Our French Revolution

From Victor Hanson.com (April 6):

We are in a Jacobin Revolution of the sort that in 1793-94 nearly destroyed France. And things are getting scary.

The Democratic Party vanished sometime in 2020.

It was absorbed by hard-left ideologues. They were bent on radically altering, or hijacking, existing institutions to force radical, equality-of-result agendas that otherwise do not earn majority support.

The American people want affordable power and fuel and energy autonomy. They do not want a Green New Deal that results in dependence on the Middle East.

They want fiscal sobriety, not a permanent stagflationary economy marked by bank failures, soaring interest rates, crony capitalism, and subsidies for those who choose not to work.

They know no country can exist without a border, much less while offering blank checks to foreign cartels that kill 100,000 Americans yearly.

They demand realist deterrence abroad, not the current woke military whose erosion is spelling the end American credibility and global stability.

Racialists are eerily embracing discredited Neo-Confederate notions of racial chauvinism, discrimination, segregation, and the old-one-drop rule of racial obsession. They are turning America toward a Balkanized war-of-all-against-all.

To implement such an unpopular program, the new Left must radically alter our institutions.

So the “Democrats” periodically threaten to pack the courts, end the filibuster, destroy the Electoral College, and override the states’ prerogatives to establish balloting laws.

They deny the committee assignments of the House minority leader. They engage in stunts like tearing up the State of the Union address on national television. With impunity they mob the homes of Supreme Court justices to leverage their decisions.

This revolution is run by elites and is a top-down operation.

University deans all but prompt students to disrupt invited campus speakers. District attorneys release violent arrested criminals without bail. Woke generals call their Chinese counterparts to warn them against their own commander-in-chief.

The Pentagon lectures the country on its supposed innate racism—even as the United States continues to lose wars abroad, abandons billions of dollars of equipment to terrorists, and allows communist China to surveille domestic American military bases with complete impunity.

Words change their meanings. “Racist” now means “don’t dare object.” “White” became the pejorative stereotype used by racists. “Diversity” means tired orthodoxy. “Equity” is a synonym for bias. “Inclusion” ensures exclusion.

Institutions are no longer recognizable. The FBI as we knew it no longer exists. Three former FBI directors either lied under oath to federal investigators, or pleaded amnesia in congressional testimonies.

Our highest former national intelligence officers lied under oath to the Senate. The IRS is weaponized against political opponents of the Democrats. The Department of Justice is more likely to send the FBI after grammar school parents than mobs threatening the homes of Supreme Court justices.

Still, to thoroughly erase America, our Jacobins must radically alter our customs and traditions.

So under the cover of the COVID quarantines, Election Day was made irrelevant. In the new America, 70 percent did not vote on the designated day but, fueled by third-party vote harvesting and relaxation of audits of non-Election-Day ballots, extended the vote over a period of several weeks.

Like the Jacobins, names and dates had to be radically transformed. 1619, not 1776, is now America’s birthdate and, we are told, it was an ignominious one.

Statues are toppled, careers Trotskyized.

Biological males suddenly have hijacked women’s sports—destroying five decades of women’s hard-won efforts to achieve equal treatment and respect in athletics.

What triggered the collective madness and this Jacobin takeover?

The Left’s perfect storm of the 120 days of riot, death, arson and looting of 2020? The COVID pandemic? The disastrous two-year lockdown? The 2016 election of the outsider Donald Trump?

All those catalysts and more.

As the country collapses under leftist nihilism, the revolution’s last gasp is to destroy Donald Trump—by empowering him. That is, the leftist legal vendetta is designed to win him just enough empathy to be nominated the Republican Party’s presidential candidate, but then to keep on indicting, gagging, and hemorrhaging him legally until Election Day 2024.

Trump was the first president to be impeached twice, to be tried by the Senate as a private citizen, and to have his private home raided by the FBI. Now he is the first president to have been indicted, effectively ending America’s moral authority abroad.

America now has three potential futures and two are bad.

First, the Jacobins have two more years to finish what they started as the founders’ dream descends into our worst nightmare.

Second, the revolution has so warped our legal system, our voting on Election Day, and the FBI, the CIA, the Justice Department, and the IRS, that even a despised, unpopular Left will “win” elections.

The third is that New York prosecutor Alan Bragg has jumped the shark.

His pathetic prosecution is so patently incoherent, illiberal, and in spirit anti-American, that two-thirds of the country will soon conclude the center is not holding. The Jacobins’ reign of terror is unsustainable. And so in 2024 the Left will not be defeated, but so defeated so that it is utterly discredited.

The choice is ours. [source]

It is America’s choice: Chaos or Constitutional rule.

Other examples of the Left’s insanity and destruction:

• The Left’s Moral Compass Isn’t Broken
• How the far-left is SABOTAGING America so they can RESET it [video]
• Why the Left Really Wants to Kill America
• The Leftist Effort to Revise American History
• Fighting Back against the Left's War on Our History
• Inflation as a Tool of the Radical Left

Secret Service paying over $30K a month for Malibu home to provide security for Hunter Biden

From Just the News.com (April 4, 2022):

The Secret Service is paying  over $30,000 a month to rent a Malibu mansion to provide security for President Biden's son Hunter Biden, according to a news report Monday.

The agency tasked with protecting the president and his family have been renting the house close Hunter's close to $20,000 a month Malibu property for close to a year, according to ABC News.

Don Mihalek, a current ABC News contributor and former senior Secret Service agent, said that the exorbitant rental figure is merely "the cost of doing business for the Secret Service."

"Typically, wherever a protectee sets up their residence, the Secret Service is forced to find someplace to rent nearby at market value," he said. "This isn't new. he Service has had to do this in past administrations, and unfortunately, the housing market right now has driven the prices up substantially."

The Secret Service commented that "Due to the need to maintain operational security, the U.S. Secret Service does not comment on the means, methods, or resources used to conduct our protective operations."

The Secret Service is responsible for protecting the president, his family, and anyone else the president selects for protection. [source]

Must be nice to be a Biden.

‘Obamaphone’ company pays $13.4 million to settle fraud claims

From Washington Times.com (April 4, 2022):

A company that the government paid to distribute “Obamaphones” — the nickname critics gave to government phones given to poor people — has agreed to pay $13.4 million to settle a case alleging that it doled out devices to tens of thousands of people who didn’t deserve them.

TracFone Wireless signed up more than 175,000 ineligible customers for the program between 2012 and 2015, according to the allegations the company paid to settle.

Officially known as the Lifeline program, it became known as the Obamaphone after news reports showed recipients thanking then-President Barack Obama for giving them phones. That sparked a debate about the generosity of the American welfare system.

Under the program, the Federal Communications Commission paid companies to sign people up and provide service for the subsidized phones. The philosophy was that a phone was critical to connecting with family and friends or applying for jobs, and should be available to those on welfare.

TracFone, through its SafeLink line, is the most prominent provider of Lifeline devices.

The Justice Department said TracFone hired sales agents to recruit customers, and some of those agents in Florida realized TracFone’s computer system allowed ineligible people to be enrolled.

Federal prosecutors say TracFone ignored warnings about the lapse for years, but eventually fixed its system in 2015, repaying $10.9 million for the bogus accounts. That money is credited to the $13.4 million settlement reached last week.

“Lifeline providers have a duty to ensure that only eligible subscribers are enrolled in the Lifeline Program,” said Michael D. Granston, deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department civil division’s commercial litigation branch.

The lawsuit was brought by a former Lifeline sales representative in Florida, Farrell Gordon, under the False Claims Act. The law allows private parties to sue over alleged wrongdoing on behalf of the federal government, and to claim a share of any settlement.

Mr. Gordon stands to get $462,500 from the TracFone settlement.

In court documents, he said he was deployed to soup kitchens and shelters to find low-income folks he could sign up. He was then assigned to sign people up at veterans’ hospitals.

He said his supervisors told him people getting veterans’ benefits or Medicare were categorically eligible for a Lifeline phone. In fact, those categories have nothing to do with the program.

They were told to fudge the qualifications and sign veterans up as Medicaid or Supplemental Security Income recipients, Mr. Gordon said. [source]

Good.

