Category: Accountability

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Accountability government transparency national politics & policies

Droning On

Mayorkas, Homeland Security, Lex Luthor

“There’s no question that people are seeing drones,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said yesterday on ABC’s This Week, acknowledging the obvious.

“We know of no foreign involvement with respect to the sightings in the Northeast,” the Secretary assured the public, “and we are vigilant in investigating this matter.” 

That means: He doesn’t know or he’s lying. But he pinky swears to apply the same vigilance to the Mystery Drone question that he demonstrated in managing the border these last four years.

Plus, Mayorkas promised, without even cracking a smile, to let us know right away if anything changes and it turns out these things humming over our heads are part of, say, an alien invasion. Or anything. Sorta don’t call us, we’ll call you.

But he reiterated his desire “to assure the American public that we are on it.”

This follows a news briefing last week by “federal agencies leading the response” that, as CNN described, “left reporters and the public with more questions than answers, as they downplayed but simultaneously legitimized concerns about the reported drones.”

“Mystery Drone sightings all over the Country,” President-​Elect Donald Trump stated on Truth Social. “Can this really be happening without our government’s knowledge? I don’t think so! Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!!”

Meanwhile, on Friday, an international airport in New Windsor, New York, closed its runways for an hour due to a drone spotted in the area; on Saturday night, Boston Police arrested two men for flying a drone “dangerously close to Logan International Airport,” with a third suspect escaping in a boat and still at large; and, earlier in the week, a Chinese national was arrested leaving the country after having flown a drone over Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. 

Is there no one in Washington capable of exerting sane leadership?

Or telling the truth?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Destroying What Has Been

Kamala Harris, tweets, riots, bail

Let’s assume that chief executives responsible for major appointments know something about whom they’re appointing.

Minnesota governor Tim Walz, the Democrat running for vice president, was fine with the appointment of an associate professor “of urban and multicultural education,” Brian Lozenski, to help write the state’s “ethnic studies” standards. Those were supposed to have been released for public comment in August but being kept under wraps.

Lozenski’s left-​wing ideas are notorious in Minnesota. For instance, he has advocated overthrowing the United States — not to be replaced by an Elysium of reason and freedom, we can be sure.

Let’s also assume that someone running for president of the United States is familiar with his or her own views and agenda.

One thing we should know about his running mate, the current Vice President Kamala Harris, is that in 2020 she asked people to “help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.” In jail for unpeacefully destroying the property of others. 

A couple of years later, she denied making the appeal … but her tweet doing so remained up on the platform and, regardless, had been screenshot.

Commentators sometimes suggest that the future policies of Kamala Harris are mysterious, since she has said or half-​said so many different things.

What mystery?

All of her left-​wing, socialist, anti-​capitalist, anti-​First Amendment, anti-​Second Amendment statements and actions express her true impulses. All her blarney about how she’s now a big fan of fracking or a gun owner who’d drop any intruder, etc., are attempts to fool voters who’d be appalled by her actual agenda.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability general freedom

New York’s Pandemic Orgiast

Varma, Covid, New York, pandemic

“The official in charge of New York City’s pandemic response participated in sex parties and attended a dance party underneath a Wall Street bank during the height of the pandemic,” reports The New York Times, “even as he was instructing New Yorkers to stay home and away from others to stop the spread of Covid-​19. He acknowledged his transgressions on Thursday after being caught on hidden camera boasting about his exploits.”

The orgiast’s name is Dr. Jay K. Varma. He served as New York City Hall’s senior public health adviser under Mayor Bill de Blasio from the height of the pandemic panic to May 2021. The camera was hidden by comedian Steven Crowder — of “Louder with Crowder” fame and infamy — who tweeted the video last Thursday.

On the released recordings Dr. Varma says a lot of incriminating things. Bad enough is what others regard as his boast: “I actually was the one who convinced the mayor to make it mandatory,” he says clearly, with the “it” being “the vaccine.” 

He was just as intentional, though, about the orgies he participated in — “to let off steam.” These were not spontaneous events erupting at sedate dinners at his home. The “eight or ten friends” rented a hotel room and bought drugs for the occasion.

If you are at all shocked, the doctor understands. “Yeah,” he says, upon being asked what would have happened had he been found out at the time he was bullying people throughout the city, “it would have been a real embarrassment.”

