Bluegrass Pundit

The ICE protests are all Astroturf

2026-01-26T09:05:00.004-05:00

Wheelchair bound ICE protester seems to temporarily have a divine intervention and is able to stand up out of his wheelchair and grab what he dropped

These are paid actors pic.twitter.com/6IznvwBtEU
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) January 24, 2026

Imagine Communism

2025-10-20T07:29:00.000-04:00

The left glorifies violence and they don't even try to hide it.

2025-09-25T08:59:00.001-04:00

Reminder: the slogan on this poster matches the engravings on Tyler Robinson's bullets.

This is not a coincidence. The Communist terror network wants everyone to know that Robinson was one of theirs, in order to put the fright on conservatives.

But, of course, they do it in… https://t.co/3zfp8LlU7H
— Eric S. Raymond (@esrtweet) September 25, 2025

2025-09-24T09:11:00.003-04:00

I was assured trump is Hitler. Now he's a communist?

Former Vice President Kamala Harris bashed President Trump on Monday night, saying the United States is dealing with a communist dictator in the White House.

In other news, Kamala Harris endorsed an actual communist for mayor of NYC.

Kamala Harris backs Zohran Mamdani in New York mayoral race

Fat Fani thrown from Trump Georgia case

2025-09-18T08:52:00.001-04:00

This case is dead, IMHO.

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia’s highest court has declined to consider Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ appeal of her removal from the Georgia election interference case against President Donald Trump and others. Citing an “appearance of impropriety” created by a romantic relationship Willis had with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she had hired to lead the case, the Georgia Court of Appeals in December ruled that Willis and her office could not continue to prosecute the case. Trump hailed the court’s ruling as “a great decision” and called Willis’ prosecution of him and others for their attempts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia “a rigged case to start off with.”

The celebration:

https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1968134929080082432/video/1

https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1968134929080082432https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1968134929080082432https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1968134929080082432

pic.twitter.com/gZgTprtUvt
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 17, 2025

Democrats Admit Trump Can Not Get A Fair Trial In DC

2024-03-04T07:47:00.005-05:00

Democrat lawyer openly brags that Trump will never get a fair trial or impartial jury in DC. https://t.co/FecleC45ij
— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) March 4, 2024

Can Trump and his supporters get a fair trial in Washington DC?

2023-11-19T10:11:00.008-05:00

No.

RCP: https://t.co/FOgK5Apdht

Trump races ahead in polling including 3rd party candidates.

2023-11-18T12:20:00.001-05:00

Trump races ahead in polling including 3rd party candidates.https://t.co/AXSnAC0WL3 pic.twitter.com/OsaTe48P5n
— ‘Clear and Present Danger' Howard Notelling (@BluegrassPundit) November 18, 2023

A Seismic Victory in Gaza: Mapping the Tunnels of the “Gaza Metro”

2023-11-17T13:14:00.003-05:00

Via RealClearWire:

A Seismic Victory in Gaza: Mapping the Tunnels of the “Gaza Metro”

By Malcolm E. Whittaker

November 16, 2023

According to sources, Hamas’ tunnels under Gaza extend “a few dozen miles.” Other sources believe these tunnels extend hundreds of miles and rival the underground of a major European city. This has caused some commentators to refer to Hama’s tunnels as the “Gaza metro.” The ‘Gaza metro’: The mysterious subterranean tunnel network used by Hamas | CNN. Whatever their length, they shield fighters from surveillance and allow movement without fear of observation or attack. What if these tunnels could be precisely located? Rather than being safe locations, they would become death traps.

Commentators suggest the tunnels give Hamas an asymmetric advantage. The noted publication Foreign Affairs, states that only “[b]ulldozers can be used to expose tunnels during a ground operation. Drones, robots, or dogs can help clear tunnels. There might be a need to enter the tunnels to rescue hostages, as a measure of last resort. … This is how most states have eliminated subterranean threats in the past, and this is what Israel should do, as well.” (November 9, 2023, “Israel Must Destroy Hama’s Tunnels, Demolishing the Groups Infrastructure Is More Important Than Eliminating Its Leaders”). In short, according to Foreign Affairs, only personnel on the ground can locate and destroy Hama’s tunnels. Of course, Israeli personnel searching open ground to locate the entrances to the tunnels would be exposed to attack.

Currently used seismic equipment could locate tunnels using a system of geophones and pulse generators. However, personnel placing the geophone data acquisition equipment on the surface would be exposed to small arms fire and potential capture. The need to potentially expose personnel to attack while emplacing geophones would seem to defeat use of this well-understood technology that could readily and accurately locate Hama’s tunnels.

At its most basic, a seismic system can map layers in the earth’s surface. To do so, as seen in the figure below, a source generates a seismic wave. This wave travels through the earth and reflects off reflecting subsurface layers, such as the roof and floor of a tunnel, and these reflected waves are collected by a receiver. A source and be anything that generates a seismic wave. Currently, stamper trucks and explosives are frequently used to generate these waves. Seismic receivers are generically referred to as “geophones.” Geophones collect seismic data, i.e., seismic waves, and map the earth’s subsurface.

Fig. 1 – Schematic of Seismic Reflection Method – courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Environmental Geophysics webpage Seismic Reflection Methods | Environmental Geophysics | U.S. EPA

Current seismic technology readily available from the oil field will allow identification (and then destruction) of these tunnels. Wireless Seismic METIS (Multiphysics Exploration Technology Integrated System) uses a seismic recording channel collected by autonomous drones. These drones also drop DART (Downfall Air Receiver Technology) receivers, i.e., geophones. The DARTs are dropped by the drone and impale themselves into the ground creating a system of geophones to model the subsurface data. This system was thoroughly evaluated in Papua New Guinea in 2018. Wireless Seismic News — METIS field test yields excellent results. A single drone dropped 60 DARTs in one hour and these drones recovered “real time seismic data” thereby imaging subsurface data of underground voids. Precision guided artillery shells could provide the seismic source needed for the geophones to collect subsurface data. The DART’s would be dropped inside Gaza to model any location, i.e., not just locations close to where Israeli troops are located. Thus, METIS could accurately map the entire Gaza strip.

Once the location of the tunnels is known, they can be destroyed using deep penetrating bombs fused to detonate deep in the ground and dropped from aircraft. This could potentially interdict the entire system of tunnels. Even an extensive metro-like system of tunnels could be defeated if important chokepoints could be detected and collapsed.

Finally, this technology could resolve the ongoing factual dispute over whether Hamas has placed tunnels underneath hospitals, United Nations positions, schools, and other places that are protected from attack. While not a panacea, the METIS system could answer these basic questions and, potentially, turn Hama’s tunnels into a death trap for fighters using the tunnels. At least, it would mitigate any asymmetric advantage Hama’s tunnels provide.

Malcolm E. Whittaker is a former candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. Malcolm is an engineer and patent attorney in Houston, Texas.

This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.

