield to equity. Elite high schools, such as Thomas Jefferson in Virginia, Stuyvesant in New York and Lowell in San Francisco, must abandon their emphasis on grades, tests and exams to gain admissions and prove progress.

And these schools must be remade to mirror the racial and ethnic composition of the communities where they reside.

And a new cancel culture has taken root in America.

Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, a CNN commentator, was fired for suggesting that Native American institutions and culture played no significant role in the foundation and formation of the American Republic.

“We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes, we have Native Americans,” Santorum said, adding: “There isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.”

Impolitic though this rendition was, was it wholly false?

Something is seriously wrong with a country that professes to be great but whose elite cannot abide the mildest of heresies to its established truth.
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Patrick Buchanan is the author of “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.” Article shared on TRIB/Live.

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Dark Clouds: Google, Amazon, Israel and the New America

by Caroline Glick: America is changing before our eyes. But the Finance Ministry apparently hasn’t paid it any mind.

Last week, the head of procurement at the Finance Ministry’s General Accountant’s Office formally announced that Amazon (AWS) and Google won the government tender to provide cloud services to the government as Israel moves forward with the first phase of the Nimbus Project. Tender bids submitted by Microsoft and Oracle were rejected.

The Nimbus Project is a massive, multiyear project that will replace the data management infrastructure of government ministries and the IDF. To date, government ministries have used decentralized servers and dozens of independently operating websites to house and manage their data. The Nimbus Project will move all government computing data and applications to commercial clouds provided by technology giants.

When the government computer systems migrate to Google and Amazon’s data clouds, these firms will manage all of official Israel’s non-classified data and computerized applications. This will include everything from government and military payrolls to welfare payments, to government pensions. It will include the medical files of all Israelis. It will include their personal and corporate tax returns.

It’s possible that from the technical and financial perspectives, the General Accountant’s tender committee’s decision to award the cloud contracts to Google and Amazon was reasonable. The two corporations are the industry leaders in cloud technologies. But even on the technical and financial levels, there are differing opinions about the committee’s decision.

Oracle’s bid was allegedly lower than those submitted by Google and Amazon. Moreover, the tender requires that the clouds be physically located inside of Israel. Oracle and Microsoft have both built cloud centers in Israel. Oracle’s is set to open in August and Microsoft’s is scheduled to open in January 2022. Google and Amazon for their part have yet to begin building their data centers, so for the next two years, and more likely the next 3-4 years, contrary to the stipulations of the tender, Israel’s government and IDF data will be housed in Europe.

Then there is the issue of redundancy. The trend today among governments and large corporations is to spread their data out among several cloud providers. Israel could have chosen to award the contract to all four companies and kept costs lower by forcing them to compete over pricing every year. Redundancy in cloud servers also lowers the risks of sabotage and technical failures that can lead to loss of data or failure of computing systems.

At any rate, assuming the tender committee followed the best practices from both financial and technical perspectives in granting the cloud contract to Google and Amazon exclusively, the decision is disconcerting all the same. The problem is not financial or technological. The problem with Google and Amazon is cultural. The organizational culture of both corporations raises significant questions about the wisdom of granting them exclusive control over Israel’s government data for the next seven years.

During this month’s Operation Guardian of the Wall, some 250 Google employees who identified as anti-Zionist Jews wrote a letter to Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai. They began by asking that Google reject the determination that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism and that the company fund Palestinian organizations.

The “Jewish Diaspora in Tech” called for “Google leadership to make a company-wide statement recognizing violence in Palestine and Israel, which must include direct recognition of the harm done to Palestinians by Israeli military and gang violence.”

Then they turned to the Nimbus contract.

“We request a review of all…business contracts and corporate donations and the termination of contracts with institutions that support Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, such as the Israeli Defense Forces.”

Shortly after the Google employees published their letter, some five hundred Amazon employees entered the anti-Israel fray. They signed a letter that was almost identical to the Google employees’ letter. They called for Amazon to reject the definition of anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism. They insisted that Israel is a racist colonial project and that the land of Israel belongs to the Palestinians. They called for Amazon to financially support Palestinian organizations. And they asked that the firm, “commit to review and sever business contracts and corporate donations with companies, organizations, and/or governments that are active or complicit in human rights violations, such as the Israeli Defense Forces.”

