Category: national politics & policies

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insider corruption national politics & policies

Un-Masking the Maskers

covid, masks, hysteria

While we turned to face masks as easy-to-practice tools early in the fight against the novel coronavirus, folks at the Centers for Disease Control were . . . lying about said technology.

“In a recently obtained letter (pdf) sent in November 2021 to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),” writes Megan Redshaw in The Epoch Times, “top epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, and seven colleagues informed the agency it was promoting flawed data and excluding data that did not reinforce their narrative.”

By over-stating the effectiveness of masks, the CDC “would ‘damage the credibility of science,’ endanger public trust by ‘misrepresenting the evidence,’ and give the public ‘false expectations’ masking would protect them from the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.”

While Osterholm and others expressed alarm that the CDC’s selection of study citations was more conclusion-oriented than process- (science-) oriented — “focus[ing] on the strengths of studies that support its conclusions while ignoring their shortcomings of study design” — we the patients (and doctors) were continually distracted from best practices during a pandemic.

Meanwhile, millions died.

The scientists’ letter was uncovered via aFreedom of Information Act (FOIA) process initiated by The Functional Government Initiative, which in making it public stated, “The story of official masking guidance should trouble the American public. Recall that Dr. Fauci at first said there was no need for masks. Then cloth masks were all that stood between you and COVID. But as evidence against cloth masks appeared. . . .”

Well, the rest is history: Big Government Science masking the truth.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption media and media people national politics & policies

In Evidence

Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Ukraine, corruption

In yesterday’s Washington Post, fact-checker Glenn Kessler explained, per the headline: “How Republicans overhype the findings of their Hunter Biden probe.”

He has a point. For example, the official House committee staff carefully stated that they had “identified over $20 million in payments from foreign sources to the Biden family and their business associates.” But Committee Chairman Comer turned that into: “The Biden family received over $20 million from our enemies around the world.”

The whole $20M+ didn’t go to the Biden Crime Family. Kessler’s analysis puts that number at merely $7.5 million. 

I guess this is why gang members sometimes turn on each other.

But Kessler — like so many other mainstream media mouthpieces — gets something very, very wrong.

“No evidence has emerged that any of these funds can be traced to Joe Biden himself,” the fact-checker asserts before delving into the specifics of his checked facts. Near the close, Kessler reiterates: “No money has been traced to Joe Biden.”

That’s just not true.

In a text that was discovered on the infamous Hunter laptop (now verified even by big media behemoths), Hunter Biden tells his daughter that his father (now President Biden for those following closely at home) makes Hunter kick back roughly 50 percent of his income.

A statement made in confidence to a loved one is commonly referred to as evidence. Strong evidence.

There are additional communications and invoices showing Hunter paid bills for “the Big Guy,” including home repairs and improvements costing thousands of dollars.

No matter how hard “fact checkers” ignore the evidence, it is still there.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom international affairs national politics & policies

It’s a Date

Taiwan, China, war, defense, freedom, technology

“Do not mess with Taiwan before 2028,” Vivek Ramaswamy instructed translators to tell Chinese ruler Xi Jinping, “before the end of my first term, okay?”

Responding to a question from Hugh Hewitt on his radio program, Ramaswamy — the entrepreneur, author, and GOP presidential candidate — urged a “move from strategic ambiguity to strategic clarity.”

The right idea, I guess, just not elaborated in the clear-thinking manner I have been hoping for.

You see, there was a “second part” to Ramaswamy’s foreign policy prescription. “That commitment is only as far as 2028,” he explained, “by which point I will have led the United States of America to achieve semiconductor independence, and we will not take the risk of war that risks Americans lives after that for some nationalistic dispute between China and Taiwan.”

“Some nationalistic dispute”?* Sure, between the democratic miracle of the last century and a genocidal totalitarian regime that claims it . . . along with claiming 90 percent of the South China Sea, the world’s busiest waterway.

A skeptical Hewitt heard Ramaswamy “saying ‘I will go to war, including attacking the Chinese mainland, if you attack before semiconductor independence. And afterwards, you can have Taiwan. So if you just wait until 2029, you may have Taiwan.’”

Let’s make the world safe for semiconductors! 

But . . . not for people? 

Ramaswamy’s transactional approach might make the Taiwanese feel less inclined to assist our efforts toward semiconductor independence. And what a terrible message to send other allies in the region!  

As the democratic countries of Asia and the world are stepping up and coming together to push back against Beijing’s belligerence, the U.S. ought not jeopardize this by suggesting more convenient dates for calendaring in future Chinazi invasions.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* From the interview, Ramaswamy appears ignorant of Taiwanese history; namely, the fact that the Nationalist Chinese forces that fled to the island in 1949, as well as their offspring, comprise a distinct minority of the island nation’s population. Meanwhile, the native Taiwanese had been under Japanese colonial rule for the previous fifty years and, prior to that, never completely under Chinese control.

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insider corruption national politics & policies partisanship

A Very Special Prosecutor

Hunter Biden, swamp, Washington DC, investigation, law, crime

You don’t send a salamander to put out a fire or a leech to drain a swamp. Similarly, you don’t appoint David Weiss as a special counsel to “investigate” the Hunter Biden case. 