Waste of the Day: U.S. Gave $4.5 Billion To Ukraine For Debt Relief

2023-10-03T08:03:00.002-04:00

Reposted with permission from RealClearWire:

Waste of the Day: U.S. Gave $4.5 Billion To Ukraine For Debt Relief

By Adam Andrzejewski

October 01, 2023

The United States sent $4.5 billion to Ukraine so it could pay down its national debt, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development.

These funds, which were approved on a bipartisan basis by Congress, are being sent to “direct budgetary support to the Government of Ukraine to help alleviate the acute budget deficit” caused by the war in Ukraine. The funding will come in tranches, with the first payment of $3 billion in August.

Waste of the Day 10.2.23

Open the Books

USAID claims this debt reduction will “allow the Government of Ukraine to maintain essential functions to its people, including social and financial assistance to Ukrainians further pushed into poverty since the start of the war, children with disabilities, and internally displaced persons.” While these are laudable goals, the U.S. and other countries have already sent billions in humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

This is not the only money the U.S. has sent to Ukraine for budgetary support. This payment brings the total amount of budgetary support for Ukraine up to $8.5 billion. The World Bank, which is handling these transactions, is assuring the U.S. that “robust safeguards” are in place to “ensure accountability and transparency in the use of these funds.”

It’s ironic that the U.S. has the money to pay off other countries’ debts, but not its own, especially when the national debt stands at almost $33 trillion, and the U.S. debt to GDP ratio is at 120%. Since Covid-19 spending started, debt to GDP has been at some of the highest levels ever recorded.

While there may be compelling arguments to aid Ukraine with humanitarian and even military aid, it’s absurd to pay off another country’s debt before we pay off our own.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

Trump Pulls Ahead Of Biden In RCP Average Of Polls

2023-09-16T06:27:00.004-04:00

Trump Pulls Ahead Of Biden In RCP Average Of Polls.

Trump is crushing his opposition in the GOP primary.

2023-07-29T10:50:00.000-04:00

Trump is crushing his opposition in the GOP primary. Via RCP:

Is it time to put Team DeSantis on suicide watch?

2023-07-02T12:14:00.004-04:00

Polling shows Ron DeSantis is stalled out at about 20%, in-spite of him announcing his candidacy and running around the country holding campaign events.

The government won't allow you to sue COVID vaccine makers and they won't pay up for injuries either.

2023-07-01T11:17:00.002-04:00

At this point, if you took the COVID vaccine, you are a sucker.

Laid Low by the COVID Vaccine, Now They've Got a Bad Case of Federal Unresponsiveness

By Christian Britschgi

June 28, 2023

By Christian Britschgi, RealClearInvestigations
June 28, 2023

In April 2021, Adele Fox received a single shot of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. Within a few hours, the 60-year-old resident of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, started feeling shooting pains in her legs, arms, and neck. The pain didn’t abate over the next few days. Instead, it got worse and was accompanied by nausea and debilitating fatigue.

Within a few weeks, neurologists affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital diagnosed her with several serious conditions they say were a result of her COVID-19 vaccine, including small-fiber neuropathy (which causes a painful tingling in the extremities) and Sjögren’s Syndrome (which leaves patients pained and fatigued, and in extreme cases, can damage internal organs).

This shot, which was supposed to get Fox back to normal, instead left her with diminished ability to work and enjoy life. Persistent physical therapy and experimental treatments she’s taken since have done little to alleviate her symptoms.

“I used to do so much, and now it’s a struggle,” she says. “Sometimes you just get down.”

With her medical bills mounting and her condition not improving, Fox sought compensation for her damaged health. Federal liability protections prevent the vaccine-injured from directly suing vaccine manufacturers like Johnson & Johnson. Instead, claimants have to go to the federal government for compensation.

But as Fox would soon learn, the government has two starkly different injury programs for vaccines. One operates like a civil court with a neutral judge, lawyers on both sides, and a guaranteed right of appeal. In recent decades, it has approved about 75% of claims and pays out hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

The other, which handles COVID-19 vaccines, has rejected almost every claim brought to it, awarding less than $10,000 since the pandemic. And in a nation nearly numb to the pandemic's toll and its scandals, the program is adding seething frustration atop lasting injury to Fox and people like her in a little reported aftermath to the government’s much criticized performance on vaccines – ranging from erratic booster advice to broad-brush vaccine mandates that cost people their jobs.

Fox filed her claim two years ago, submitting hundreds of pages of medical documents about her condition and diagnoses. She’s nevertheless one of the 10,887 people still waiting on a decision. “You’re not even hearing anything from the organization that’s supposed be helping you,” she says. “The phone keeps ringing, no one is emailing, nobody is doing anything.”

The federal agency overseeing the program, the Health Resources and Services Administration, said in a statement to RealClearInvestigations that the current number of claims “significantly exceeds the previous volume in the program” and that the program has “hired additional staff to address this growth in claims, and the President’s budget requests additional funding to support the additional staffing needed to process claims.”

Tale of Two Compensation Programs

The government’s two contrasting vaccine compensation programs are similarly named and thus easily confused. The first, Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) was created in the 1980s and covers most routine vaccines. The second, the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), is a result of war-on-terror legislation in 2005 and now covers COVID-19 vaccines. Their bureaucratic differences help explain why a nation that has spent trillions of dollars on COVID relief programs has provided almost no assistance to people harmed by the vaccines that the government encouraged, and sometimes required, them to take.

The earlier program was supposed to shore up pharmaceutical companies’ willingness to make childhood vaccines in the face of persistent vaccine injury lawsuits, while also giving the vaccine-injured a fair and expedited process for compensation.

The vaccine-injured would not sue pharmaceutical companies. Instead, they’d petition the government in Federal Claims Court, where special masters (judges) would decide cases. Compensation came from a government-administered trust fund paid for by excise taxes levied on vaccine manufacturers.

Between 2006 and 2021, this court adjudicated cases from 10,602 petitioners and issued compensation to 7,618 of them. The compensation trust fund sits at $4 billion and pays out about $200 million in compensation and attorneys’ fees each year.

This earlier program bears little resemblance to the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program, where the COVID-vaccine cases of Fox and many others are languishing.

It was meant to incentivize pharmaceutical companies to be part of the federal response to one-off, one-in-a-million events like a bioweapon attack or an outbreak of a deadly pandemic. Although almost one billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the United States, and health authorities say boosters could become as common as the annual flu shot, it remains the only way people harmed by the shot can receive compensation.

It's far from guaranteed they’ll get it.

Before the pandemic, this program received a little over 500 claims and had paid out compensation to only 30 people – mostly for H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine injuries. In just the past two years, it has been asked to make decisions on over 10,000 injury claims related to COVID countermeasures.

As of June, it made decisions on just 919 of these COVID-related claims and rejected 894 of them. It has so far paid out only $8,593 in compensation to just four people who were injured by a COVID vaccine. The program has deemed another 20 people eligible for compensation, but has yet to pay them.