CONFIRMED: The FBI Has Spies in Catholic Churches to Hunt for ‘Domestic Terrorism’

From PJ Media.com (April 10):

A few weeks ago, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) asked Gestapo chief Merrick Garland, “Are you cultivating sources and spies in Latin Mass parishes and other Catholic parishes around the country?” Garland pleaded innocent, insisting, “No, the Justice Department does not do that and does not, uh, um, do investigations based on religion.” But it has now come to light — okay, get ready for the shock of your life — that Garland was lying. The feds did have informants in Catholic churches, snooping around and looking for evidence of that domestic terror threat that the Biden regime keeps insisting is the worst such threat we face today. Nor is there any indication that they’ve taken these spies out of the pews.

We all know that “domestic violent extremists,” a.k.a. “white supremacists,” are the biggest terror threat the nation faces today. After all, Old Joe Biden, Gestapo chief Merrick Garland, and the FBI have repeatedly told us so, and those sterling public servants wouldn’t lie to us, would they? In November 2021, FBI and Homeland Security Department officials increased investigations of “domestic extremists,” reiterating the claim that they are today’s foremost terror threat. The only problem with this was that there just weren’t enough “domestic violent extremists” to match the hysterical rhetoric, and so the FBI actually resorted to pressuring agents to inflate domestic extremism numbers, and even to fabricate such cases.

That imperative, plus the burning hatred that Catholic Joe’s regime clearly has for all forms of traditional Christianity and above all for pro-lifers, may have led to the fact that, as Fox News reported Monday, the FBI “recently sought to develop sources inside Christian churches and Catholic dioceses as part of an effort to combat domestic terrorism.” This is clear from internal FBI documents that the House Judiciary Committee released to the public on Monday.

The documents reveal that the FBI was attempting to use “mainline Catholic parishes” as “new avenues for tripwire and source development.” The feds wanted to educate sympathetic Catholics about “the warning signs of radicalization,” and then get them to help stop the rosary-praying terrorist by obtaining “their assistance to serve as suspicious activity tripwires.” This is nothing short of breathtaking in its resolute determination to construct a reality other than the one we happen to be living in. If there were a steady stream of terrorists routinely “radicalized” in Catholic churches and going out to bring the wrath of the Immaculate Heart of Mary upon the populace, there might be some justification for this program. As it is, it’s plain and simple harassment and scapegoating of Christians.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote to FBI top dog Christopher Wray on Monday, “Based on the limited information produced by the FBI to the Committee, we now know that the FBI relied on at least one undercover agent to produce its analysis, and that the FBI proposed that its agents engage in outreach to Catholic parishes to develop sources among the clergy and church leadership to inform on Americans practicing their faith.” He added, quite rightly, that “this information is outrageous and only reinforces the Committee’s need for all FBI material responsive to our request,” referring to material that the Committee had requested earlier but not received (and why not?).

Jordan added that what he had already received from the feds was bad enough: “The documents produced to date show how the FBI sought to enlist Catholic houses of worship as potential sources to monitor and report on their parishioners.” He felt it necessary to remind Wray, who likely thinks that Christians go to church on Sunday in order to plot hate crimes and figure out new ways to oppress brown people, of some basic truths: “Americans attend church to worship and congregate for their spiritual and personal betterment. They must be free to exercise their fundamental First Amendment rights without worrying that the FBI may have planted so-called ‘tripwire’ sources or other informants in their houses of worship.”

First Amendment rights? Come on, man! This is the Biden regime we’re talking about, the alleged administration that tried to institute a Disinformation Governance Board within the Department of Homeland Security and colluded with Twitter and the other social media giants to deplatform and silence dissidents. Does anyone really think they’re going to respect the freedom of religion? [source]

I have a feeling it won’t stop with Catholic churches. The FBI could have spies in other Christian denominations too. Is it just Christianity that the Biden regime is worried about? Or are the other main stream religions too? Probably not.

Amazon’s Roomba Deal Is Really About Mapping Your Home

From Bloomberg.com (Aug. 5, 2022):

Amazon.com Inc. hasn’t just bought a maker of robot vacuum cleaners. It’s acquired a mapping company. To be more precise: a company that can make maps of your home.

The company announced a $1.7 billion deal on Friday for iRobot Corp., the maker of the Roomba vacuum cleaner. And yes, Amazon will make money from selling those gadgets. But the real value resides in those robots’ ability to map your house. As ever with Amazon, it’s all about the data.

A smart home, you see, isn’t actually terribly smart. It only knows that your Philips Hue lightbulbs and connected television are in your sitting room because you’ve told it as much. It certainly doesn’t know where exactly the devices are within that room. The more it knows about a given space, the more tightly it can choreograph the way they interact with you.

The smart home is clearly a priority for Amazon. Its Echo smart speakers still outsell those from rivals Apple and Google, with an estimated 9.9 million units sold in the three months through March, according to the analysis firm Strategy Analytics. It’s complemented that with a $1 billion deal for the video doorbell-maker Ring in 2018, and the wi-fi company Eero a year later.

But you still can’t readily buy the Astro, Amazon’s household robot that was revealed with some fanfare last year, is still only available in limited quantities. That, too, seemed at least partly an effort to map the inside of your property, a task that will now fall to iRobot. The Bedford, Mass.-based company’s most recent products include a technology it calls Smart Maps, though customers can opt out of sharing the data.

Slightly more terrifying, the maps also represent a wealth of data for marketers. The size of your house is a pretty good proxy for your wealth. A floor covered in toys means you likely have kids. A household without much furniture is a household to which you can try to sell more furniture. This is all useful intel for a company such as Amazon which, you may have noticed, is in the business of selling stuff.

What’s more, the acquisition looks like a snip for the retailer, which had $61 billion of cash at the end of June. The $1.7 billion deal represents a 22% premium to iRobot’s share price before the deal was announced. Less than a year ago, iRobot was valued at $2.5 billion. And it won’t take much to cover the target’s cost of capital. Its predicted profit may only be about $78 million next year, but it also has sales, marketing, and administrative costs of $389 million, a number that Amazon can surely bring down by pumping the products through its existing sales channels.

Amazon would not be alone in wanting to map your home. Apple Inc. also unveiled a tool in June for the next release of iOS, its mobile operating system, that uses the laser scanner on the latest iPhones to build 3-D models that it’s dubbed “RoomPlan”.

Amazon’s 2017 deal for Whole Foods gave it insights into the grocery industry. The $3.5 billion deal announced for One Medical Ltd. last month provides a wealth of health-care data. Now iRobot can give Jeff Bezos & Co. a sense of what’s in your home. [source]

The Fourth Turning Tipping Point

From International Man.com:

A Fourth Turning is a period in history when all the negative developments over a four-generation period reach a crescendo – a time when the sociopaths are the rulers and are putting the squeeze on the populace.

In addition to an effort to institute totalitarian rule, symptoms include the breakdown of both morality and logic. Black is white; up is down. Confusion and chaos increase in both frequency and magnitude as the Fourth Turning advances.

Those of a libertarian mindset tend to be especially sensitive to and cognizant of these symptoms as they unfold. Since a classic Fourth Turning takes place over roughly twenty years, by the time the halfway mark is reached and the symptoms are peaking, it may appear that “It just keeps getting worse. Won’t people ever wake up and understand that this is crazy?”

Well, historically, the answer has always been “Yes.”

There’s always a turning point, even if it seems that it’s not only a long time coming but that there’s no level of oppression that won’t be tolerated by the masses.

The reason for this is that a Fourth Turning is made possible by complacency. Although there has been a deterioration in self-reliance and reasoning for three generations, a population does not become truly complacent until the latter stages. The deeper the complacency, the greater the oppression by leaders.

Interestingly, complacency is at its greatest in populations where there previously was the greatest prosperity. Therefore, in the present Fourth Turning, the countries that have been most dramatically impacted have been those that had previously been the most prosperous.

Not surprising, then, that the level of governmental controls and, indeed, the oppression of social wokeness is now most extreme in the US, UK, Canada, EU, etc., as, since the last Fourth Turning in the 1940s, they have been the world’s leaders in prosperity. In Second and Third World countries, the level of oppression – and the chaos and confusion that go with it – has been significantly less.

So, if we are to see a turning point, when will it be, and what will cause it?

Historically, there is generally both a political turning point and a social one. They’re not always concurrent, and that’s the case this time around.

In February of 2022, the US placed sanctions on Russia as a result of the Ukraine war. This was predictable. However, the US concurrently confiscated the private property of Russian citizens.

At the time, this didn’t get a lot of publicity in the West, but I believed that, in retrospect, it would be seen as the political turning point. The reason is that most of the countries in the world do not see themselves as world powers. They see themselves as countries that are continually impacted by world powers.

As such, they try to cooperate with the big boys and suffer as little as possible from what the big boys do.