Not if you want justice.

Weiss, who has been on the case since 2017, was responsible for the cushy plea deal that fell apart last month, in court. It was a novel, first-of-its-kind offering of immunity to all future prosecutions for unspecified charges. When pressed in court, the prosecutors had to admit it was “unprecedented.”

And the judge had to throw it out.

Now, with U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointing Weiss as special counsel, the questions mount:

  • Why Weiss — considering his track record?
  • What additional powers does he have — considering the AG’s past assurances that Weiss had everything he needed?
  • And why now?

To answer that last query, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) admitted on ABC’s This Week — amidst many accusations against former President Donald Trump — that Hunter Biden “did a lot of really unlawful and wrong things” and that Mr. Weiss, “with the collapse of the plea agreement that he had apparently worked out with Hunter Biden,” now “wants to be certain that he’s got the authority to go bring charges wherever he wants.”

Which only further begs the question. Weiss says he didn’t ask for it. And if he in fact lacked what was needed, why didn’t Garland give it before?

What’s really going on?

“The Biden Justice Department is trying to stonewall congressional oversight,” explains House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), “as we have presented evidence to the American people about the Biden family’s corruption.”

And as Jonathan Turley, the renowned George Washington University law professor, adds, “The initial impact is to insulate Weiss from calls for testimony before Congress.”

Republicans are looking this Democrat gift horse in the mouth. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Fifth Amendment rights Fourth Amendment rights national politics & policies

Time to Slap Grabby Hands

Civil Asset Forfeiture, theft, law enforcement, crime

Is the House of Representatives readying itself to do something to limit civil asset forfeiture initiated by federal agencies?

The legislation has emerged from the Judiciary Committee, so there is hope.

The Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration Act (FAIR) would impose substantial limits on federal civil asset forfeiture — on the power of officers to grab someone’s cash or other belongings on the unsupported suspicion that it was involved in a crime.

Currently, this power to steal based on zero evidence and zero due process remains untrammeled. And forfeited funds thus grabbed can then be spent by the agencies that did the asset-grabbing. 

Victims must spend years in the courts to get their stuff back, if they ever do.

FAIR would require “clear and convincing evidence” of wrongdoing. It would also prohibit law-enforcement agencies from being able to spend forfeited funds, eliminating a perverse incentive to rob people naïve enough to be carrying “too much” cash for whatever reason.

At National Review Online, Jill Jacobson says that the bill is “a step in the right direction” but doesn’t go far enough. Arguing on the premise of innocent until proven guilty, she insists “there is no reason why federal law enforcement should be seizing personal property from everyday citizens on tenuous suspicion.” 

Or even non-tenuous suspicion, I would add, for not everyone strongly suspected of doing wrong can be proven to have done wrong. And citizens caught on the wrong end of a government official’s steely gaze should not be regarded as a public resource. 

The reform isn’t finished until civil asset forfeiture is abolished altogether.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies

Melting in the Force of Opposition

snow flake, news, Covid, censorship

Is it time to bring back the pejorative “snowflake”?

We got used to the term in the early days of woke political correctness, but maybe the most egregious snowflakes are the elites in government and Big Pharma.

They melt when anything is said challenging their narratives about disease and cures and public health measures.

An article on online censorship in The Epoch Times, by Naveen Athrappully, discussed recent revelations that Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) calls “the Facebook Files” — all about COVID-19, and the official Government Narrative surrounding it.

In July 2021, “President Biden accused Facebook of ‘killing people’ by not censoring COVID-19 content that the administration perceived to be ‘misinformation,” Mr. Athrapully explains. “The White House wanted Facebook to remove humorous or satirical content that it thought suggested the COVID-19 vaccine wasn’t safe. The Biden administration even wanted to remove honest information about the vaccines.” [Emphasis added.]

I mean, wouldn’t you add the emphasis? Forbidding even honest and true information that might give an inconvenient take surely goes too far. Facebook’s communications documents say that the Surgeon General wanted the social media giant “to remove true information about the side effects if the user does not provide complete information about whether the side effect is rare and treatable.” Astounding!

This level of touchiness, this obsession for control, shows a remarkably fragile bearing on the part of bureaucrats. The winds of doctrine and the gales of opinion? Mustn’t let that whirl around!

It’s the fainting couch set who most desire to control speech.

These government officials should be fired on principle. 

Every. Last. Snowflake.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Slow Murder Is Still Murder

weather, climate change, government, power

Electricity providers must not beg the government to destroy them more slowly. 

“I’m not saying now’s the time to double down” on fossil fuels, pleads Lanny Nickel, chief operating officer of Southwest Power Pool, which helps provide electricity to 14 states. “I’m just saying now’s the time to slow down on the removal of [those] assets from our footprint.”

The assets Nickel means are oil, gas, coal.

Like others in the business of keeping the lights on, Nickel knows that if and when the percentage of fossil fuels in the utility industry “footprint” is coercively reduced to point oh one percent or whatever, wind and sunshine will not be taking up the slack. 