It’s not a judicial process either. Rather, it’s an administrative process overseen by Health Resources and Services Administration, which is housed within Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). People file a claim and government medical reviewers decide whether to pay out or not. That’s an awkward arrangement, given that HHS is deciding whether to pay for damages caused by products it approved and in some cases mandated.

Because it’s an administrative process, there’s no right to counsel and no neutral arbitrator. A denied claimant can file for reconsideration with HRSA, but otherwise has no right to appeal.

Unlike the earlier program, the CICP offers no compensation for pain and suffering and doesn’t pay attorneys’ fees. Most successful claimants have received compensation totaling a few hundred dollars or a few thousand dollars. The highest award for a COVID-19 vaccine injury sufferer was $3,957.66 to a person who got myocarditis (a heart condition) from a vaccine.

It also has shorter filing deadlines. People have to file a claim within one year of vaccination, a much shorter window than the earlier program’s standard of three years from the onset of symptoms. Of the 894 claims that CICP has rejected, 444 of them were for missing the filing deadline.

CICP also only awards compensation in cases where there’s “compelling, reliable, valid, medical, and scientific evidence” that someone’s injury is linked to a covered countermeasure. HRSA describes this as “a high evidentiary standard.” Renée Gentry, a practicing vaccine injury lawyer who directs the Vaccine Injury Litigation Clinic at George Washington University, says it’s a much higher bar than what the earlier vaccine injury compensation program requires, which contributes to a much lower rate of successful claims.

The Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program’s nature as a small emergency program has seen its capacity strained by a flood of COVID-related injury claims. Of the 11,806 COVID-related claims filed, 10,887 are still pending. Those four cases where COVID compensation was paid out didn’t come until after April 2023, over two years since the first vaccines were administered.

Pain and Suffering

The shortcomings of CICP are all too apparent for the people who are forced to wade through it. Even folks who seem to have done everything right are left waiting or disappointed by the program.

Fox filed her claim in May 2021, which was relatively early in the immunization campaign. She also had clear diagnoses from well-credentialed doctors linking her conditions to her COVID-19 vaccination. Fox says she provided the program with no shortage of documentation as well.

After filing all that paperwork, she hasn’t been idle either. After months of not hearing anything back from CICP, Fox started to reach out repeatedly to anyone she thought might be able to move the needle. She spoke repeatedly with representatives from Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s and Rep. Chris Pappas’ offices. She also kept calling program administrators, trying to figure out what was taking so long.

“I’m sure they saw my number, and said ‘Ah, Fox, oh no, not her [again]’,” she jokes.

Her congressional representatives did reach out to CICP on her behalf. That was at least effective at getting program administrators to call Fox personally twice, once in July 2022 and again in June 2023. But each time, they could only offer her reassurance that her paperwork had been received. On both calls, Fox says she was told that the program was vastly overburdened by the flood of COVID-19 claims it had received. She, like thousands of others, would have to wait.

The few decisions on COVID-19 claims that have trickled out haven’t offered much relief to the people who’ve received them. That includes Cody Flint, one of the 894 people who’ve had their COVID-related claims rejected.

Flint was vaccinated in February 2021, when he received a single Pfizer dose. He says that he started to feel headaches and had affected vision within 30 minutes of the shot. He was still experiencing symptoms two days later when he headed to his job as a crop-dusting pilot.

While flying that day, he started to experience extreme tunnel vision, followed by a sensation he describes as “a bomb [going] off in my head.” He barely managed to get his plane back to his runway, where his coworkers found him slumped over his controls and shaking.

He was diagnosed with perilymphatic fistula (or tear of the inner ear) caused by elevated intracranial pressure – which could only be relieved through repeated draining of his spinal fluid. Given the timing of his symptoms and the fact that he’d passed a flight physical just a couple weeks prior, his doctors said his condition was almost certainly caused by the vaccine. His injury prevented him from returning to work as a pilot, and his mounting medical bills saw him draw down all of his savings.

In April 2021, Flint filed a claim. In May 2022 – just a few weeks after Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith asked HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra about his case specifically in a committee hearing – Flint’s claim was rejected. The program’s medical reviewers told Flint that it was more likely his injuries were caused by barotrauma from flying a plane.

He petitioned for a reconsideration of his case. His doctors argued that there was no way he’d have experienced barotrauma from flying just a few hundred feet off the ground. Commercial airliners, they noted, are pressurized at 6,000 to 8,000 feet of elevation. Flint’s lawyers also submitted recent studies linking the symptoms he’d experienced to COVID-19 vaccinations.

Nevertheless, a separate medical reviewer at HRSA upheld the CICP’s initial denial in January 2023. That letter succinctly stated that HHS has “no appeals process beyond this reconsideration” and “there is no judicial review of a final action concerning CICP eligibility.”

Efforts at Reform

The federal government’s liability protections for COVID-19 vaccines aren’t scheduled to expire until the end of 2024. Once they do, those claiming a vaccine injury will be able to pursue claims against vaccine manufacturers in state courts.

While liability protections remain in effect, the federal program is injured claimants’ only potential source of compensation.

Whether or not the HRSA succeeds in boosting staffing in line with its statement to RCI, those seeking compensation have started to get organized. They’ve formed the group React19, which is dedicated to advocating for additional research into the side effects of COVID-19 vaccines. It’s grown into a network of tens of thousands of people who say they suffered adverse injuries from the shot. Flint, the pilot, is on its board of directors.

“It’s a very pro-vaccine community,” says Christopher Dreisbach, the group’s legal affairs director. “You say anything about vaccine injuries, you’re branded as anti-vaxxers. We are pro-science, we are not political. We’re just dealing with a very politicized issue.”

He says the politicization of vaccines has made their efforts at compensation reform a challenge.

When the CICP, and the 2005 Pandemic Response and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act that created it, were first being debated, Republican lawmakers were its main advocates, while its main critics were Democrats. The partisan politics of the program and liability protections for pharmaceutical companies has done a 180 since COVID.

In 2005, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee argued during the House floor debate on the PREP Act that the law’s liability shield would leave injured healthcare workers with little protection or chance of compensation. Come 2023, she would return to the floor of the House to argue in favor of mandating those same healthcare workers receive a vaccine covered by the PREP Act’s liability shield.

The PREP Act’s harshest critics during COVID, meanwhile, have mostly been Republicans.

“I call the PREP Act medical malpractice martial law,” says Rep. Thomas Massie, who complains that its liability shield is both incredibly broad and improperly preempts state law. “I think it’s sort of anathema to the way our government is set up. I found it hard to believe that Congress would pass something, much less that a Republican president would invoke it.”

In March 2022, Sen. Mike Lee introduced a bill that would have amended CICP to give claimants the same framework for pursuing compensation as the VICP. They could file in Federal Claims Court and receive an expedited, judicial adjudication of their injury claim.

Gentry argues that it would be far simpler to just move the COVID-19 vaccines into the VICP program, which already has a successful track record of adjudicating injury claims. In order for that to happen under the law that created the VICP, the CDC needs to recommend the vaccines for routine administration to children (which has already happened) and vaccine manufacturers would have to start paying excise taxes. That latter condition will require action from Congress.