But more than merely embarrassing. That the public health Covidians were willing to break both letter and spirit of their tyrannical edicts only suggests that the most flagrant orgy was their naked abuse of political power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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He Lied About Who Died Where

Cuomo, Covid

Lying about data was not uncommon during the late pandemic. 

In April of 2020, I noted one way pandemic statistics were muddied: by paying hospitals more to identify a patient, surviving or not, as a COVID patient than as something else. This was especially devastating to death stats, perhaps mildly (or even wildly) over-​stating the effect COVID was having.

But understating the death count, or shifting it from one location to another, was also a problem. 

“Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo personally edited a government report that undercounted the Covid deaths that resulted from his March 2020 directive forcing nursing homes to admit coronavirus-​positive patients, a congressional panel concluded,” explains James Lynch at National Review.

 “The New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) issued a report in July 2020 faulting nursing homes for the spread of coronavirus in their facilities at the direction of Cuomo administration officials who ‘heavily edited’ the document, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus pandemic said in a memo released Monday.” As I prepare these words, that subcommittee is set to listen to the former governor’s testimony on “the directive and his administration’s apparent coverup of the death total.

“More than 9,000 Covid-​positive patients were admitted to nursing homes because of the ‘must-​admit’ order,” James Lynch adds.

Remember, Andrew Cuomo was once a star of the pandemic, hailed for “getting tough” on the spread of the virus, as in cracking down on church services — assumed (but never proven) to be the kind of “superspreader” events that “kill grandma.” He was so much a star of the brief, flaming epoch that he was awarded an Emmy for his performance. (It was later rescinded).

I guess lying — falsifying data — is a performance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Slope of Service

Trump, sniper, Secret Service, DEI

“Heads should roll at Secret Service,” I declared on Monday.

That was before I stumbled upon Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle explaining to ABC News the strategic situational thinking employed by the agency in determining not to place agents on top of the roof of a building where the assassin fired multiple rounds, hitting former President Trump in the ear, killing a man attending the rally with his family and seriously wounding two others. 

Director Cheatle offered that “the Secret Service was aware of the security vulnerabilities presented by the building Crooks took a sniper’s position on to aim at Trump,” Fox News reported. “However, a decision was made not to place any personnel on the roof.” 

So much for “awareness.” And why was this decision made?

“That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point,” she pointed out. “And so, you know, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof. And so, you know, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside.”

Competing safety factors, eh? The former president’s and that of novice roof-​climbers in the Secret Service.

Instead, three local law enforcement sharpshooters were stationed inside the building as the shooter easily climbed up onto that ever-​so-​dangerously slanted roof and opened fire.

The finger-​pointing at local police by Secret Service officials, who claimed that securing that building was a local law enforcement responsibility, is simply passing the buck.

Cheatle acknowledged that her agency “is responsible for the protection of the former president,” adding “the buck stops with me.”

Good, I’m looking for immediate change.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Weekend at Biden’s

Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Weekend at Bernie's

“I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence,” former President Trump told CNN’s debate moderator Jake Tapper. “I don’t think he knows what he said either.”

Mr. Trump was referring to the incoherent ramblings of our current president at last week’s notorious debate — bizarrely held five months before the election. (Well, now, I guess that timing might make a little more sense.)

President Biden, as journalist Glenn Greenwald put it, “unsteadily shuffled onto a debate stage in Atlanta and then preceded to fulfill every fear and nightmare that Democratic Party operatives and American voters have been harboring about him.”

Beyond what Biden’s debate performance says about who should be the next president is what it screams at maximum volume: Who is really running the country?

It’s scary to think that it isn’t the man we elected to do the job. But perhaps scarier still, after last Thursday’s performance, would be if it actually is that man.

On his System Update program, Greenwald also pointed out that, “Just two weeks ago the media was insisting that the only reason Joe Biden looked in any way to be impaired is because right-​wing liars were clipping videos in a deceitful way …”

No one clipped or cheap-​faked the 90-​minute debate, though.

In a country being torn apart and a world on fire, we have a commander-​in-​chief who is simply, obviously, not in command. And arguably even worse, we have a news media that has largely gaslighted the public on the matter.

If President Biden stays in the race, watch for the media to go back to its cover-​up mentality, telling us only what they want us to know about him … so we will vote the way they want.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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