Keep on Truckin’, Working Class Rebels

 he line of polite big-rig drivers crossing Canada in protest over the maple leaf mandate Marxism imposed by the ridiculous Justin Trudeau is a welcome sign of the workin’ class revolt to come. The courteous Canadians outside of its noxious elite, a caste that rivals our own useless elite in terms of unearned self-satisfaction, have discovered something. They make their country happen. It’s not diversity enforcers who feed the Great White North. It’s not regime journalists who fuel it. And it’s certainly not genderqueer-affirming professors who defend it.

The working class is getting sick of this Schiff, and it is starting to push back. And this will happened here in America too. How it ends is unclear, but my money is on the guys who can do push-ups.

Understand that “Democracy” means, to our garbage ruling class, rule by the ruling class with no annoying input from the people who actually make America work. The Democrat Party, once the party of the workin’ man, is now the party of tech zillionaires, college professors, welfare cheats, and sexually unsatisfied liberal wine women. The workin’ class was not merely abandoned by the Dems. It was thrown out of the party. Their love of family and country was both embarrassing to our overlords as uncouth and as humiliating as well. The workin’ class believes in traditional manhood – they can do the aforementioned push-ups – while our elite rejects the concept of traditional manhood in favor of a neutered weakness masquerading as gender enlightenment. Real men are scary and none will ever get pregnant. Eek! Why, those brutes even have guns!

When you see the moistened likes of David French mewling about how today’s conservatives – now the home of the workin’ man – are big hairy meanies who mock libs for being sissies, understand that this whining is because the libs know that they are sissies. They won’t admit it, but they are – properly – ashamed. And so are their wives, who drown their sorrows over being trapped with weak pseudo-men in goblets of screw-top Trader Joe’s chardonnay and by reading the books by Ibram X. Kendi and whoever wrote that Fifty Shades crap.

“But Kurt, you’re a noted LA trial lawyer who refuses to go anywhere where there’s not someone ready to serve you a glass of bespoke cabernet and hardly one of the mavens of the wrench turning set! Many of you con blue checks cheering on the workin’ class don’t break a sweat when you work!”

An interesting and superficially intriguing point, which misses the bigger one. Leaving aside that my first job was slopping out toilets in a Carl’s, Jr., restaurant, followed by one slopping out toilets in a basic training barracks, support for the workin’ class is not limited to those who turn wrenches. It’s not actually about wrenches at all. It is about something bigger. The main workin’ class concern today is no longer jobs and economic benefits. It is our culture, and you don’t have to sweat for a living for that to be your number one priority. The elite has put our families and our country at profound risk. Today, you need not be a card-carrying member of the workin’ class to sympathize. All of us share the fight against globalist elitist smiley-face dictatorship.

If you object to the name, you just can call us patriots.

But the real problem for the elite is that the actual workin’-class folks, who are usually busy workin’, are getting activated by the myriad assaults upon them made by our elite. It takes a lot to activate them politically. Look at those Canadian truckers. They would rather be trucking. Taking time off for protests – usually the province of parent-supported brats – costs them money they need. But now they have no choice but to stop earning and start making clear that they are done with the petty and not-so-petty oppressions of an elite that despises them.

The template of the elite response has been drearily predictable. First, it was studiously ignored by the regime media. That didn’t work, because there are now rebel media outlets that publish unapproved information (are you shocked about the pro-censorship movement to suppress “misinformation”?). Next, it tried to mock the revolt. Those truckers are just hicks, and rubes, and even racists. It’s always racists, of course. And when that hasn’t worked, when gleeful Canucks lined the off-ramps and overpasses to cheer on the truckers, the regime tried to ban public shows of support. Then its gimp media moved to issuing urgent warnings that the pleasant pedal-pushers were about to get violent.

Just remember this flex – and every flex over the last two years in Kangarooland – when they tell you to turn in your guns.

The idea is, of course, to get the protestors to go away and stop interfering in their own country’s politics. That is the idea here too. Our government has just gone farther. The whole post-January 6th festival of liberal onanism was designed to demonstrate to the masses that they have no role to play in their own governance, that any effort to do so is illegitimate, even (gasp) insurrectionist.

That will work. Uh huh. Yeah, our elite’s track record of success shows that it is full of smart people who are competent and make good decisions. They’ll get this right. Sure thing.

The workin’ class is getting tired of this. And it is activating.

It, adorably, once believed the hype and participated in the political process by electing Donald Trump. After all, back before CRT, when schools taught civics, they were taught that every American has the right to make his views known and to elect the leader of his choice. It is so cute how they believed that. They registered their displeasure by electing Trump, and the elite said “No.” 

Trump was ham-strung by an elite enraged that its control was challenged, and the rigged election of 2020 – rigged in part by traditional fraud, in a larger part by improper voting rule changes, and most of all by an institutional conspiracy to install the drooling cucumber who currently wanders aimlessly through the Oval Office muttering nonsense – ensured the workin’ class’ choice was suppressed.

So what is the workin’ class’ outlet for its grievances now? The elite somehow got the idea into its pointy collective collectivist head that with no outlet, the workin’ class will shut its whiny trap and get back to making and delivering things to the elitists’ condos and mansions. Except history teaches that when you suppress legitimate gripes, the pressure builds instead of dissipates. Unfortunately for our garbage ruling caste, they don’t study history anymore. Too many dead white guys.