VICP needs a number of updates as well, says Gentry, including expanding the number of special masters to handle the backlog of cases and increasing the available levels of compensation (which haven’t been updated since the 1980s).

Increasing the number of special masters is particularly important if the VICP program is going to be expected to process tens of thousands of COVID claims, she says. But she argues it’s the best way of getting the vaccine injured out of CICP and into a program that will work for them. “If you’re taking away someone’s constitutional right to sue, you really have to give them a reasonable and meaningful alternative and that’s what this program is, for all of its faults,” says Gentry.

While efforts at reform in Washington lumber on, React19 has started a privately funded compensation program that’s thus far paid out $552,000.

“Is that making a meaningful difference to all the vaccine injured everywhere? No, that’s not enough,” says Dreisbach, but he notes that it’s far more than what CICP has paid out. “That should be pretty embarrassing to the federal government.”

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

Ron DeSantis campaign has failed to launch

2023-06-25T11:05:00.003-04:00

Ron DeSantis campaign has failed to launch. He is going nowhere fast. There's a lot of time left, but I would rather be Trump than DeSantis based on polling.

There are too many things our masters want to keep secret from us.

2023-06-21T09:49:00.001-04:00

Classified Info: Washington's Most Powerful Weapon

By J. Peder Zane

June 20, 2023

Here’s why we should doubt the widespread claim that Donald Trump was hoarding the nation’s most sensitive nuclear and military secrets in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom: If he had, that highly classified material would have been leaked by now.

The New York Times and Washington Post would be quoting highly placed current and former officials familiar with the investigation who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the investigation – but who were eager to show the danger Trump presents by revealing the secrets he held.

I suspect we have only the vague, yet frightening descriptions of the seized documents from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s 37-count indictment, because a more detailed accounting might show they are more innocuous than apocalyptic. I could be wrong about that, but this much we know: Since Trump burst on the scene in 2015 the leaking of classified information has been the weapon of choice for his opponents at the highest reaches of government.

The Russiagate conspiracy hoax was fueled by leaks, especially from House Intelligence Committee Democrats and highly placed FBI officials; the Department of Justice’s inspector general referred former FBI Director James B. Comey for criminal investigation over leaks connected to the probe.

Trump is not the only target. One leaker gave ProPublica the confidential tax information of thousands of wealthy Americans – a gross violation of the privacy of ordinary citizens. Another gave Politico a highly confidential, though technically not classified, draft of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, prompting the incessant, illegal harassment of conservative justices, and a plan to murder Justice Bret Kavanaugh.

One of the more duplicitous performances in the theater of D.C. politics is given each time current FBI Director Christopher Wray and his minions gravely tell Congress they cannot answer questions because they involve “ongoing investigations.” The truth is that they much prefer leaking cherry-picked pieces of information, behind the cloak of anonymity, to advance their narrative.

Unlike Trump, leakers do not just possess secret material, they helped spread it far and wide. And, unlike the former president, they are almost never brought to justice. The Intercept reported that the Trump administration referred at least 344 allegations involving the leaking of classified information to the Department of Justice but that “very few referrals typically end up identifying suspects.”

None of this exonerates the former president. The special counsel appears to make a strong case that he violated the law. But the guns-blazing effort to hold him accountable cannot be separated from the fact that the rule of law in America is increasingly becoming a situational tool, invoked only at the convenience of the powers that be.

Consider the argument regarding classified documents, now widely embraced by mainstream news outlets that want to get Trump but give a pass to President Joe Biden. For decades, the possession of such information outside the area authorized for individuals to view it – a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF – was considered a crime. We don’t know how Biden ended up with such material from his days as a senator and vice president, but it was illegally removed. We also don’t know whether Biden reviewed these documents, though it is hard to believe he never saw them and even more unlikely that as they were moved and dispersed to several locations in the years since that nobody saw the classified markings and asked “the big guy” about them.

Biden’s supporters, however, are arguing that there’s “no there there” even if he took, viewed, and intentionally held the documents. All of that is now fine and dandy because he returned them when they were discovered. During a recent interview with GOP presidential hopeful Francis Suarez, ABC News presenter George Stephanopoulos, for example, declared that “there’s a very big difference between those two cases. President Biden turned them over himself. Had Donald Trump turned over all those documents, he wouldn’t have been charged.”

One wonders how this new standard might be applied to other crimes. Will bank robbers go free if they agree to return the money? I guess we’ll find out when Hunter Biden is (or is not) charged for income tax evasion: He apparently has paid back taxes.

This is not the only example of how Biden’s supporters are moving the goalposts to protect him. It is now beyond dispute that the president’s son and his brother Jim were running a multi-million-dollar influence peddling scheme, which hinged on the potential favors Biden could provide their business partners who just happened to be in countries, including Ukraine, China, and Romania, where Biden was deeply involved in policymaking while serving as vice president.

Despite the president’s insistent denials, evidence shows that he was not only aware of but met with people involved in these deals – the payments of which were often channeled through a series of shell companies and funneled, in some cases, to at least nine of his family members including his young grandchildren. It remains unclear to this day what services the Bidens were providing these entities other than access to Joe.

This is textbook political corruption. But now, his defenders insist, this is a problem for Biden only if it can be proved that he directly received money from the deals or that he specifically changed a policy in a quid pro quo for the payments to his family members.

Even if we accept that Biden never took any action in exchange for the money – that his famous boast that he forced Ukraine to fire the prosecutor investigating the corrupt gas company paying his son $83,000 a month was not a signal that he had delivered on a promise but that he was carrying out official policy – there is no doubt that his family was offering the promise of influence.

Donald Trump may get what he deserves, but America cannot endure as a great nation if the rule of law does not apply to all. To all. Fairness to all. Justice to all. That is the hallmark of our great democracy, which is built on the people’s trust in our institutions. That trust is eroding as our leaders brazenly weaponize our legal system. Benjamin Franklin warned that our founders had given us “A republic, if you can keep it.” We are losing it day by day.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

Latest Harvard-Harris Poll has Trump clubbing DeSantis and Biden like they were baby seals.

2023-06-17T05:49:00.002-04:00

The latest Harvard-Harris Poll has Trump clubbing DeSantis and Biden like they were baby Seals. In the GOP Primary, Trump is at 59%. DeSantis is only 14%.

Conducted June 14-15, 2023 among 2,090
registered voters by The Harris Poll and HarrisX. (pdf)

In the General Election, Donald Trump is up 6 points on Joe Biden.

The reasons why trump is beating Biden may be in this survey of important issues. The issues Democrats beat the drum on (climate, women's issues, race, healthcare) are scoring low. The main issues play into Republican hands.

Is Trump unstoppable?

2023-06-14T08:59:00.003-04:00

Current polling says yes!

Covid money is still being wasted.