For them, the announcement by the US was a direct threat: “Omigod, if they confiscated assets of the Russian people, they could do the same to us.”

This generated a quiet move away from US influence. Representatives of many countries started to travel to Moscow and Beijing to form new alliances, new trade agreements, and new loyalties to replace the ever-riskier relationship with the US.

Such changes don’t happen overnight, but in the last year, we’ve seen moves away from the petrodollar, the US reserve currency, and increased applications to join the BRICS. Recently, Malaysia became the first country to announce that its preparation to step away from the US is now complete, and they are formally distancing itself from the US.

This trend will expand over the coming year as more countries “come out” in their intention – a trend that will serve both to isolate the US and to increase the collective strength of the BRICS.

But what of that other concern – the social tipping point?

Again, complacency is the overriding stumbling block. In recent years, conservative thinkers have become more and more irate over socialistic notions and, particularly, wokeism. The overreach of Black Lives Matter, climate change, LGBTQ rights, presumed white privilege, and vaccine mandates have become increasingly dominant and seemingly unending.

But recently, there have been cracks in what seemed to be a developing permanence of wokeism. To wit:

• Stanford Law School students drove out a conservative speaker, with angry insults, with students even calling for his daughters to be raped. The moderating Administrator added to the fire, denouncing the speaker as he left. But, in a surprise move, the otherwise liberal Dean suspended the Administrator and announced that all students would be required to attend training on “freedom of speech and the norms of the legal profession.”
• Ana Kasparian of the left-wing “Young Turks” broke with her peers to state, in no uncertain terms, that “I’m a woman. Please don’t ever refer to me as a person with a uterus, a birthing person, or a person who menstruates.How do people not realize how degrading this is?”
• Andrew Tate, a former kickboxer, has become extremely popular with young men and boys due to his presentation as ultra-masculine. His followers comment that Tate represents “everything about their nature that they’ve been forced to suppress.”

This is just a sampling of an increasing surprise reversal of the woke trend. And the key to it is that it has not emanated from the conservative side; it’s coming from liberals themselves.

Essentially, what we’re seeing is the effects of overload – those who previously supported wokeism… until it had taken over their lives. A breaking point is being reached in increasing numbers of liberals as wokeism is simply becoming intolerable.

So, what does this mean for the future? Is the globalist push nearing an end? No, unfortunately, even if it is to be defeated, it still has years to go. And the worst is yet to come. But the pushback is now quietly underway for the first time.

Is wokeism a dead duck? Hardly. But we may be witnessing the turning point – the point at which the narrative becomes intolerable to increasing numbers of people, and the tide turns.

To be sure, leaders never tire of the rhetoric that they create. But sooner or later, their minions – those who are pushing their propaganda – get a bellyful and move on.

This doesn’t happen overnight, but we may be reaching a turning point when it begins to lose its appeal to the very people who are spouting it.

Editor’s Note: It’s clear there are some ominous social, political, cultural, and economic trends playing out right now. Many of which seem to point to an unfortunate decline of the West.

That’s precisely why legendary speculator Doug Casey and his team just released this free report, which shows you exactly what’s happening and what you can do about it. Click here to download it now. [source]

There have been quite a few psychopathic rulers in the past: Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, etc. But the Fourth Turning Tipping Point crescendo might be the last tipping point if the ultimate psycho-ruler appears: The Anti-Christ.

The CDC Massively Violates Its ‘Pledge’ To Americans – Why Should Anyone Trust It Now?

From Issues Insights.com (April 5, 2022):

One of the five items on the CDC’s “Pledge to the American People” is that it will “base all public health decisions on the highest quality scientific data that is derived openly and objectively.” Can anyone honestly say that it has lived up to this promise during the COVID outbreak?

Three recent events should make it abundantly clear that the answer is no. 

First, the CDC has been caught hiding vast amounts of scientific data regarding COVID. The New York Times, of all places, reported in late February that “For more than a year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has collected data on hospitalizations for COVID-19 in the United States and broken it down by age, race and vaccination status. But it has not made most of the information public.” Why? Because the data, especially data on the efficacy of vaccines, “might be misinterpreted.”

Dr. Nicole Saphier, a physician at Memorial Sloan Kettering, tweeted in reaction to the news that: “The CDC’s response when questioned about their withholding of COVID data and lack of transparency is essentially ‘we don’t trust you to be able to understand the truth.’ The condescension is palpable.”

She added that “People who have blindly trusted the CDC the last 2 years are about to have their world turned upside down as the lack of transparency and manipulation of data become undeniably evident.”

So much for the CDC’s pledge to be “open and objective.” (This revelation also shows that the CDC has violated another of its pledges: to “treat all persons with dignity, honesty, and respect.”)

How about the CDC’s pledge that it will base all its public health decisions on science? Well, try to square that with the recent revelation that it was working hand-in-glove with a teachers’ union when setting guidelines for school reopenings and mask mandates.

House Republicans released a report last week revealing how senior CDC officials shared a draft guidance document on school opening policies in early 2021 with the gigantic American Federation for Teachers. The account shows the union pushed CDC Director Rochelle Walensky to make changes, including, among other things, adding a “trigger” to close schools automatically if COVID rates hit a certain level.

“The CDC obliged,” the report says, “and thousands of schools across the country remained closed throughout the 2020-2021 school year.”

It further demonstrates how the CDC took language proposed by the AFT and in some cases included it word-for-word in its guideline.

To make matters worse, the Biden administration also tried to keep a muzzle on CDC scientists who were asked questions about this cozy relationship.

This violates every part of that CDC pledge.

As Republican Reps. Steve Scalise and James Comer put it: “The facts are clear: Biden’s CDC overrode routine practice to allow a radical teachers union that donated millions of dollars to Democrat campaigns to bypass scientific norms and rewrite official agency guidance.”

We also recently learned that the CDC can’t even be counted on to handle its own data properly.

A couple of weeks ago it admitted that it had over-counted COVID-related deaths by 72,277 across 26 states – or about 7.5% of all supposed COVID deaths. The CDC had inflated pediatric deaths by 24%. The massive error was attributed to a “coding logic error.” Good luck to anyone looking for more information on how it could screw this up so badly.

We’ve long speculated that the CDC has been inflating COVID death statistics by treating anyone who died with COVID as a death from COVID – even if they died of cancer, or Alzheimer’s, a fall off the roof, or something else unrelated to the disease. But even we didn’t think the CDC was as incompetent as it has now admitted to being.

All this is to say nothing of the fact that the CDC has repeatedly changed its guidelines on masks and vaccines and moved the goalposts when it comes to what it’s trying to achieve. Based on what? Who knows? Anyone remember how we were told in early 2020 that all we had to do was “flatten the curve”?

And with every change, the CDC has conveniently managed to keep itself at the center of our lives – calling a lie on yet another of its pledges: to “place the benefits to society above the benefits to our institution.”

As a result of all this, the CDC has managed to break still another of its pledges: to “be a diligent steward of the funds entrusted to our agency.” That’s four of the five it lists. (The only one we don’t know about is the pledge to treat its own employees ethically. We wouldn’t be surprised if it’s violated that one, too.)

It is long past time for a day of reckoning at the CDC. The public has suffered long enough at the hands of this out-of-control, unaccountable, power-hungry federal bureaucracy. [source]

The CDC like other gov’t agencies ran by the Left thinks they know better than the average American what is good for Americans. Other CDC abuse of power article:

CDC Tracked Millions of Phones to See If Americans Followed COVID Lockdown Orders

Scientists Make Message to Send Earth's Location to Aliens, Ignoring Stephen Hawking's Warning

From Newsweek.com (April 1, 2022):

Scientists have designed a radio message to be beamed into deep space that reveals Earth's location, which they hope will be received and understood by an intelligent alien civilization.

The message is essentially an updated version of the famous Arecibo message, transmitted in 1974, which had the same purpose. Broadcast from the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico, the message consisted of 1,679 bits arranged into 73 lines of 23 characters.

The message was transmitted in binary code—ones and zeroes. Once decoded, the message forms a visual graphic consisting of a stick figure of a human as well as representations of our solar system, DNA, and the Arecibo telescope.

Now, scientists have designed a new message to improve upon the Arecibo transmission. Called the Beacon in the Galaxy (BITG) message, it contains more information about basic mathematics and science than the Arecibo message did. It is hoped that these concepts will be universally understood by life forms of at least similar intelligence to humans.

