Category: national politics & policies

crime and punishment national politics & policies

“The Same Lunatics”

Yesterday, President Donald J. Trump characterized a subset of federal government employees as “scum.”

While some pearls will no doubt be clutched out there among the Big Government fan base, he’s not wrong.

On Truth Social the president wrote: “I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbright to let her know that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross.”

This pardon, which readers of This Is Common Sense have certainly heard about before, was a long time coming. Ross Ulbricht had been sentenced for establishing and running The Silk Road, a Dark Web marketplace, way back in 2015.

Interestingly, Trump pardoned Ross, as he put it, in honor of Ross’s mother and friends — chiefly libertarians, specifically in the Libertarian Party. This may be the most significant thing the Libertarian Party has accomplished in years: a man is free.

Then we read the killer sentence: “The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me.” While Trump defined the pardon as a matter of honor, the most important point may be who he is dishonoring.

But of Ross’s plight, Trump wrote, “He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!”

Yes, ridiculous. Overkill. The inhabitants of permanent government were trying to send a message: they would not allow commerce outside the scope of their moderation and oversight.

Trump now sends a different message. He knows what his enemies are.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies

Trump Fact-Checked

“Over the past eight years I have been tested and challenged more than any president in our 250 year history,” said Donald Trump in his second inaugural address. “And I’ve learned a lot along the way.”

This section of his speech, yesterday, is probably the best.

Because true.

While known for hyperbolic statements, extravagant figures of speech and whoppers and colorful b.s., Donald John Trump’s not exaggerating to claim a special status of having endured more than other presidents and presidential candidates. The prosecutions, the impeachments, the lies, the elaborate psychological operations carried on by mass media and Deep State operatives, and more, give weight to his claim.

Now, this doesn’t make any of his proposals and positions and other opinions correct.

But it does help us receive his next sentence: “The journey to reclaim our republic has not been an easy one, that I can tell you.” In the second half of the speech Trump framed his approach as a nationalism in the McKinley-Roosevelt tradition. Theirs is the kind of politics and republic he seeks to revive.

Also not untrue? “Those who wish to stop our cause have tried to take my freedom, and, indeed, to take my life.”

The mobbing of multiple prosecutions was piled onto by two would-be assassins. Their story, Tucker Carlson noted last week — has dropped out of the conversation.

Trump dropped it back in: “Just a few months ago, in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin’s bullet ripped through my ear — but I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.”

Whatever else you may say about Trump, and whatever credence you give to his theological spin on the shots fired on July 13, 2024, his take is, if a stretch, a traditional one; many who first witnessed the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, leapt to a simple conclusion: he would become president again.

And he did.

No joke — as another, very different president liked to say.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency insider corruption national politics & policies

The Biden Is No More

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., went out as he came in, plagiarizing.

Well, in style anyway, his bizarre farewell address striking ultra-familiar themes.

“Most Biden speeches are acknowledged (Lincoln, Obama) or unacknowledged (Neil Kinnock, John Kennedy) homages to other politicians,” explains Matt Taibbi. “This last Biden attempt at an Eisenhower impersonation offers an anti-insight. We’re warned about an ‘oligarchy,’ which Webster’s def i nes as ‘a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.’”

And here the intelligent reader is already ahead of the author.

“He tries to tag disobedient billionaires like Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen and Mark Zuckerberg (as opposed to Reid Hoffman, Bill Gates, Steven Schwartzman, etc.) as this new oligarchy, but there’s one closer to home, which Biden referenced later in the speech: ‘In the years ahead … it is going to be up to the president, the presidency, the congress, the courts, the free press and the American people … I still believe in the idea for which this nation stands.… Now it’s your turn to stand guard.’

“Biden’s possibly ad-libbed distinction between ‘president’ and ‘presidency’ was the most inspired line of his career,” Taibbi quips.

And eerily defining … of Biden’s stint at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue … and various vacation hot spots.*

Taibbi contrasts the man — “stumbling, tumbling” — with the machinery of the office — run by a mostly-unseen cabal Taibbi defines with reference to H. G. Wells’s science fiction novel The Invisible Man.

Other sci-fi metaphors come to mind. In his penultimate paragraph, Taibbi mentions Frankenstein filmmaker James Whale, and then in his last line Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man. But didn’t Philip K. Dick provide a hundred examples of fake personae as presidents and tyrants?

Except that the Biden Administration, whatever it might have been, was limited in its power because it lacked legitimacy from half the population — and was as cognitively challenged as Biden himself.

Yesterday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R‑La.) told Meet the Press that our sleepy commander-in-chief had been manipulated by his staff into signing key executive orders under false pretenses. And running interference for this Democratic Party “presidency” were Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.).

Thank goodness, the Age of “The Biden” is over.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Biden spent 40 percent of his term in office “on vacation.”

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Tags Joe Biden, presidency

insider corruption national politics & policies

Oligarchy Malarkey

Joe Biden, farewell speech, covid, oligarchs

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape, in America, of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” President Biden warned the nation Wednesday night.