2023-06-14T08:33:00.007-04:00

NC Spends $18M of Covid 19 Funds on Racetrack

By Adam Andrzejewski

June 13, 2023

North Wilkesboro Speedway, a NASCAR racetrack in rural North Carolina, received $18 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds for a “revitalization” project approved by state lawmakers of both parties, according to National Review.

The outlet reported that Gov. Roy Cooper (D), State House Speaker Tim Moore (R), and State Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger (R) all supported spending this money to revitalize the racetrack, which recently had its first major NASCAR race in decades, albeit an exhibition race.

Unfortunately, there are no guarantees of major races in the future at North Wilkesboro Speedway, with NASCAR unwilling to commit to future events, due in part to its isolated rural location, its small capacity, and its aging racing track, which hasn’t been repaved since 1981.

While the recent Cup Series all-star race at the track was well received by fans, it didn’t award points like other major races across the country, and the location of this annual event changes each year, so it isn’t guaranteed to return.

The unlikelihood of major races returning to North Wilkesboro Speedway may be why its owners, Speedway Motorsports, haven’t invested in this facility with its own money. Luckily, state legislators were willing to spot them $18 million, which went toward improving water, sewage, and other infrastructure at the track.

ARPA was bloated with overspending. Rather than giving the money back to the federal government, states found creative ways to spend extra funds on anything they could, even abandoned motor speedways that may never see another NASCAR race.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

Key Player in Biden Documents Removal Was Caught Up in Bill Clinton-Era Chinagate Scandal

2023-06-10T09:58:00.001-04:00

Via RealClearWire:

Key Player in Biden Documents Removal Was Caught Up in Bill Clinton-Era Chinagate Scandal

By Paul Sperry

June 08, 2023

By Paul Sperry, RealClearInvestigations
June 8, 2023

The custodian of Joe Biden’s vice presidential records, a key witness in his classified documents probe, was caught up in another documents scandal while working at the Commerce Department during the Clinton administration, court records reveal.

Longtime Biden aide and gatekeeper Kathy S. Chung, who has been interviewed by federal prosecutors and congressional investigators in the Biden case, was part of a team sanctioned for withholding and even destroying key documents in the federal case that sought sensitive records from a central figure in the so-called Chinagate fundraising investigation of the late 1990s, RealClearInvestigations has learned exclusively.

A special prosecutor is now investigating whether Biden unlawfully handled top secret materials in early 2017, when he tasked Chung with removing boxes containing classified documents from the White House and storing them at various private offices in D.C., including the Chinatown neighborhood. Some of the highly sensitive papers also ended up at his home in Wilmington, Del.

Noting that Chung came into Biden’s orbit through working with the president’s son, Hunter, during the 1990s, congressional investigators want to know if the Biden family dealings in China have anything to do with the stockpiling of classified documents. They note that the mishandling of White House papers took place during the 14-month period in 2017-2018 when the Chinese were wiring almost $6 million in payments to Hunter and his uncle Jimmy Biden without providing any known legitimate services. They have expressed concern that the payments, which were flagged by the U.S. Treasury Department, were part of a Chinese intelligence-gathering operation.

Chung is central to the Justice Department’s investigation of Biden’s breach of classified documents.

On Jan. 4, federal agents interviewed Chung while working with an investigative team led by U.S. Attorney John Lausch, who was tasked to conduct a preliminary probe of the security breach. Alarmed by what his investigators reported back to him about Chung's role in the possible illegal removal and retention of state secrets, Lausch urged Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel. The following day Garland complied, naming veteran federal prosecutor Robert K. Hur to take over the criminal case as special counsel. Hur's office reportedly has obtained more than 100 pages of documents from Chung, including emails and text messages.

While Donald Trump and Mike Pence are also under investigation for removing classified documents from the White House and storing them at their private residences, GOP congressional investigators say comparisons to Trump and Pence miss the point. In interviews with RCI, they insisted that Biden's document scandal is potentially more serious than just mishandling state secrets. They suspect it could mushroom into a counterespionage case involving China and national security, though the White House dismisses such speculation as “baseless.”

Chung’s lawyer Bill Taylor did not return a request for comment. But in an earlier statement, he scolded Republicans for “suggesting someone is a traitor without any evidence."

Chung’s dual role – as an aide to Joe Biden when he was vice president and a friend of Hunter Biden, who emails show received sensitive information from Chung from his father’s office – further highlights the murky ethics that exist between the Biden family’s public service and business interests.

Hunter Biden and Chung have a long history dating back to their days working together at the Commerce Department during Bill Clinton’s presidency. It was there that Chung – a longtime Democrat working in the federal bureaucracy – became a witness in a case involving convicted Chinagate fundraiser Jian-Nan “John" Huang, who was a top Commerce official.

In 1993, President Clinton named Huang, a China-born banker friend from Little Rock, deputy assistant secretary of international economic affairs at Commerce, where he was responsible for Asian trade matters. Within a month, Huang was given a top secret security clearance and received twice-weekly intelligence briefings by CIA analysts. At the same time, it was later revealed, he was meeting regularly with Chinese diplomats and other officials tied to Beijing.

Watchdog group Judicial Watch sought documents concerning Huang’s access to trade secrets and his trips to China. Chung was one of the administrators responsible for producing such documents under the Freedom of Information Act.

But the department was sanctioned for withholding and even destroying key documents in the federal case â€’ Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Commerce, et al â€’ in which Huang was listed as the lead defendant. After U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled Commerce's search “grossly inadequate” and “unlawful,” Chung and her superiors were ordered to conduct another search. Still, Chung came up short in producing Huang-related documents from the computer of her boss, Melissa Moss, in the Office of Business Liaison, according to her sworn declaration in the case, a copy of which was obtained by RCI. A Clinton appointee like Hunter Biden, Moss worked with Huang on controversial Asian and other foreign trade junkets for Democrat donors. She came to Commerce from the Democratic National Committee, where she had served as finance director.

“In performing this search, I was assisted by an employee of the Computer Help Desk who informed me that some documents could not be opened,” Chung told the court in the 1999 affidavit, which was never uploaded to PACER, the electronic federal court records system. (After several requests to the court, Leayrohn King, a records clerk for the U.S. District Court for D.C., provided RCI a copy of Chung's declaration and commented that it was odd that it was missing from PACER. The court has since made it available in the online docket system.)

Chung, who now works as a top aide to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, was not directly accused of wrongdoing. But lawyers for Judicial Watch complained her department was covering up for Huang, whom they suspected was trading government secrets and access to China.

While Chung remained at the Commerce Department, Huang left to work for the Clinton reelection effort. He raised almost $3 million for the DNC and Clinton in 1996, half of which was later found illegal or improper and returned because the donations came from foreign sources, many of them tied to Beijing.

The Justice Department, through a specially appointed task force, investigated Huang as a possible “agent of influence” for China. In 1999, Huang pleaded guilty to a felony violation of campaign finance laws for arranging illegal foreign donations. Even though the felony charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, he was sentenced to one year of probation and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in their investigation of several co-conspirators.