Matthew Chong, a physics and maths student at Cambridge University and co-author of a draft report outlining the project, told Newsweek: "Extended from the 1974 Arecibo message and the 1999/2003 Cosmic Call, the main part of this BITG Message contains a new set of graphical information in the form of images and special 'alphabets' to represent numbers, elements, DNA, land, ocean, and human, etc., starting by an artificial header and footer that consists of prime numbers."

Jonathan Jiang, project lead and scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), told Newsweek that the BITG message also depicts a group of cosmic landmarks "to indicate the location of Earth within the Milky Way galaxy."

The researchers do not intend to send the message themselves, but propose that it could one day be transmitted from the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope in China and the SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array in northern California.

The question of whether or not we are alone in the universe has tantalized scientists for decades, but efforts to find intelligent—or even microbial—life anywhere else but Earth have been unsuccessful. Some scientists think that's a good thing.

Stephen Hawking's Concerns About Aliens

The late physics professor Stephen Hawking expressed concern multiple times about humans calling out into the vastness of space and contacting aliens.

In 2015, Hawking appeared at an event announcing the launch of the Breakthrough Listen project, which studies radio waves in an effort to find out if any of them are artificial in origin.

Hawking showed support for efforts to find alien life by listening, but warned against actively reaching out ourselves, using humanity's own behavior as a sign that aliens won't necessarily be friendly.

"If you look at history, contact between humans and less intelligent organisms have often been disastrous from their point of view, and encounters between civilizations with advanced versus primitive technologies have gone badly for the less advanced," he said.

Hawking went on to say that aliens could be vastly more powerful than us and "may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria."

Later, in the 2016 online documentary series Stephen Hawking's Favourite Places, the physicist revisited the topic in reference to the exoplanet Gliese 832 c, which is considered to be a potentially habitable world.

"One day we might receive a signal from a planet like Gliese 832 c, but we should be wary of answering back," he said.

Jamilah Hah is also involved in the BITG project. She thinks that the benefits of contacting aliens outweigh the potential risks.

"Stephen Hawking's quote is absolutely inspiring and my personal conclusion was that any species capable of understanding and interpreting our message will likely be equally if not more intelligent and wary of our existence," she told Newsweek.

"Thus, as long as contact is approached with a clear sign of peace, it can be assumed that the hopeful possibilities and discoveries that come alongside communication outweigh the risk."

The draft report outlining the proposed BITG message was published on the arXiv pre-print archive this year.

Correction, 4/5/22, 4:31 a.m. ET: This article and its headline have been updated to clarify that the BITG project authors do not intend to broadcast the BITG message. [source]

I agree with Stephen Hawking. The location of our planet should never be transmitted. Space aliens could be benevolent. But what if they are not? Being intelligent and having superior technology doesn’t necessarily make them benevolent. Intelligence and morality are two separate characteristics.

Keep in mind they wouldn’t be human. So, they would be the equivalent of a psychopath—having no empathy toward mankind. All we could hope for is that they would be indifferent to us and not dominate us or destroy the planet. Definitely they would not be our saviors as some new age religions suggest.

Milennials, Gen Z less likely to embrace religion, patriotism than older Americans: poll

From Christian Post.com (April 1):

The share of Americans who see the value of patriotism and religious faith has declined sharply in the past four years as younger Americans detach themselves from traditional American values long honored by older generations, according to a new poll.

The Wall Street Journal and the University of Chicago’s NORC conducted a survey asking 1,019 adults what values they view as “very important.” The responses, collected from March 1-13, show a drop in the percentage of Americans who place a high premium on the values of patriotism, religion, having children and community involvement compared to previous surveys asking the same questions.

In 2023, 38% of Americans identified patriotism as a “very important” value. This represents a noticeable decline from the 61% who described patriotism as “very important” in 2019 and the 70% who said the same in 1998.

The percentage of Americans who characterize religion as “very important” has nosedived throughout the same time, decreasing from 62% in 1998 to 48% in 2019 to 39% in 2023. While a majority of Americans surveyed in 1998 (59%) said having children was “very important” to them, just 43% said so in 2019. By 2023, just 30% of respondents cited having children as a “very important” value.

As Americans have placed less emphasis on patriotism, religion and having children over the past quarter-century, the share of respondents who value community involvement jumped from 47% in 1998 to 62% in 2019. However, the percentage of Americans who see community involvement as “very important” fell substantially in the past four years to 27%.

On the other hand, the share of respondents who think money is “very important” has consistently risen over the past 25 years. Forty-three percent of Americans classified money as “very important” in 2023, an increase from the 41% who listed finances as one of their most important considerations in 2019 and 30% who called money “very important” in 1998.

The results of the 2023 survey demonstrate a generation gap regarding the values viewed by respondents as “very important.” Majorities of respondents older than 65 characterized patriotism (59%) and religion (55%) as “very important,” while less than one-third (32%) had the same view about having children.

On the other hand, significantly smaller shares of respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 identified patriotism (23%) and religion (31%) as “very important.” Only 23% of young Americans thought having children was “very important.”

Additionally, views toward religion, patriotism, community involvement and having children differed based on partisan identification. Majorities of Republicans said patriotism (59%) and religion (53%) were “very important” to them, while significantly smaller shares of Democrats (23%) and independents (29%) listed patriotism as a “very important” value. Similarly, small shares of Democrats (27%) and independents (38%) said the same about religion.

Less than half of Republicans (38%), Democrats (26%) and independents (20%) told pollsters that having children was “very important” to them. Thirty-two percent of Democrats cited community involvement as a “very important” value followed by lower shares of Republicans (25%) and independents (23%). Equal shares of Republicans and Democrats (45%) pointed to money as a “very important” value while 36% of independents did.

The survey also asked respondents to weigh in on the hot-button cultural issues of the day. A majority of respondents (56%) expressed support for requiring trans-identified athletes to play on sports teams that align with their biological sex, while 17% supported allowing trans-identified athletes to compete on teams designated for the opposite sex.

Critics of allowing trans-identified athletes to compete in sports teams designated for the opposite sex assert that the biological differences between men and women give men an unfair advantage over women in athletics. USA Powerlifting cites “increased body and muscle mass, bone density, bone structure, and connective tissue” as factors that give male athletes an advantage over their female counterparts in sports.

Concerns about the fairness of allowing men to compete on women’s sports teams has prompted 19 states to pass laws requiring athletes to compete on teams that match their biological sex: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Overall, a plurality of respondents (43%) indicated that they thought society had gone too far in “accepting people who are transgender,” while a plurality of respondents (37%) believed society had not gone far enough in “accepting people who are gay, lesbian, or bisexual.” Pluralities of those surveyed stated that businesses (39%) as well as schools and universities (34%) had “not gone far enough” in “taking steps to promote racial and ethnic diversity.”

Majorities of Republicans thought that society had gone too far in “accepting people who are transgender” (75%) and “accepting people who are gay, lesbian or bisexual” (52%). Fifty-five percent of Republicans thought schools had gone too far in promoting “racial and ethnic diversity” while 52% said the same about businesses.

When asked how they felt about “people identifying their pronouns, such as ‘he/him, she/her, or they/them,’ in email, social media communication, or conversations,” a plurality of those surveyed said they viewed the focus on pronouns as neither favorable nor unfavorable (37%), followed by 27% who had a “very unfavorable” view of people announcing their pronouns in written communication, 16% who viewed the phenomenon as “somewhat favorable,” 12% who described it as “very favorable” and 8% who characterized it as “somewhat favorable.”

Thirty-five percent of respondents had a “very unfavorable” view of “being asked to use gender-neutral pronouns, such as ‘they/them,’ when addressing another person,” followed by 32% who had a neutral opinion on the matter and 15% who had a “somewhat unfavorable” opinion about requests to use gender-neutral pronouns. The remaining respondents saw requests to use gender-neutral pronouns as “very favorable” (11%) or “somewhat favorable” (7%). [source]

This is sad news. Then again this is what the Left wants and what they indoctrinate in the classrooms. France didn’t have patriotism in the 1940s either. Then Hitler invaded the country. He knew very few would stand up and defend the country.

The main stream religions like Christianity used to be popular. Now they have been replaced by other religions (cults?): DIE\Wokeism and the pagan religion (scam?) called Climate Change formerly known as Global Warming (or is that title coming back?). Neither have a deity. Both require human sacrifice. Nature abhors a vacuum, so when people remove God out of society, they have to worship something else.