Another employee group called “Amazon Employees for Climate Justice” tweeted a long chain of posts denouncing the company’s participation in the Nimbus Project. Among other things, they wrote, “We stand in solidarity with Palestinians who went on a historic general strike to protest Israel’s deadly assault on Gaza. Amazon and Google recently signed a $1B deal supporting Israel’s military. Amazon is complicit in state killings and human rights abuses.

“Amazon’s workers didn’t sign up to work on projects that support militaries and policing forces. We didn’t sign up to be complicit in state killings and human rights abuses in the U.S., Israel, and around the world,” they concluded.

The workers’ protests in both companies are deadly serious. In 2018, Google employees discovered that the company was working with the Pentagon to develop an artificial intelligence system to improve the accuracy of U.S. military drones. Some 4,000 Google employees, including dozens of senior engineers signed a petition to Pichai demanding that Google end its involvement in the project. As they put it, “We believe that Google should not be in the business of war.”

Google management caved to the pressure and cancelled the contract with the Defense Department.

In January, Amazon cancelled its cloud service contract with the social media platform Parler, which was identified with Republicans. Amazon justified move by claiming that Parler contained “violent content.” The fact that violent content is also contained on other social media platforms – including Amazon itself – was neither here nor there.

Notable as well is the fact that Amazon’s CEO and founder Jeff Bezos is a close friend of musician Brian Eno. Like Roger Waters, Eno is a prominent proponent of the anti-Semitic BDS campaign that seeks to boycott Israel and demonize and silence its Jewish supporters worldwide.

The senior officials at the Finance Ministry, the national Cyber Authority and the Ministry of Defense who granted Google and Amazon the government and IDF cloud contracts may simply not understand the dire implications for Israel’s national security posed by the antagonistic positions of some Google and Amazon employees.

In a press conference this week, the heads of the Finance Ministry actually presented these statements as testaments to the credibility of the contracts. The fact that the leaders of Google and Amazon signed the deal with Israel despite the hatred their employees express towards the Jewish state is proof of the companies’ commitment to the project, they insisted.

The Finance Ministry added that there is no cause for concern because the contracts require that Google and Amazon set up subsidiary firms in Israel to actually manage the clouds. As Israeli registered companies, the subsidiaries will be bound to the requirements of Israeli law. And as such, they will have no option of sabotaging the work or otherwise breaching the contract no matter how anti-Israel the Google and Amazon employees outside of Israel may be.

The problem with this argument is that the subsidiaries in Israel will be wholly owned by their mother corporations. All of their equipment will be owned by Google and Amazon in the U.S. If the mother corporations decide to pull the plug on the Nimbus contract, the local subsidiaries will be powerless to maintain them.

The same Google management that blew off the artificial intelligence project with the Pentagon three years ago to satisfy their workers should be expected to repeat their actions in the future. If their employees unite to demand that Google abrogate the Nimbus contract, management can be expected to absorb a few hundred million dollars in losses to keep their workers happy.

The polarization of opinion on Israel that we are witnessing in American politics between Republicans who support Israel and Democrats who oppose Israel, is an expression of a much larger division within American society. The heartbreaking but undeniable fact is that today you can’t talk about “America” as a single political entity.

Today there are two Americas, and they cannot abide by one another. One America – traditional America – loves Israel and America. The other America – the New America – hates Israel and doesn’t think much of America, either.

Traditional America believes that the U.S. brought the promise of liberty to the world and that even though it is far from perfect, the United States is the greatest country in human history. In the eyes of the citizens of Traditional America, Israel is a kindred nation and the U.S.’s best friend and most valued ally in the Middle East.

New America, in contrast, believes that America was born in the sin of slavery. New Americans insist America will remain evil and an object of scorn at home and abroad so long it refuses to exchange its values of liberty, capitalism, equal opportunity and patriotism with the values of racialism and equity, socialism, equality of outcomes, and globalization. For New Americans, just as the U.S. was born in the sin of white supremacy so Israel was born in the sin of Zionism. In New America, Israel will have no right to exist so long as it clings to its Jewish national identity, refusing to become a “state of all its citizens.”