After Hunter Biden left the Commerce Department in 2001, where he served as executive director of e-commerce policy, he joined a K Street law firm founded by William Oldaker, a major political donor of his father. Records obtained by RCI show lawyers for Oldaker, Biden & Belair LLP represented another boss of Chung at the Commerce Department in the ongoing FOIA case, which wasn’t settled until 2004.

A decade later, Hunter recommended his father hire Chung as his personal assistant in the Office of Vice President, according to emails found on his abandoned laptop. Starting in July 2012, Chung was responsible for overseeing then-Vice President Biden’s office affairs, including handling his briefing books and scheduling his travel abroad. She handled the details for Hunter Biden's controversial 2013 trip to Beijing with the vice president, during which Hunter met with Chinese investment partners and arranged for his father to shake one of their hands. Emails show Chung also invited Hunter to attend a 2015 lunch with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the State Department.

In January 2017, as Biden moved out of the White House, Chung helped pack 13 boxes with files from his office cabinets and store them at a transition office nearby, according to a partial transcript of Chung’s recent deposition taken behind closed doors at the Capitol. Around July 2017, Chung reloaded the boxes in her car and moved them to a private office that she leased in the Chinatown neighborhood of Washington, before they ended up early the next year at the China-funded Penn Biden Center in D.C., according to the transcript.

The boxes turned out to contain dozens of highly classified documents, including ones so secret they could only be viewed in a Sensitive Compartment Information Facility, or SCIF. Yet they were found last year in an unlocked storage room at the center that required no key to access. (The White House initially claimed, falsely, they were stored in a “locked closet.”) Prosecutors are investigating the chain of custody of those loosely stored intelligence papers to determine whether any were copied or passed through foreign hands.

Chung, who held a Top Secret security clearance and had experience handling and identifying classified documents, told congressional investigators she was unaware the boxes contained classified material – even though some of the file folders in the boxes were emblazoned with cover sheets stating they contained secret government documents. She insisted she never noticed any classified papers or saw any classified markings, even though she unpacked the boxes when she relocated them to the center and then re-packed them last summer at the request of Biden’s lawyers.

At least 20 highly classified papers marked at the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information level were found at the center, which the FBI searched earlier this year. The materials reportedly covered Ukraine, Iran, and the United Kingdom, among other foreign countries.

Chung helped Biden research his 2017 memoir, “Promise Me, Dad.” It’s not known if Biden or Chung referenced any of the materials from the boxes for his book, which was published in November 2017 and revealed insider accounts of Biden’s various roles in U.S. foreign policy, including Ukraine. Biden listed Chung first among people he acknowledged for their contributions: “Thank you for all of this, and more, to Kathy Chung.”

Overlapping Scandals?

Hunter first made contact with Chinese executives with CEFC China Energy, a suspected front for Chinese intelligence, in 2015. Emails found on Hunter’s abandoned laptop show a CEFC adviser arranged a private Washington dinner in December 2015 with Hunter and then-CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming, who reportedly has ties to the Chinese military.

In an email Chung sent to Hunter Biden that same year, she included a list of personal cell phone numbers for high-profile Washington officials, including then-White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and several Cabinet secretaries, as well as Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and a number of powerful senators and members of Congress.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer speculated that Hunter may have been trying to "prove his worth to these people that were paying these enormous sums of money to him,” in part by “showing them he had cell numbers for powerful individuals.”

Chung continued her dealings with Hunter Biden after she left the White House. On Feb. 2, 2017, shortly after Chung packed up Biden’s White House files, Hunter emailed Chung to ask her to “come work with me ... so that I can make everyone money.” The next year, messages found on Hunter’s laptop show Chung sent Biden family members a link to an encrypted messaging app called Signal and urged them to install it on their electronic devices.

Later in February 2017, Hunter received an $80,000 diamond from Ye, who left the rare gem with a thank-you note at Hunter's hotel room after they met in Miami. In an interview with The New Yorker magazine, Hunter admitted taking the expensive stone, though he says he doubts it was meant as a bribe.

Comer said he is investigating whether the Bidens' Chinese partners “had access to the classified documents found.” He noted that Hunter Biden, in 2017, planned to share office space in D.C. with another one of his Chinese partners, Gongwen “Kevin" Dong, who was the CEFC money man who signed off on the wire payments to the Bidens.

“This level of access and opportunity raises questions about who had access to the classified documents,” Comer said.

In November 2017, another Biden partner from China â€’ CEFC’s Patrick Ho â€’ was arrested by FBI agents on charges of bribery and money laundering. According to federal documents obtained by RCI, the FBI raided CEFC's D.C.-area offices shortly after Ho’s arrest and searched them for evidence. The FBI had been "electronically monitoring” Ho as a suspected Chinese spy under a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act wiretap warrant, the documents further reveal.

Within months of learning his Chinese partner had been arrested, property records show Hunter terminated the lease on his own D.C. office and closed the facility, where he'd made keys for both Dong and his father, Joe Biden, according to emails found on his abandoned laptop. That same month – February 2018 – the former vice president opened a D.C. office for the China-funded Penn Biden Center, where Hunter maintained access.

It’s not known if any White House records were stored at Hunter's Georgetown office or transferred from there to the Penn Biden Center about four miles away. The center is hosted by the University of Pennsylvania, which has received several million dollars from anonymous Chinese sources since opening the center. But Hunter's arrangement with his Chinese benefactors clearly raised counterintelligence alarms at the FBI, which began monitoring their communications. For whatever reason, the Bidens were never prosecuted as unregistered foreign agents and their own offices were never raided. Biden’s unauthorized removal and storage of classified intelligence went unnoticed – until after the 2022 congressional elections.

Chung, who worked on Biden’s 2020 campaign, was grilled on Capitol Hill about her access to and handling of classified information in April. She gave sworn testimony to the House Oversight Committee for roughly four hours behind closed doors.

Comer suggested earlier this year in a Fox News interview that his investigators were looking into possible ties between Chung and the Chinese Communist Party. Fox host Maria Bartiromo asked if Chung was "reporting back to the CCP about any of” the former vice president’s documents, and Comer replied, “We’re looking into that.”

Added Comer, "We’re looking into at least three different people that Hunter Biden was directly involved with that have very close ties to the Chinese Communist Party.”

Ties to Chinese Communists

Comer noted that when Chung was in the White House, she fed Hunter Biden sensitive information on U.S. political leaders that he said Beijing would covet. In her April 4 interview with House Oversight investigators, Chung denied having a relationship with the CCP, according to excerpts of her testimony released by Democrats earlier this month.

Chung also insisted she never shared classified information with anyone who wasn't cleared to read it, which ostensibly would include Hunter Biden. Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the Oversight panel, said Comer was spreading falsehoods based on a “bigoted conspiracy theory.”

House investigators want to know what the Chinese got for the massive payments they wired to President Biden’s son, brother, and several other family members. Were they using their contacts with the Bidens to gather U.S. intelligence? Were any White House records stored at Hunter’s Georgetown office, where his Chinese partners had access?