Pro-Trump Memester Found Guilty Of Election Interference

From Daily Wire.com (May 31):

Douglass Mackey, who went by the alias Ricky Vaughn on social media, was convicted by a federal jury on Friday for a “scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote,” according to a statement from the Justice Department.

Mackey was charged one week after President Joe Biden assumed office and roughly four years after his purported offenses. The Justice Department claimed that Mackey had conspired to “injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate” people from exercising their right to vote.

“Mackey has been found guilty by a jury of his peers of attempting to deprive individuals from exercising their sacred right to vote for the candidate of their choice in the 2016 Presidential Election,” United States Attorney Breon Peace remarked in the statement. “Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality and flatly rejects his cynical attempt to use the constitutional right of free speech as a shield for his scheme to subvert the ballot box and suppress the vote.”

James Lawrence, an attorney for Mackey, previously said in an interview with The Daily Wire that his memes were satirical and were therefore not relevant to the law he purportedly violated. Mackey could serve as many as 10 years in prison after he is sentenced.

The Justice Department said that Mackey had worked with other influential Twitter users between September 2016 and November 2016 to “disseminate fraudulent messages” which persuaded voters for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to cast their ballots via phone or social media. One image depicted a black woman standing in front of an “African Americans for Hillary” sign and said “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home,” “Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925.”

Some 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted the hotline, according to the Justice Department, although it was unclear how many were participating in the joke rather than trying to cast their ballots. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey suspended Mackey from the platform.

“One of the arguments is that the conduct of the issue does not fall within the scope of the statute as it’s written,” Lawrence told The Daily Wire. “I mean, this is a statute that was passed after the Civil War as part of the reconstruction process in the south to guarantee the rights of freed slaves to vote without fear of intimidation.”

Some contended that Mackey’s right to free speech had been violated in a politically motivated case by the Biden administration. “It’s a three-fer: the prosecutorial creation of a crime Congress has not prescribed, the trivialization of civil-rights law, and the intrusion of government as a monitor of political speech,” former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy wrote in an opinion piece for National Review.

The conviction of Mackey comes one day after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted former President Donald Trump and called on him to surrender in New York for an arraignment on Tuesday amid legal proceedings over his alleged hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election cycle. The case has been similarly characterized as politically motivated since Bragg has earned a reputation for his soft-on-crime approach with respect to violent offenses in New York City. [source]

Stupid. He should have never been found guilty. There was no election interference. If anybody fell for his joke that’s on them. Election interference is intimidating people from voting. That’s what the Left does best.

I agree, his free speech had been violated. Welcome to the new banana-republic.

Why I'm Not a Libertarian

From Jeremy Egerer on American Thinker.com (Feb. 27, 2022):

The reason I'm not a libertarian is because I'd like to be free.  The libertarian says he does, too, but is living proof that wanting something and getting it are two completely different matters — and his theory stands directly in the way of his practice.

His first problem is his dislike of government, which he shares many times with other "conservatives."  This means he's the least likely to actually go into it (and who wants to hire a man who doesn't believe in his job?), and since he forfeits the position, all kinds of important bureaucratic and so-called "oppressive" jobs get filled by his enemies.  A quick look at the policies of the FBI, the CIA, the FDA, the CDC, and OSHA proves it.  He says he'd like to downsize or even get rid of them, but he can't, so instead many times he does nothing — not a fight, but a forfeiture. 

Second is his tendency, also general among the right wing, to say public schooling and other cultural and state organs can be "neutral": that you can cater to everybody and nobody at the same time, somehow, and still churn out solid people, and that we don't have to clean house of obvious heretics — a job nobody securely on top ever forfeits, and which most people who love truth usually enjoy.  The leftists don't believe that any power can be entirely neutral, and that's why they own the institutions and will continue to own them even when we win elections.

Third is his belief many times that taxation is "theft" and that a government that taxes (and does) least is the best — a joke philosophy that if taken seriously would lead to his immediate domination by a foreign power, and leaves him underfunded, impotent, and incapable of being believed in.  But more importantly than this, I would add that his love of business, and the "right" of every man to do whatever he wants "with his own property," nearly without exception, leaves international corporations free to sell us out at home and abroad, and to dictate what their employees (and many times even their customers) can and can't say and do.  These days, it means bosses can tell employees what to put in their bodies.  The libertarian believes that the only kind of slavery is to government and ignores that the rich man who pays you, especially in a world dominated by large and left-wing corporations, to some degree owns you.

(Am I saying I'm totally against libertarianism — that it has nothing good to offer, that it isn't tailored in any way to reality, and that its adherents are what the critics say — a bunch of selfish monsters, stoners, autists, and oglers of underage women?  Not at all, and in fact I agree largely with the spirit of Ayn Rand, which believes deeply in inequality through ability and character, that the universe belongs to the strong of mind and heart, that American society was a miracle but that it's become a sewer, that philosophy and worldview are the life-blood of all civilization, that a stance of "neutrality" is a forfeiture of your power, that the universe can largely be understood and to some degree conquered, that alcohol and drugs are a bad fit for a thinking man, that people who value the wrong things will be slaves, that altruism as a political stance is a slippery slope toward slavery and murder, and that we shouldn't be giving rights to countries who don't give their citizens rights — the manliest philosophy to ever come out of a woman, brilliantly stated, free of all turgidity and ivory-tower obfuscation, and lacking mainly in its throwaway attitude towards God and religion, its absolute failure to value compromise and a piecemeal victory, its refusal to take any tyranny other than government seriously, its inability to see that big money plus human nature equals corruption, and its belief that a productive morality is the main thrust of morality.)

Even if libertarians held a clear majority, there are instances where numbers and a "principled cause" were beaten by better organizers anyway — for instance, when Spain, in 1936, blew up in a civil war between fascists and leftists.  That year, revolution was happening in the big cities.  Churches were ransacked by the left wing, and around 7,000 clergy were murdered in cold blood.  They threw prisons open, and the criminals ran amok. 

The factories were taken over by radicals, too, and workers' communes were set up to spread the wealth around, and rich men and right-wingers went into hiding so they wouldn't be shot.  Farmers and bakers brought in food by the truckloads in exchange for manufactured goods, and good wine flowed from the cellars of the "liberated" estates.  The mood in leftist Barcelona and Madrid for a while was high, and from the majority's perspective, Spain was heading for the New Millennium.   

They weren't, of course, because the fascists wouldn't have it, and they staged a counter-revolution; but during all this, the biggest and most hopeful sect of revolutionaries, by far, was the anarchists.  Their flags flew over all the cafes and barber shops and every factory they took over.  Anarchist pamphlets flooded the streets, and they held an overwhelming and energetic majority, and from every vantage point it looked as if Spain was going their way. 

But there was something standing in the anarchists' way, and it was their belief in anarchy.  According to Adam Hochschild, author of Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, the CNT, a federation of anarchist unions, had two million members and only a single officer.  It turns out that anarchists hated bureaucracy.  They ran no candidates for parliament.  They had some sort of a national committee — but nobody could serve more than a year, and a recall could happen any time by a vote.  They won union strikes but were 100% against union contracts.  All forms of government were disgusting to them, and they believed that Soviet Russia was a slaughterhouse not because Stalin was an ass, or because of one-party rule, or because they had no freedom of speech or assembly or religion, but because Russia had a government at all.  These were the people who took over Catalonia and the surrounding regions.

But the anarchists couldn't hold them.  Their "allies," the vastly outnumbered communists, believed deeply in government, and thus were experts in top-down organization.  They were also experts in silencing opposition, in disarming their opponents, and in getting foreign funding.  While the anarchists were honest and trumpeted the revolution, the Communists were practical, and tried to pretend it wasn't happening.  To the communists, the war could be won only by keeping the West neutral — in other words, with an appeal to foreign investors and the liberal bourgeois.  To the anarchists, there was no point in a war without a revolution.  The commies aimed for less so they could win it.  The anarchists didn't want it if they couldn't have the whole thing.

Little more needs to be said here.  The anarchists were suppressed by the communists.  The communists were bulldozed by the fascists.  I'm not saying Spain would have done better under anarchists.  I'm saying that even if you have the vast majority of the country on your side, if you won't or don't know how to play politics, if your ideals are too libertarian and cat-like, or too idealistic to be practical, or too stupid, or even just out of step with the times, you're going to get wrecked.  And if it was because of your pride, you deserve it. [source]

Good points. They also believe in free trade with countries who openly don’t have free markets like China and who are anti-free market. Free trade has to be fair trade or it doesn’t work properly. Libertarians are skeptical of the Ruling Class because of power corrupting, but don’t understand why it corrupts. The “why” is the Fall of mankind—being corrupt is part our nature.