New America’s power isn’t limited to its control over the White House and Congress. It also controls much of corporate America. Under the slogan, “Stakeholder Capitalism,” corporate conglomerates whose leaders are New Americans use their economic power to advance the political and cultural agendas of New America. We saw stakeholder capitalism at work in March following the Georgia statehouse’s passage of a law requiring voters to present identification at polling places. Major League Baseball, Coca Cola, Delta and American Airlines among others announced that they would boycott the state, denying jobs to thousands of Georgians in retaliation.

Silicon Valley is the Ground Zero of Stakeholder Capitalism. Its denizens are the loudest and most powerful proponents of using technological and economic power to advance the political and cultural agendas of New America.

Microsoft and Oracle are appealing the Nimbus tender award. They are basing their appeals on what they describe as technical and other flaws in the tender process. Israel should view their appeals as an opportunity to reverse course.

In light of New America’s hostility towards Israel generally, and given the proven power of Google and Amazon employees and their expressed antagonism towards Israel, the Finance Ministry should reconsider the tender award. Technical considerations aside, the decision to grant Google and Amazon exclusive control over the State of Israel’s computer data did not give sufficient weight to all the relevant variables.
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Caroline Glick shared her original article in Israel Hayom.

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Biden Tries to Shanghai Voters on China

by Tony Perkins: It's been called the "largest liable case in the history of the world," but Joe Biden doesn't seem to care if we get to the bottom of it. Finding out who's responsible for COVID might upset his cozy relationship with China -- and surely no one on the Left wants to admit what conservatives have known all along: the real conspiracy isn't the speculation that the killer came from a Wuhan lab, it's that some Democrats, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the communist regime were so desperate to cover it up what they say didn't happen.

It's the typical Biden two-face. On one hand, the administration shut down former Secretary Mike Pompeo's State Department investigation into what or who caused the coronavirus pandemic. On the other, he's holding a press conference, promising to follow the evidence where it leads. Why the sudden interest in origins of COVID? Because new reports on not-so-new information are pointing -- at least in part -- to a leak from the Wuhan lab, not a random explosion from bat-infested markets. Now, suddenly, the Biden administration is asking the intelligence community to dig deeper, "to collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion."

At the heart of this "new report" are three Chinese scientists -- all who worked at the Wuhan lab, all who contracted an illness with symptoms like COVID. One, Li Wenliang, died a hero trying to warn his people that the killer was loose. Two others did their best to also sound the alarm -- one going so far as to risk his life by giving the West the COVID genetic code, information that, Dr. Martin Makary says, American researchers used to create the Moderna vaccine two days later.

Naturally, the question on everyone's minds is: did these men get the virus from the lab -- and does that prove it escaped? To be honest, Makary says, we may never know. For starters, he writes in a compelling article about these three men, it would require "cooperation from the Chinese Communist Party," among other things that a leader as weak as Biden -- and a co-conspirator like WHO -- cannot or will not demand. To be honest, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said, "This is too little, too late." And yet the Arkansas Republican, who blew the whistle before February of 2020, can't help but laugh at the irony. He was demanding the U.S. investigate the lab only to be roundly mocked as a conspiracy theorist.

So if the information hasn't changed (the Trump administration knew all of this in 2020), the WHO's position hasn't changed, and China's posture hasn't changed, what has? "The biggest change," Cotton explained on "Washington Watch," "is that Donald Trump is no longer in the White House and Joe Biden is. And early last year, when I was pointing out -- not on the basis of some kind of secret intelligence or other information, but just plain old common sense -- 'Guys, this virus didn't emerge from some mountain village next to a cave full of bats. It emerged in a city larger than New York, right down the street from the labs where they research dangerous coronaviruses. How about we ask two questions about that?' ..The media was going to do nothing if it... was going to help Donald Trump's reelection." Now, he supposes, with Biden in the White House, the blue media thinks okay to start asking questions again.