In a recent letter to Hunter Biden, Comer requested, under threat of subpoena, that the president’s son provide any documents in his possession designated “classified” government property, along with any communications with Dong, Ho, Ye, and other CEFC officials. Separately, he has asked the University of Pennsylvania for a list of people who had keycard access to the Penn Biden Center. He also requested administrators turn over the visitor logs for the center.

“It is imperative to understand whether any Biden family members or associates gained access to the classified documents while stored at the Penn Biden Center,” Comer said.

According to emails found on Hunter’s laptop, Joe Biden was a silent partner in the CEFC deal that netted his son and brother millions. The documents show Hunter claiming that 10% of the Chinese payments were set aside for “the big guy.” Former partner Tony Bobulinski has confirmed that “the big guy” was Joe Biden.

CEFC is the capitalist arm of Chinese President Xi’s “Belt and Road Initiative” to spread China’s influence around the world while gobbling up oil and gas rights. China has sought to influence powerful officials, particularly to gain access to U.S. energy markets, which are heavily regulated.

Among the classified documents Biden reportedly had removed from the West Wing are sensitive compartmented briefings about Iran, where Beijing has been injecting billions of dollars in direct foreign investment to extract cheap oil.

“It would be reasonable to suspect that Ye and his associates intended to use their contacts with Jim [Biden] and Hunter to gather intelligence” about such critical foreign countries, said Ben Schreckinger, author of “The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power.”

Bobulinski says the Chinese weren’t looking to make a “healthy” return on investment, but rather were partnering with the Bidens "as a political or influence investment.” He noted the CEFC partners were Chinese intelligence and understood the value of the Biden name.

In a May 2017 email, Jimmy Biden provided Hunter, Bobulinski, and other partners a list of friendly American political contacts whom they could exploit to advance the proposed joint venture with their Chinese partners. Among the “key domestic contacts” were Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York; then-Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo; former Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe; and then-Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris of California, who would go on to become Biden’s vice president.

Republicans have slammed Biden for being soft on China. When Beijing flew a giant spy balloon across the continental U.S. and collected highly sensitive data from U.S. military sites, Biden did not order Defense Secretary Austin to shoot down the spycraft for several days, and only after public outcry.

In July 2021, Biden named his trusted aide Chung a top assistant to Austin, where she has access to sensitive Pentagon information. The Pentagon and White House declined to answer questions about the level of Chung’s access to classified military intelligence and the extent of her role in handling such material.

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

Five-Thirty-Eight A rated pollster finds Daniel Cameron in a dead tie with Andy Beshear.

2023-06-04T06:30:00.004-04:00

Five-Thirty-Eight "A" rated pollster finds Daniel Cameron in a dead tie with Andy Beshear. Cygnal bills it's-self as a center-right polling organization, but an A rating from Five-Thirty-Eight is rare.

According to this Cygnal survey, conducted May 22 – 23, 2023,of 600 likely general election voters, Cameron and Beshear are tied at 47%. (M.O.E. ±3.92%)

This survey must scare the pants off Beshear and Kentucky Democrats.

2023-06-03T09:31:00.002-04:00

California Budget Deficit $10B Greater than Forecasted

By Adam Andrzejewski

June 02, 2023

California’s state budget is the largest in the nation, accounting for $306 billion in spending. Unfortunately, it severely underestimated costs and overestimated income, leaving the state with a $32 billion deficit, $10 billion larger than it forecasted just months ago.

According to Fox News, California is one of only a few states with any budget deficit at all. A progressive tax code that heavily taxes stock market returns may be partially to blame in a year with a subpar stock market performance. Inflation also surely pushed up costs.

Now, Gov. Gavin Newsom faces criticism from lawmakers of both parties. He has proposed $9.6 billion worth of cuts to climate programs, disappointing progressives, as well as cutting drought programs, frustrating rural conservatives.

This shortfall comes just a year after Newsom touted a $97 billion budget surplus, largely thanks to hoarding federal Covid-19 relief funds and redesignating them for other state programs.

While a $32 billion budget deficit should spark serious reflection over spending habits, community leaders and activists are forging ahead with calls for massive spending programs. Recently, California’s Reparations Task Force officially recommended the state pay reparations for Black residents that could amount to $800 billion, almost three times the size of the current state budget.

Unlike the federal government, states can’t print their own money to pay back debt, making state deficits extremely dangerous to the economy. California needs to get its fiscal house in order before it’s too late.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

2023-05-27T12:39:00.002-04:00

Via RealClearWire:

Iowa Poll: Trump Holds 3-to-1 Lead Over DeSantis

By Jake Bevan

May 25, 2023

An abortive rally and an expanding field of challengers hasn’t hurt Donald Trump’s standing in Iowa, according to a new poll from Emerson College. In results released Thursday morning, 62% of Republican voters indicated they would choose Trump as the party’s nominee, giving the former president a 3-to-1 margin over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who clocked in at 20%. Mike Pence and Nikki Haley are tied for third with 5%.

DeSantis, who formally declared his run Wednesday during a Twitter livestream with Elon Musk, has long been considered the most significant challenger to Trump for the GOP nomination, but the gap between the two has been expanding. Although the governor made a pair of widely covered visits to Iowa earlier this month, any corresponding boost in the polls has yet to materialize. The Emerson survey places him about on par with the current RCP national average.

Nonetheless, the DeSantis campaign may have exposed a fault line within the GOP’s base. The new poll found that although Trump was preferred by Republican voters across the board, he was especially favored by those under the age of 35 (75%) and without a college degree (70%). DeSantis is much closer among Republicans with a postgraduate degree.

The poll found that either candidate would beat President Biden handily in Iowa if the election were held today. A rematch between Trump and Biden shows a 49%-38% Trump lead in the Hawkeye State, with 10% voting third party and 6% undecided. DeSantis leads Biden 45%-38%.

Despite this — and despite a meager 35% job approval rating in the state — Iowa Democrats remain united behind Biden. Emerson found 69% of them ready to support his reelection in 2024. Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. comes in a distant second at 11%.

The survey also showed that the top concern among Iowans is the economy, with 31% of all voters citing it as the most important issue facing their state. This was followed by education (15%), “threats to democracy” (15%), immigration (10%), abortion access (9%), and health care (8%).

Election integrity continues to be an especially divisive issue. Although the majority of those polled stated that Joe Biden’s 2020 victory was legitimate, 46% of Iowa voters — including 43% of independents — said it was not. There was, predictably, a split along party lines: 91% of Democrats believe the election results to be sound, and 78% of Republicans do not.

Iowans are also anxious for their state’s caucus to retain its first-in-the-nation status, a roughly 50-year-old tradition that has cemented Iowa as a cornerstone of the American political landscape and transformed the sparsely populated, rural state into a kind of presidential power broker. Its status has been threatened this year following a move by Democrats to swap Iowa with South Carolina in their primary lineup.

About three-fourths of voters found it “very” (40%) or “somewhat” (34%) important that Iowa keep its perch as first in the nation. Republicans were particularly animated by the issue, with 86% saying it was important.