Tulsi Gabbard Triggers Leftists With Excellent Suggestion for Florida on Parental Rights Law

From Red State.com (April 4, 2022):

As we previously reported, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the Florida “Parental Rights in Education” bill into law last Monday as The Usual Suspects on the left vowed to fight it in court and as “woke” Disney pledged to lend their support in various ways including via funding to try and get the law overturned.

Though the law has been dubbed by critics as the “don’t say gay” law, nowhere in the text of it does the word “gay” even appear, much less is it written that teachers are banned from saying “gay.” To reiterate points we’ve already made, here’s what the law actually mandates as far as instruction on sensitive sexual matters goes:

“Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

You’d think making sure teachers didn’t overstep their bounds in how they approach these topics in the classroom with young children wouldn’t be considered “controversial” at all, but the radical left being who they are have portrayed the “issue” that way in a campaign that so far has failed to convince even a majority of their own voters, who along with conservatives also support the measure.

And speaking to that point, former Congresswoman and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard took to the Twitter machine earlier to not only express her support for the law but to also to note her surprise that the limiting of the instruction/discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity topics only applied to grades K-3.

Observing that most people were well aware at this point that “parental rights are under attack by the government all across this country,” Gabbard said, “We should all support the Parental Rights in Education bill that recently passed in Florida, which very simply bans government and government schools from indoctrinating ‘woke’ sexual values in or schools to a captive audience.”

“A captive audience” Gabbard noted, “that is by law required to attend.”

She went on to suggest that the law maybe should have gone even further.

“I gotta tell you I was shocked to learn it only protects kids from kindergarten until third grade,” she stated. “Third grade? What about 12th grade or not at all? Government has no place in personal lives. Government has no place in our bedrooms. Parents are the ones responsible for raising their kids and instilling in them a moral foundation, not the government.”

She then pivoted to where she believes the real focus in public education should be: Reading, writing, arithmetic, and history, where she says our schools are “failing” students.

“The reality that we are facing in our country is our schools are failing. Nationally, 34 percent of students are below basic reading level in the fourth grade. 25 percent of high school graduates are functionally illiterate,” she pointed out.

“Now I’m confident that if our schools focused on educating our kids, teaching them the fundamentals … we would see our literacy rates improve and set our young people up for success to be thinking logically, to be thinking critically, and thinking for themselves. This is what our public schools should focus on” Gabbard asserted.

The comment section of her tweet was of course bursting at the seams with triggered Democrats, but she made some great points I’ve also heard some Republicans make about how there needs to be more of a sense of urgency in the party among political leaders about how “woke” groups and educators work to indoctrinate students in all grades, whether it be on topics related to sexual orientation and transgenderism to critical race theory and hating America.

DeSantis and the Republicans in the Florida state legislature obviously have been trying to address some of those concerns with this and other legislation as have other red-state governors and state legislatures, which is a good thing. The worry I think people who oppose these indoctrination efforts have the most is in wondering how much backbone these same Republicans will have when the left/media/woke corporations begin their inevitable coordinated trash campaigns complete with Hollywood elitists chiming in with lectures and then the legal threats that almost always follow.

DeSantis and company have shown they’re committed to not backing down in the face of concerted media/leftist PR efforts. The onus will be on parents in other states to make sure the Republicans who represent their interests not only get in the fight but stay in it as well. Because if we can’t get a handle on how far radicals on the left are willing to go to infiltrate schools and pump poison into the minds of impressionable kids, everything else falls apart. [source]

She has a point.

Next step: Pedophilia

From American Thinker.com (April 4, 2022):

The dishonesty over the recently signed Parental Rights in Education Bill in Florida has reached a fever pitch, with LGBTQ+ groups and now the Disney Corporation proclaiming that it is a "don't say gay" bill.

The pertinent text of the Bill reads:

Requires district school boards to adopt procedures that comport with certain provisions of law for notifying student's parent of specified information; requires such procedures to reinforce fundamental right of parents to make decisions regarding upbringing & control of their children; prohibits school district from adopting procedures or student support forms that prohibit school district personnel from notifying parent about specified information or that encourage student to withhold from parent such information; prohibits school district personnel from discouraging or prohibiting parental notification & involvement in critical decisions affecting student's mental, emotional, or physical well-being; prohibits classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in certain grade levels; requires school districts to notify parents of healthcare services; authorizes parent to bring action against school district to obtain declaratory judgment; provides for additional award of injunctive relief, damages, & reasonable attorney fees & court costs to certain parents.

Not a word about gay.  The bill insists that parents, not educators, should be leading discussions with their own children about sexuality and sexual identity.  To think that a five- to eight-year-old has the mental or emotional capacity to grasp the concept of sexuality or gender identity is ludicrous.

In America, children cannot be interviewed by a police officer or prosecutor without an adult being present, and only then with parental consent.  To think children in an educational setting would be forced to engage in a discussion on sexuality or gender identity without the expressed consent of their parents is ludicrous.

What is striking is how adamant the radical Left and LGBTQ+ community have been in their quest to impose sexuality and gender identity on children as young as five years old.  But why?

Here's a thought.  If children can be encouraged to consent to their sexuality or gender identity at a young age (behind the backs of their parents), what prevents someone from  insisting that, if they've made this consent, that they should not then be able to consent to sex with an adult? [source]

Actually, that is happening now in a way. The Left is now calling a pedophile a “minor attractive person.” We don’t offend the pedophiles (like Biden) I guess. It won’t be too long before pedophiles will be included in the LGBTQ+ community.

The U.S. made a breakthrough battery discovery — then gave the technology to China

From NPR.org (Aug. 3, 2022):

When a group of engineers and researchers gathered in a warehouse in Mukilteo, Wash., 10 years ago, they knew they were onto something big. They scrounged up tables and chairs, cleared out space in the parking lot for experiments and got to work.

They were building a battery — a vanadium redox flow battery — based on a design created by two dozen U.S. scientists at a government lab. The batteries were about the size of a refrigerator, held enough energy to power a house, and could be used for decades. The engineers pictured people plunking them down next to their air conditioners, attaching solar panels to them, and everyone living happily ever after off the grid.

"It was beyond promise," said Chris Howard, one of the engineers who worked there for a U.S. company called UniEnergy. "We were seeing it functioning as designed, as expected."

But that's not what happened. Instead of the batteries becoming the next great American success story, the warehouse is now shuttered and empty. All the employees who worked there were laid off. And more than 5,200 miles away, a Chinese company is hard at work making the batteries in Dalian, China.

The Chinese company didn't steal this technology. It was given to them — by the U.S. Department of Energy. First in 2017, as part of a sublicense, and later, in 2021, as part of a license transfer. An investigation by NPR and the Northwest News Network found the federal agency allowed the technology and jobs to move overseas, violating its own licensing rules while failing to intervene on behalf of U.S. workers in multiple instances.

Now, China has forged ahead, investing millions into the cutting-edge green technology that was supposed to help keep the U.S. and its economy out front.

Department of Energy officials declined NPR's request for an interview to explain how the technology that cost U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars ended up in China. After NPR sent department officials written questions outlining the timeline of events, the federal agency terminated the license with the Chinese company, Dalian Rongke Power Co. Ltd.

"DOE takes America's manufacturing obligations within its contracts extremely seriously," the department said in a written statement. "If DOE determines that a contractor who owns a DOE-funded patent or downstream licensee is in violation of its U.S. manufacturing obligations, DOE will explore all legal remedies." [read more]

Plain stupid.

Deepfakes Could Destroy the 2024 Election

From Newsweek.com (March 24):

In March 20 British journalist Eliot Higgins, founder of the Bellingcat investigative website, posted an extraordinary series of images. They showed Donald Trump, former president and Republican frontrunner for 2024, being tackled to the ground by police officers. Somehow Trump slips from their grasp and runs down the street, with law enforcement in pursuit. He is once again caught, as Melania appears to scream at officers, and is next pictured inside a prison cell.

The series continues with Trump in court, then prison, from which the former president makes a Shawshank Redemption-style escape and ends up in a McDonald's.

If you're wondering whether you somehow missed the news event of the decade you can be assured none of this actually happened, something Higgins was entirely clear about. Instead, the pictures were created using Midjourney, one of a growing number of artificial intelligence-based image creators, as an intellectual experiment. They were deepfakes, synthetic media created with the aid of artificial intelligence.