Obviously, Cotton agrees, our intelligence community should keep trying to get to the bottom of this. But at the end of the day, the Chinese Community Party is the only one with answers -- and Joe Biden should have been demanding them from day one. Instead, he's been too busy coddling China to hold anyone accountable for a pandemic that could have been stopped before any Americans died. "If China had acted in a civilized fashion and told the world, told the WHO, told America and Japan and South Korea and Germany and other countries that could provide experts, perhaps we could have kept this a local outbreak. It wouldn't have become the worst pandemic in a century." But China Is malevolent, Cotton warns. They have complete disregard for their own people and the people around the world. "And they have to be held responsible for that. It's time for the civilized world to lower the boom for what China has done to the world these last 18 months."

Meanwhile, if grilling Anthony Fauci were an Olympic sport, almost every Senate Republican would medal. Earlier this week, the GOP leaders took turns pointing out his conflicting statements, his misguided advice, and his blind trust for the bad actors at WHO. The hot seat only got hotter when the topic turned to $600,000 in taxpayer dollars that NIH earmarked for the Wuhan lab for a supposed bat-to-human coronavirus transmission study. "You have no way of knowing whether they did or not, except you trust them. Is that right?" Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) asked. Fauci admitted that no, he had no way to guarantee they wouldn't lie. He went on to defend the "integrity" of WHO, prompting Kennedy -- one of the most colorful senators -- to say, "If you turn President Xi upside down and shake, WHO would fall out of his pocket."

For now, most of the senators suspect, the only reason Biden is looking at this is because the country is forcing him to. "We need to find out what happened, so it never happens again," Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) agreed. "As you know," Cotton said, "China isn't terribly popular with the American people. Imagine how China will be viewed," Cotton said, "not just in the United States, but around the world, if it turns out that Chinese communist incompetence and deceitfulness was responsible for all the loss of lives, for all the illness, for all the destroyed businesses, for all the lost livelihoods..."

And the more information the American public has, the more pressure they'll apply to political leaders -- even a party like Joe Biden's, who's reluctant to take on China. But someone has to, and if Democrats won't, then voters will just elect people who will.
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Tony Perkins is President of Family Research Council (FRC)

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Biden Frees Al Qaeda Ally Who Plotted to Smuggle Nukes Into US

Why settle for helping Iran nuke America, when you can also help Al Qaeda nuke America?
by Daniel Greenfield: With inflation rising almost as fast as gas prices and the cost of a home, Joe Biden ain’t doing much for most Americans. But if you’re an Al Qaeda terrorist, he’s got your back.

Just ask three of Gitmo’s finest who are benefiting from Biden’s generosity.

Saifullah Paracha (pictured above) was a Pakistani businessman and New York travel agent with some big plans. The Gitmo inmate now being set loose by Biden wanted to “do something big against the US.”

9/11 was in Al Qaeda's rearview mirror and its mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was plotting a sequel. The Gitmo dossier for Paracha first details a plan to use his “textile business to smuggle explosives into the US” and these "ready-made explosives, specifically C4" would go into shipping containers full of "women and children's clothing".

Shipping Al Qaeda’s C4 to America would be more lucrative than dumping sweatshop labor sweatpants because “if al-Qaida used detainee’s textile company for shipping explosives to the US, he would likely be paid additional money beyond the standard shipping fees”. No word on whether there would have been a bonus for every American blown up.

And then things escalated from there with testimony that Paracha allegedly claimed that he, “believed he could obtain unspecified chemicals from Chinese sources”. The fellow he was talking to about the unspecified chemicals, Ammar al-Baluchi, one of the few Gitmo Jihadis whom neither Obama nor Biden had managed to release yet, had helped out the 9/11 hijackers with flight simulators, and manuals, and allegedly chatted with Mohammed Atta.

After 9/11, Al-Baluchi was looking at all sorts of plans for crashing planes into things, like the American consulate in Karachi or London’s Heathrow airport, but there were other options on the table. The nature of the chemicals out of China was never specified, but the KSM lieutenant believed they were” chemical or biological agents” that could be used “as a weapon”.

Paracha reportedly advised Al Qaeda that “one should look for a similar looking chemical and put it in between the good chemicals and it would be very easy to get [through] customs.” With his business experience, he could offer Al Qaeda tips on smuggling such as warning them about the “radiological sensors at ports or places of entry into the US” that would make it difficult to smuggle radioactive materials into the country”.