Voters in Iowa are also divided, though less informed, when it comes to the looming prospect of America’s first-ever default on its national debt. Half of them (49%) are against raising the debt ceiling, compared to 36% in favor, with 16% unsure.

The one area where Iowans from both parties unequivocally agreed? The need for televised presidential debates. A whopping 92% of all caucus voters found that participation in debates was important prior to making a decision. Trump has cited his poll numbers as proof that he need not debate with any of his party’s numerous upstart candidates. Iowans do not agree.

Emerson’s poll was conducted May 19-23 among 1,064 registered voters. The margin of error is roughly 2.9 percentage points.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

American voters may be finally growing weary of the Ukraine-Russia proxy war

2023-05-27T10:44:00.006-04:00

Economics is number one with voters. So, it's often missed in the polling, but a recent poll shows only 38% approve of Biden's foreign policy. I believe it's Ukraine weariness. Taxpayers are tired of spending 10s billions for no return. The war is stalemated. Nobody even seems to know where our money went. Trump is the only major candidate on the side of making peace in Ukraine. Biden's a warmonger. DeSantis flip-flopped. After wanting to disengage from the war, he now supports it. His big donors in the defense industry got to him? I believe voters and taxpayers want a peace treaty. They have had enough. Another $100 billion of our tax dollars and another hundred thousand dead won't change a thing. If we keep funding it, this war could last a decade! Via Fox News: https://t.co/ncLdvMQSJ3

2023-05-21T12:39:00.001-04:00

Via RealClearWire:

Biden Administrations New Mortgage Policy: Unjust and Dangerous

By Andy Matthews

May 19, 2023

One of the essential lessons most of us are taught early in life is the importance of developing a sense of financial responsibility.

Work hard to earn a good paycheck. Don’t spend more than you can afford. Save for the future.

Eventually, following these steps will land you in a position where you can afford some of the nicer things life has to offer. Behaving in a financially responsible way isn’t always fun in the moment – but it’s well worth it when you get to reap the rewards of your good decisions later on, as you’re able to enjoy more and more of the things you want and need.

It’s one of the most fundamental principles of our society, and it’s also rooted in one of the basic realities of human nature: Incentivize good behavior, and you’ll get more of it.

But what happens when the incentive structure becomes inverted? We’re about to find out, because that’s what’s going to occur thanks to a new Biden administration policy that took effect on May 1.

The new Federal Housing Finance Agency policy will force those with good credit scores to pay more for their mortgages each month, with those extra payments used to subsidize the loans of higher-risk borrowers. Experts say that homebuyers with credit scores of 680 or higher will now pay roughly $40 per month more on a home loan of $400,000, with those who make down payments of 15 to 20% hit with the highest fees. It amounts to a tax increase on the middle class, and it’s atrocious in every way imaginable.

For starters, it is fundamentally unjust and absurd to impose a policy that punishes those who have acted responsibly, sacrificed, and worked hard toward a secure financial future for themselves and their families. That’s why I was honored to join a coalition of 34 state financial officers from around the country, led by Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity, in signing a letter to the Biden administration voicing opposition.

But this new policy is more than simply unfair. It’s also deeply reckless. The 2008 financial crisis and mortgage meltdown offered a painful lesson in what happens when government intervenes to push those who cannot afford a home loan to take one and to undermine the critical role that credit scores play in assessing a prospective borrower’s risk level. My home state of Nevada was hit the hardest by that crisis, suffering under the highest rates of foreclosures and unemployment in the entire nation. And Nevadans will once again be put in a position of exceptional vulnerability under the Biden administration’s new policy.

For its part, the administration defends its policy on the grounds that it’s simply trying to close a gap in house ownership between higher- and lower-income Americans. The administration also anticipates some political gain through what is merely the latest of its many wealth redistribution schemes.

But while increasing opportunities for home ownership is a laudable goal, the right way to accomplish this is by taking steps to eliminate unnecessary regulations, reduce inflation, and bring down energy costs – not to subvert basic market principles to political considerations.

If political advantage is what the Biden administration is indeed expecting here, they may be in for a harsh surprise. The more Americans learn about this new policy, the more they are rightly outraged and insulted that the administration would adopt a plan that perversely punishes responsible behavior and removes Americans’ incentives to manage their finances wisely and prudently.

The administration should reverse course immediately.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

Bluegrass Pundit

The ICE protests are all Astroturf

Imagine Communism

The left glorifies violence and they don't even try to hide it.

Kamala Harris backs Zohran Mamdani in New York mayoral race

Fat Fani thrown from Trump Georgia case

Democrats Admit Trump Can Not Get A Fair Trial In DC

Can Trump and his supporters get a fair trial in Washington DC?

Trump races ahead in polling including 3rd party candidates.

A Seismic Victory in Gaza: Mapping the Tunnels of the “Gaza Metro”

Via RealClearWire:

A Seismic Victory in Gaza: Mapping the Tunnels of the “Gaza Metro”

Waste of the Day: U.S. Gave $4.5 Billion To Ukraine For Debt Relief

Reposted with permission from RealClearWire:

Waste of the Day: U.S. Gave $4.5 Billion To Ukraine For Debt Relief

Trump Pulls Ahead Of Biden In RCP Average Of Polls

Trump is crushing his opposition in the GOP primary.

Is it time to put Team DeSantis on suicide watch?

The government won't allow you to sue COVID vaccine makers and they won't pay up for injuries either.

At this point, if you took the COVID vaccine, you are a sucker.

Laid Low by the COVID Vaccine, Now They've Got a Bad Case of Federal Unresponsiveness

By Christian Britschgi, RealClearInvestigationsJune 28, 2023

Tale of Two Compensation Programs

Pain and Suffering

Efforts at Reform

Ron DeSantis campaign has failed to launch

There are too many things our masters want to keep secret from us.

Classified Info: Washington's Most Powerful Weapon

Latest Harvard-Harris Poll has Trump clubbing DeSantis and Biden like they were baby seals.

Is Trump unstoppable?

Covid money is still being wasted.

NC Spends $18M of Covid 19 Funds on Racetrack

Key Player in Biden Documents Removal Was Caught Up in Bill Clinton-Era Chinagate Scandal

Via RealClearWire:

Key Player in Biden Documents Removal Was Caught Up in Bill Clinton-Era Chinagate Scandal

By Paul Sperry, RealClearInvestigationsJune 8, 2023

Overlapping Scandals?

Ties to Chinese Communists

Five-Thirty-Eight A rated pollster finds Daniel Cameron in a dead tie with Andy Beshear.

California Budget Deficit $10B Greater than Forecasted

Via RealClearWire:

Iowa Poll: Trump Holds 3-to-1 Lead Over DeSantis

American voters may be finally growing weary of the Ukraine-Russia proxy war

Via RealClearWire:

Biden Administrations New Mortgage Policy: Unjust and Dangerous

By Christian Britschgi, RealClearInvestigations
June 28, 2023

By Paul Sperry, RealClearInvestigations
June 8, 2023