Deepfakes have been around for a number of years but what is changing, and at breakneck speed, is both their sophistication and the number of people who can create them.

This, combined with an increasingly conspiracy-laden American political culture, is sparking growing concerns about the next presidential election, with one expert telling Newsweek they expect deepfakes to be "deployed quite broadly" in 2024.

……….

The Threat to 2024

In an interview with Newsweek, Henry Ajder, a deepfakes expert who presents a podcast on the subject for the BBC, said he's particularly concerned about the 2024 presidential election following "the explosion we've seen generative content" over the past year.

He said: "So for me 2024 is looking increasingly likely to be an election where deepfakes are deployed quite broadly.

"The real key question is whether there is an incredibly high-quality deepfake, which is very hard to authenticate or falsify, and is linked to a critical period in the electoral process. Say the eve of an election, or before one of the debates, and becomes part of the narrative from the opposition."

Ajder argued the threat is intensified by public ignorance over AI developments, stating: "A lot of people aren't familiar or used to the fact you can now clone voices quite convincingly, or that you can generate entirely new images of say Trump getting arrested as we've seen over the last couple of days on Twitter.

"So when people aren't inoculated, or aware, of the changing AI and information landscape, you start to see people lagging behind the understanding and becoming more susceptible."

Concern about 2024 was also expressed by Matthew F. Ferraro, a counsel at WilmerHale who specializes in emerging technology like deepfakes. Speaking to Newsweek, he said: "I expect that we will see many more deepfake videos of political figures and candidates circulate online between now and the 2024 presidential election. Many of these videos will be satirical or clear parodies.

"The more worrisome kind of deepfakes will be those that purport to show political figures in real events in an attempt to mislead voters about what is true and what is false. These deepfakes could confuse voters and help to undermine fair elections."

Ferraro added America's strong conspiracy theory scene could make the country particularly vulnerable, stating: "Deepfakes take society's existing problems of disinformation and conspiracism and pour jet fuel on them." [read more]

Scary.

Another article on deepfakes:

U.S. SPECIAL FORCES WANT TO USE DEEPFAKES FOR PSY-OPS

How Hitler Became a Believer in the State-Planned Economy

From FEE.org (Feb. 22, 2022):

Probably the most important and most controversial question we face in the interpretation of Adolf Hitler’s economic concepts is the one about the relationship between market economy and planned economy elements in his thinking.

In fact, to a certain extent we can only speculate on Hitler’s true position before 1933 because Hitler kept his plans strictly secret, primarily in order not to offend the businessmen. In his talks with Otto Wagener, the chief of the economic policy section of the NSDAP, Hitler underlined the importance of keeping his economic plans secret time and again. In September 1931, for example, he said:

“The conclusion from this is what I have said all along, that this idea is not to become a subject for propaganda, or even for any sort of discussion, except within the innermost study group. It can only be implemented in any case when we hold political power in our hands. And even then we will have as opponents, besides the Jews, all of private industry, particularly heavy industry, as well as the medium and large landholders, and naturally the banks.”

In speeches to industrialists before 1933, Hitler presented himself as a supporter of private ownership; in other speeches, he sharply attacked capitalism. Often tactical considerations played a role, and sometimes he was only saying what he knew his audience wanted to hear. One thing is certain, however: Hitler’s main intention was obviously to reconcile the advantages of the principles of competition and selection (in the socio-Darwinistic sense) with the “advantages” of a state-controlled economy.

While the state was to direct the economy according to the principle “common interest before self-interest” and to set the objectives, within this framework the principle of competition was not to be abolished, because in Hitler’s view it was an important mainspring for economic development and technical progress. What was important, however, was that Hitler did not share the beliefs of economic liberalism, according to which the common good would come about as a result of the play of the various self-interests.

This is made clear in a speech Hitler delivered on November, 13 1930:

“In all of business, in all of life in fact, we will have to do away with the concept that the benefit to the individual is what is most important, and that from the self-interest of the individual the benefit to the whole is built up, therefore that it is the benefit to the individual which only makes up the benefit to the community at all. The opposite is true. The benefit to the community determines the benefit to the individual. The profit of the individual is only weighed out from the profit of the community.... If this principle is not accepted, then an egoism must necessarily develop which will destroy the community.”

In view of the successes then achieved by the economic policies of the government, Hitler’s reservations against state planning of the economy gradually diminished. How important Hitler considered the question of state-controlled planning of the economy to be can be seen from the fact that in August 1936 he personally wrote a “Memorandum on the Four-Year Plan 1936.” In this memorandum his admiration and fear of the Soviet system of planned economy were expressed: “The German economy, however, will learn to understand the new economic tasks, or it will prove itself to be incapable of continuing to survive in these modern times in which the Soviet state sets up a gigantic plan.”

Hitler was convinced of the superiority of the Soviet planned economy system over the capitalist economic system. This must be regarded as an essential reason why he so vehemently demanded and enforced the extension of state control of the economy in Germany as well.

Hitler attributed the success of National Socialist economic policy primarily to state control of the economy. From 1940 at the latest, Hitler increasingly became a proponent of the state planned economy – partly because he was convinced of the superiority of the Soviet Union and its economic system. In his monologs to his inner circle (known as “table talks”) on July 27-28, 1941 Hitler said that “A sensible employment of the powers of a nation can only be achieved with a planned economy from above.”

About two weeks later he said: “As far as the planning of the economy is concerned, we are still very much at the beginning and I imagine it will be something wonderfully nice to build up an encompassing German and European economic order.” The statement that as far as the planning of the economy was concerned one was still at the very beginning is important because it shows that Hitler was not thinking at all of a reduction of state intervention – not even for the time after the war – but, on the contrary, intended to expand the instruments of state control of the economy even further.

On July 5, 1942 Hitler expressed the opinion that if the German economy had been able so far to deal with innumerable problems “... this was also due in the end to the fact that the direction of the economy had gradually become more controlled by the state. Only thus had it been possible to enforce the overall national objective against the interests of individual groups. Even after the war we would not be able to renounce state control of the economy, because then every interest group would think exclusively of the fulfillment of its wishes.”

Hitler’s view of the Soviet economic system apparently also changed from skepticism to admiration. In a table talk on July 22, 1942, Hitler vehemently defended the Soviet economic system and even the so-called “Stachanow System,” which it was “exceedingly stupid” to ridicule: “One has to have unqualified respect for Stalin. In his way, the guy is quite a genius! His ideals such as Genghis Khan and so forth he knows very well, and his economic planning is so all-encompassing that it is only exceeded by our own Four-Year Plan. I have no doubts whatsoever that there have been no unemployed in the USSR, as opposed to capitalist countries such as the USA.”

Hitler’s admiration for the Soviet system is also confirmed in the notes of Wilhelm Scheidt, who—as adjutant to Hitler’s “representative for military history” Walther Scherff and a member of the Führer Headquarters group—had close contact with Hitler and sometimes even took part in briefings. Scheidt writes that Hitler underwent a “conversion to Bolshevism.” From Hitler’s remarks, he says, the following reactions could be derived: “Firstly, Hitler was enough of a materialist to be the first to recognise the enormous armament achievements of the USSR in the context of her strong, generous and all-encompassing economic organisation.”

Scheidt writes that in view of such impressions Hitler had recognised and expressed “the inner relationship of his system with the so heatedly opposed Bolshevism,” whereby he had to admit that “this system of the enemy was developed far more completely and straightforwardly. His enemy became his secret example.” The “experience of Communist Russia,” particularly the impression of the alleged superiority of the Soviet economic system, had produced a strong reaction in Hitler and the circle of his faithful: “The other economic systems appeared not to be competitive in comparison.” About the impression of the rational organisation of farming in the USSR and the “gigantic industrial plants which gave eloquent testimony despite their destruction,” Hitler, says Scheidt, had been “enthusiastic”.

The German dictator admitted during a conversation with Benito Mussolini on April 22, 1944, he had become convinced: “Capitalism too had run its course, the nations were no longer willing to stand for it. The victors to survive would be Fascism, and National Socialism – maybe Bolshevism in the East.”

Hitler himself was convinced, as he emphasized in his last radio address on January, 30, 1945, “that the age of unrestricted economic liberalism had outlived itself.” These statements of Hitler’s in 1935 to 1945, but particularly from the beginning of the 1940s on, show that he had become a vehement critic of the system of free enterprise and a confirmed adherent of the system of a planned, state-controlled economy. [source]

Just like all Marxists/socialists/radicals Hitler was just a conman.