But Biden’s newest charity case wanted something bigger. The dossier describes the 9/11 mastermind's associate and Paracha chatting about Al Qaeda getting some "radiological or nuclear items several times" because Paracha wanted "to help al-Qaida 'do something big against the US.'”

Paracha "also discussed nuclear attacks and attacks against nuclear power plants" and had an idea for “al-Qaida to attack a nuclear power plant”.

So you can see why Joe Biden is letting him go.

Why settle for helping Iran nuke America, when you can also help Al Qaeda nuke America?

The Pakistani graduate of the New York Institute of Technology “expressed strong anti-US sentiment” and allegedly “stated that nuclear weapons should be used against US troops, as thousands of the troops would be killed at once”.

The pro-terror lobby has spent all these years claiming that Paracha was an innocent victim of American imperialism who was never charged with anything and was smeared with confessions obtained by acts of horrifying torture like Barney songs played on a non-stop loop.

Curiously the dossier mentions that Paracha's diary had "references to military chemical warfare agents, and their effects on humans" including Sarin nerve gas.

But what New York travel agent hasn't filled his diary with entries about the effects of nerve gas on humans along with the contact information for an alleged Al Qaeda anthrax operative?

You’d have to be an Islamophobe to find anything suspicious about that.

Sadly, none of these plans worked out. Instead the agents of the Great Satan told Palacha that they wanted him to come to Thailand to discuss a deal with Kmart. When Palacha showed up to pitch Kmart reps on a blue light special that might or might not glow in the dark, they weren’t there to get a deal on some Pakistani underwear, but offering a place off Cuba with a view.

Even Obama didn’t set Paracha loose, but Biden is determined to out-Obama him.

The media understandably doesn’t want to trouble Americans with any uncomfortable mentions of nuclear weapons and Chinese chemicals when explaining Biden’s latest gift to Al Qaeda.

The New York Times only mentions that Paracha is "a former businessman and longtime legal resident of New York" and that he has "heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure".

Also some years ago a spiritual leader with a Buddhist symbol made famous by an Austrian house painter carved into his forehead died of colon cancer while one of California's oldest inmates. It’s almost as awful as when that elderly former house painter commited suicide after a long struggle with syphillis along with his new bride in a bunker that Biden would have envied.

The Hill plaintively whines that, “Paracha was the oldest and reportedly among the sickest detainees held at Guantánamo Bay. He suffered from heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure.” Since Paracha is still alive and the description is in the past tense, we can only assume that being freed by Biden is a cure for heart disease, diabetes, and blood pressure.

If Biden really wants to cure cancer, he can drop all of that moonshot nonsense, all he needs to do is give all of Al Qaeda cancer, and then release them. If it doesn’t cure them, it’ll kill them.

Releasing Paracha might also be a concern for the Brits as the dossier also states that he had discussed with Al-Baluchi “how to smuggle explosives and chemicals into England”.

When Paracha wasn't exploring the exciting possibilities of nuclear weapons, he met Osama bin Laden on a trip to Afghanistan and "offered to let UBL and al-Qaida use his media broadcasting business to film and distribute propaganda and training films'' that would include "depicting UBL quoting Koranic verses". While a lot of Paracha's other plots were theoretical, the dossier indicates that Al Qaeda used Paracha's "video broadcasting facility" to make a movie featuring "a senior Saudi al-Qaida facilitator associated with a cell targeting Americans in Saudi Arabia."

But no doubt after all that time having to listen to Barney sing, “I Love You, You Love Me” on repeat at Gitmo, with nothing to read except the Koran and Harry Potter novels, Paracha has come around and now loves America. And from now on will commit to only shipping women’s and children’s clothing to Kmart without C4, Chinese chemicals, or nukes.

The other beneficiaries of Biden’s generosity are Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman, an alleged bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, and Abdul Rabbani, allegedly a member of an Al Qaeda cell plotting car bomb attacks against Americans.

Biden intends to continue Obama’s work of freeing all the Islamic terrorists of Gitmo.

Paracha had apparently told American investigators that "he did not think meeting with al-Qaida was a crime, just business".

Biden clearly doesn’t think aiding Islamic terrorists is a crime either. That’s why he’s doing it.
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Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer for FrontPage Mag focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

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