“We see the consequences all across America.”

Yes, we do, but what specific consequence brought on the president’s sudden awareness of the “O” word: The Democrats’ political defeat? His own? Harris’s?

Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg was a swell fellow back in 2020, when he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, tossed in $400 million to goose Democratic Party turnout. But when the Meta CEO admitted that Facebook was bullied by the Biden administration into censoring content, he becomes a terrible oligarch.

As for “extreme wealth,” Democrats outspent Republicans. By a lot.

Biden compared his swan song to President Eisenhower’s famous 1960 farewell address, in which World War II’s Supreme Allied Commander sounded the alarm about a military-industrial complex with dangerous levels of power. Says Biden: “I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well.”

“Potential”? “Could”?

I guess he means that, say, some day Big Tech might censor discussion of information about a candidate’s drug-addicted, gun-toting son’s international influence-peddling operationjust weeks before an election.

Or perhaps squelch news on the origin of a pandemic killing millions.

“Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power,” argued the president.

He’s got a point. Look at the elaborate ruse run by Democrats at the White House, in Congress, at the DNC, in the media, pretending for those of us in TV Land that our commander-in-chief, the most powerful man in the world, was fully competent to execute the duties of the office even while knowing he most certainly was not.

Joe Biden is a charter member of the “oligarchy” about which I’m most concerned.

This is Common Sense.

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Accountability First Amendment rights national politics & policies too much government

GEC Bullet Ducked?

Last month, a mega-monstrous “continuing resolution” (CR) — allowing federal deficit spending over the set debt limit — was killed by public outcry, helped along by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and others with megaphones or MAGAphones.

This CR was chucked to the great annoyance of champions of runaway spending and runaway violations of individual rights. They babbled about the autocratic interference of one “President Musk.”

As if his complaints alone would have sufficed to kill it had nobody else in America cared.

The mega-monstrous CR was replaced by a mini-monstrous CR. The replacement sported many fewer pages, things like a pay raise for congressmen having been left out.

Also deleted? A part of the State Department devoted to censoring Americans.

Called the Global Engagement Center (GEC), it was designed to use indirect methods to censor Americans guilty of wrongthink. The plan was to give our tax dollars to creators of blacklists, like $100,000 to the Global Disinformation Index. American advertisers then would feel compelled to avoid dealing with listed companies — to remain on the good side of the U.S. government

Thanks to “President Musk” and his “obedient slave” Donald Trump, the GEC died. State’s website now says so itself.

Or did it? Has the GEC simply been rebranded?

The new thing is a so-called Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub; it looks like State will still be funding this GEC clone.

The GEC, after all, was also supposed to focus only on foreign agitprop.

When will government agencies stop trying these kinds of anti-democratic, anti-constitutional end runs?

Never. Not voluntarily.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment media and media people national politics & policies

Pardon Me

Dr. Fauci, Anthony Fauci, covid, pardons, Biden, justice

Another round of presidential pardons, anyone?

At Medium, former New York Times science and health reporter Donald G. McNeil, Jr., urges President Joe Biden to “preemptively pardon Jack Smith, Robert Mueller, Merrick Garland, Brad Raffensberger, Fani Willis, Letitia James, E. Jean Carroll, Judge Juan Merchan and every judge who has ever issued a ruling that made Donald J. Trump unhappy.”

He says that “President Biden should also pardon himself,” along with “the heads of Operation Warp Speed and the chief executives of Pfizer and Moderna,” and “can’t even imagine how many political journalists … also need protecting.”

Is there anyone left?

“While we’re at it,” writes McNeil, “I’d like a pardon too.”

The award-winning journalist had a colorful history at The Times. In 2020, the paper reprimanded him for comments attacking Trump and the head of the Centers for Disease Control over their COVID response, declaring “that his job is to report the facts and not to offer his own opinions.”*

And we can’t forget the primary focus of McNeil’s essay, titled: “Now Biden Should Pardon Tony Fauci.” Declaring “Dr. Fauci has done nothing wrong,” the reporter decries that “a motivated prosecutor can go after you for anything … can break you financially with legal fees just proving your innocence.”

Yes, we know … having watched it unfold against Mr. Trump.

McNeil clearly fears that Trump will become a dictator, throwing out the Constitution and the rule of law. Judging from Trump’s first term, I am not so worried. But does even McNeil really believe these pardons could survive his imagined MAGA maelstrom?

For nearly 40 years, Anthony Fauci directed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, with primary responsibility for the treatment of contagious illnesses, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. A presidential pardon would be an official admission of his guilt.

In your own vernacular, Mr. Biden: Don’t!

Fauci deserves his day in court. And so do we.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Then, in early 2021, McNeil resigned from the newspaper “under pressure” after complaints surfaced about him using the n‑word on a student trip to Peru, for which he served as a guide.

Note: Back in 2022, Elon Musk did post on X: “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.”

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