Another article on the subject: Hitler's Views on Private Property and Nationalization

Creepy Bill Gates Threw Millions at New Technology of Under-Skin Nanoparticle QR Code, to be Scanned by Smartphones

From The Gateway Pundit.com (April 2, 2022):

60 Minutes interviewed retired Colonel Matt Hepburn, an army infectious disease physician, who spent years with the secretive defense advanced research projects agency or DARPA, working on technology he hopes will ensure COVID-19 is the last pandemic.

“Dr. Hepburn showed us a few current projects, some sound like they’re from an episode of “Star Trek.” Consider a ship like the USS Theodore Roosevelt — hobbled last year when 1,271 crew members tested positive for the coronavirus. What if everyone on board had their health monitored with this subdermal implant, now in late-stage testing. It’s not some dreaded government microchip to track your every move, but a tissue-like gel engineered to continuously test your blood,” 60 Minutes host Bill Whitaker said.

Dr. Hepburn told 60 Minutes that the microchip is like a “check engine light.”

The segment aired on “60 Minutes.”

In Sweden they took this a step further. Over the last few years some Swedish workers have volunteered to have microchips implanted in their hands so they no longer have to carry cash, ID, keys, gym passes etc.

This research into  quantum dot tattoo—an under-skin nanoparticle QR code, to be scanned by smartphones — did not go unnoticed.

Creepy Bill Gates heard about this new technology and immediately threw millions of dollars at the project. This should surprise no one.

Joe Allen at Joebot.xyz reported:

We’re living out a sci-fi thriller where unaccountable corporations openly force advanced tech into our bodies. Capitalizing on the current germaphobic frenzy, Moderna’s co-founder, Dr. Robert Langer, saw his experimental mRNA vaccines pushed on the American public. Riding that dark wave of corporate and government mandates, Langer became an instant billionaire. But this isn’t the only fanged rabbit in his magic top hat.

In 2018, the MIT scientist had developed a quantum dot tattoo—an under-skin nanoparticle QR code, to be scanned by smartphones—in order to track the vaccinated masses and ensure compliance. Like many undignified experiments, this was to begin in the Third World—cuz social justice.

This vaxx & track technology drew the intense personal interest of Bill Gates. That interest naturally translated into millions of dollars in funding. This is in addition to $20 million given to Moderna by the Gates Foundation back in 2016 to develop a new type of vaccine—where bits of injected genetic code would hijack the cell’s machinery to produce reams of pathogenic proteins.

At one time, not sol long ago, the media used to call these reports on Bill Gates and digital certificates a conspiracy.

It looks like they were wrong again.

Read the entire Joe Allen article here. [source]

The Weakest Presidential Line Of Succession Ever

From Issue Insights.com (April 1, 2022):

As Vladimir Putin floats terrifying hints of Russia’s willingness to use nuclear weapons against countries that assist in Ukraine’s defense against Moscow’s brutal invasion, the United States is saddled with a president teetering on the brink of senility, and a woman one heartbeat away from the presidency who is as dependably incompetent as she is undependable in prepping herself on national and international issues.

Polling makes clear that the public is fully aware of, and disconcerted by, the alarming shortcomings of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris alike; but at the same time, there is little if any appreciation of the unprecedented vulnerability to the United States due to those further down in the line of succession. Old age, timidity, and lack of qualification abound among those who might be thrust into the job of most powerful individual on earth, charged with leading the free world.

On Saturday in a speech in Warsaw, Biden called for the end to Putin’s “for life” tenure as Kremlin premier, instantly sending the White House into a DEFCON 1 in crisis communications.

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” the president exclaimed at the close of his remarks, apparently departing from the prepared text.

What looks weaker on the part of a superpower in the midst of one of the most challenging military crises in decades than to back-peddle a moral pronouncement of illegitimacy against one of its chief adversaries? We are not demanding that Putin go, sundry administration aides assured friend and foe.

That kind of fumble is one of the consequences of electing a commander in chief pushing 80 and conspicuously well along on the road of dementia. House Majority Whip James Clyburn, the South Carolina Democrat, has a great deal for which to answer in handing Biden victory in the Palmetto State’s Democratic primary in 2020, calculating that a feeble old man campaigning out of his basement in Delaware would be perceived as unlikely to pursue a radical left agenda, and thus be more electable in November than his rival Democrats. South Carolina opened the floodgates for Biden to secure the nomination.

Vice President Harris, speaking in Louisiana last week, was semi-coherent as she repeated the phrase “significance of [or “to”] the passage of time” some four times in less than 30 seconds, during a meaningless observation regarding her tour of a library. Her infamous cackle reared its head in reaction to a sensitive question about Ukrainian refugees at a joint press conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda during her visit to the country last month, her girlish demeanor inciting condemnation from Ukrainians.

And weeks ago on the Morning Hustle radio show, with its largely black listenership, Harris expounded on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as if she were reading Fun With Dick and Jane to a kindergartener. “Ukraine is a country in Europe,” she said. “It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine.”

Presumably “veepsplain” will now soon be entering the English language, in the aftermath of “gift” becoming a verb and “ask” becoming a noun.

The Knaves Who Would Be President

But what about further down in the line of succession? Should some calamity befall both Harris and Biden on the same day, 82-year-old House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would immediately be sworn in as president. During Biden’s State of the Union address to Congress on March 1, Pelosi inexplicably stood up and began rubbing her knuckles together at a point in the speech when Biden spoke of U.S. service personnel’s experiences in Iraq “breathing in toxic smoke from burn pits.” She has mistaken Biden for former President Barack Obama. There are multiple video clips online suggesting Pelosi’s senility, but those who consider attacks on her mental acuity and judgment unfair should assess her bizarre recitation of a poem by U2’s Bono last month on St. Patrick’s Day.

Next in line is the president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, the just-turned-82 Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, longest-serving member of either chamber of Congress. Those watching Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings last week saw for themselves how feeble the gravel-throated Leahy is, and how unfit he is for the presidency, especially at a time of national emergency.

After Leahy, we have Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, or “A. Blinken” as Washington wags have called him. He oozes impotence and vulnerability more than any U.S. foreign policy chief in history, his only rival being Cyrus Vance, who ran the State Department under President Jimmy Carter and resigned over the Desert One fiasco seeking to rescue the 52 American hostages being held in Iran.

Beneath Blinken we find Secretary of the Treasury and former Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, notorious for her deceit before congressional committees and the general public alike. Sporting a Yale economics Ph.D, her dissertation supervised by a Nobel laureate, Yellen consciously sold TV viewers snake oil downplaying inflationary expectations last year.

Should a devastating attack on the nation’s capital, God forbid, snuff out all of those first six in the order of succession, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin would take the oath of office. As Obama’s commanding general of U.S. forces in Iraq beginning in 2010, Austin squandered the near-miraculous recovery effected by George W. Bush’s 2007 Iraq surge and presided over the drawdown that preceded Obama’s withdrawal and the subsequent rise of ISIS’ murderous Islamic State. As Pentagon chief, Austin then last year oversaw the disastrous pullout from Afghanistan, in which 11 Marines and two other U.S. service members were killed in a terrorist explosion, a debacle that advertised American weakness to the world and emboldened Putin into making his move against Ukraine this year. Under Austin, the Defense Department’s priorities are wokeness and teaching white privilege over and above training our fighters how to kill.

Next comes Attorney General Merrick Garland, touted as a moderate during Obama’s ill-fated 2016 nomination of Garland to replace Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, and whose Justice Department considers parents who oppose their children being taught smut and transgender activism masquerading as academic learning in public schools to be domestic terrorists deserving the scrutiny of federal law enforcement.

The book of Proverbs tells us, “A wise man is strong … and because war is managed by due ordering there shall be safety where there are many counsels. Wisdom is too high for a fool.” The United States today has never been more vulnerable to a vacuum of leadership and wisdom in the aftermath of an act of war against our homeland.

New York University constitutional scholar Richard Epstein warns, “in the long run a nation that places a succession of fools and knaves in high places will not be able to survive unscathed regardless of its constitutional structure.” Under the Biden administration, that nation, with its presidential succession of fools and dotards, may not survive at all, even in the short run. [source]

Yea, the line of succession is pretty sad. At least Pelosi isn’t in the line anymore, so that’s good. Don’t know if McCarthy would make a good president or not but he would be better president than Pelosi.