We’ll suffer, instead, from lots more brownouts and blackouts.

Nickel understands this. 

But begging regulators and politicians to go slower won’t discourage them. They’ll just gloat about how they’re making the utility executives sweat.

We should in fact be doubling down on fossil fuels, because these are the only always-reliable sources of electricity. 

Should solar and other sources of electricity become cheaper and more reliable, people won’t have to be compelled to increasingly turn to them. The transition would happen naturally, in the normal course of progress. 

And the notion that government will be able to fine-tune global weather if only we are forcibly deprived of our means of coping with the ups and downs of the weather is a willful delusion.

Electricity providers must not beg the government to destroy them more slowly, sure. But more importantly, the government should not be destroying them — and us — in the name of the religion of Climate Change at all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption national politics & policies term limits

Nineteen Seconds and Counting

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)

We witnessed the epitome of uber-experienced Washington, last week, when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) froze mid-sentence during a press briefing, unable to utter a sound or make any movement for a seemingly interminable 19 seconds. 

The Republican leader, 81 years of age, the last 38 spent in the United States Senate, was eventually rescued by fellow Republican senators, led away from the microphones.

McConnell has plenty of company in Washington. There’s our doddering octogenarian president. And in Congress, incumbency leads to longevity, which leads to old age. The Senate, Newsmax notes, now “has the highest median age in U.S. history at 65.”

Americans were treated to another gerontocratic spectacle with 90-year-old Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), appearing confused at a committee hearing, and being told to vote “aye.” 

And sheepishly complying. 

I started to write, “If this is what experience leads to . . .” but there is no need for the “if.” It is.

And grist for a million memes. “Family Torn Between Placing Grandpa In Hospice,” runs a Babylon Bee headline, “And Having Him Run For Senate.”

Funny, sure. But this problem isn’t. Getting old isn’t always pretty. And even career politicians such as McConnell and Feinstein deserve better.

So do ‘We, the People’! 

Term limits would solve the problem and be better than age limits. Both are popular — 75 percent favor age limits, while over 80 percent want term limits. But with Congress having dodged the congressional term limits enacted in 24 states back in the 1990s, citizens in North Dakota, with help from U.S. Term Limits, have launched a ballot initiative for 2024 to place an age limit of 80 on their federal representatives.

Three decades ago, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly struck down state-imposed term limits, 5-4. Today, what will the High Court determine on age limits?

Inquiring minds want to know. And I really love the movement’s relentless agitation!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability national politics & policies tax policy

Won’t Come A-Knockin’

IRS, audit, tax, taxes

The Internal Revenue Service says it will end “most” surprise visits to homes, like the one an agent made to the home of journalist Matt Taibbi the day he was telling Congress about governmental use of social media to censor people.

According to IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel, the many surprise visits each year looked bad, and “making this change is a common-sense step.” (The IRS wants to still be able to surprise-visit taxpayers whose assets it is seizing. . . .)

Let’s hope that the reform, even if partial and inadequate, is for real. It’s long overdue.

But can we trust these “revenuers”?

The agency periodically says that it will now respect taxpayer rights, now be nicer, etc., usually soon after publicity about awful IRS abuses. As a result of such attention, some IRS personnel are then probably nicer in some ways to some taxpayers sometimes.

And things could always be worse.

Indeed, they may be getting worse. Our Congress recently moved to expand IRS funding by $80 billion over the next ten years (part of the laughably named Inflation Reduction Act). Over the last few years, the IRS has spent millions on “weaponry and gear.” And the question of what to do about the latest bad-looking IRS abuses of the taxpayer never seems to go away.

It will probably never be realistic to expect the IRS to always play nice and in strict accordance with all pertinent legalities and constitutional rights.

But if the Congress that funds the IRS actually represented us, the American people, maybe these issues would’ve been solved a long time ago. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency ideological culture national politics & policies

Bless You, John Kerry

John Kerry, climate change, global warming

It is hard to find the words. 

Having just finished wringing out a soaked handkerchief, soggy with tears of gratitude for your recent act of high nobility and raw courage in defying the worst aspects of current U.S. policy and your own dismal and dismaying track record of silly pronouncements as Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, an actual title I might add, I wanted to take a moment to say Thank You.

Thank you, sir, thanks for declining to again deploy your eloquence, charisma, and illogic in the service of the same old dreary nonsense.

For when asked during a recent congressional hearing whether the United States would be contributing to a fund to pay “climate reparations” to countries harmed by extreme manifestations of weather, aka “climate-driven” natural disasters, you said, flatly, “No, under no circumstances.”

Wha . . . ? Was this the same man who likened the fight against “climate change” to the fight against the Nazis in World War II?

I mean, I’ll believe it when I don’t see it, but for now I just want to say: Wow! 

Especially since last year’s Conference of the Parties, COP27, billed as “a defining moment in the fight against climate change,” where the United States did express support for such payments.

So the U.S. will not, after all, be using taxpayer money to appease other countries for also experiencing weather. Great news. For every minute it lasts, I really appreciate it. 

I am veritably dripping with . . . gratitude.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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