The workin’ class is going to revolt here in American, and I can’t wait. It’s a matter of both time and extent. In November, it will revolt at the ballot box again. But if that is stolen from them again, if the releases of protest and electoral impact are totally foreclosed to them, the revolt will manifest in other ways. The elite will deserve the whirlwind it reaps.

And reap it shall, because there’s nothing this collection of naggy shrews and fussy femboys can do to stop a real workin’-class revolt. Our rulers can’t feed themselves, they can’t fuel themselves, and they sure as hell can’t defend themselves. Our rulers rule only because the workin’ class allows them to. And it may get ugly when that permission is revoked.

It need not come to that, but our elite is so transcendently stupid that you would be a fool to bet that it would not provoke a real rebellion. One way or another, this is going to get resolved. After all, history always keeps on truckin’.

CBP Has Seized a Staggering Amount of Fentanyl Only a Few Months into the New Fiscal Year

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced on Thursday Border Patrol agents and Customs officers have seized more than 2,700 pounds of fentanyl in only the first three months of fiscal year 2022 as the crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border continues unabated.

The large seizure of the extremely dangerous drug, which only takes 2 milligrams to induce an overdose, in only three months means CBP is on pace to overtake the amount that was seized in fiscal year 2019, 2,804 pounds, and fiscal year 2020, 4,791 pounds.

Fiscal year 2021, which includes the year Joe Biden became president, CBP officers and agents confiscated a whopping 11,201 pounds of fentanyl. Goes without saying, but the seizure totals does not include the thousands of pounds that were successfully smuggled and distributed across the United States.

CBP agents and officers seized more than 2,700lbs of fentanyl during the first three months of FY22.

Check out additional agency drug seizure statistics by component, type, and location: https://t.co/nw8Es5tAeH pic.twitter.com/oaCy7SPvMi— CBP (@CBP) January 27, 2022

Over 100,000 Americans died from drug overdoses between May 2020 to April 2021, with fentanyl and the COVID-19 lockdowns accelerating the trend. This means drug overdoses now surpass deaths from car crashes, guns, and even flu and pneumonia. The total is close to that for diabetes, according to CBS News.

Mexican drug cartels have mainly switched to producing fentanyl and other drug products containing fentanyl, with supplies to make it coming from China, because it is more powerful than other hard drugs and it is not limited by a growing season.

 

America’s History Is Not Just Black and White

 

Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of the infamous 1619 Project, said recently that she didn’t understand why parents believe they should have a say in what their children are learning in school. She simply doesn’t get it. While most Americans agree that our children must learn the whole story of America, they oppose indoctrination and are outraged that the 1619 Project and critical race theory is showing up in our schools.

Hannah-Jones and The New York Times crowd that launched the 1619 Project three years ago have stopped fighting about whether their work is history.  After virtually every reputable historian in the country—on both the left and the right—called their work inaccurate and sloppy, they know they have lost that fight. Now they are fighting parents and conservatives.

These days Hannah-Jones and the Times carefully call 1619 a “journalism project” which apparently means it doesn’t have to be true.

Backing away from facts even further, Hannah-Jones has called the work an “an origin story.” She also says “…it is not about history, it’s about memory…”

Journalism, memory, whatever—1619 marches on. It is now a best-selling book and will soon become a movie. A children’s version has been released. 

No one who has read 1619 is confused about what it is—another left-wing, America-hating screed designed to divide us on race and to indoctrinate our children. 

The 1619 Project has always had a classroom component with teaching guides and lesson plans. It is being taught in thousands of classrooms across America now. The goal is for every school child in the country to be taught that America did not begin in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence, but instead was born in 1619 when the first Africans arrived in Virginia.

It presents all of American history in black and white. “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false,” Hannah-Jones writes, “Black Americans have fought to make them true.”

Of course, Americans of every race and creed have fought—and continue to fight—so our country lives up to the ideals laid out by the founders.  

1619 presents only two American stories—the black story and the white story. But American history is made up of millions of stories and we are learning more about those stories all the time.  

If Hannah-Jones were a historian writing real history, she would understand that what we know about our past is dynamic. It changes when real historians discover new facts that put the past in clearer focus and sometimes reverses what we thought was historical fact.  

When the British dug up Richard the Third in a parking lot in 2012, 500 years of English history had to be re-examined. Closer to home, when DNA finally confirmed in 1998 what Jefferson’s descendants had known and many people had believed for generations—that Thomas Jefferson had fathered Sally Hemmings’ children—it recast the way Americans, who may not have been paying much attention before, viewed our country’s founding and the leaders who forged the nation.  

The Jefferson-Hemmings story was not a surprise. Long before The New York Times put out the 1619 project, Americans knew that Jefferson, Washington and other Founding Fathers, despite the great country they had built, were also slaveholders who had exploited the evil of the institution they were perpetrating. By the 1960s, American children were learning in school about slavery and the long road to freedom, from Reconstruction to Jim Crow to the struggles that continue today. Despite their insistence that 1619 advocates teaching history accurately, contemporary history classes discarded “whitewashed” views of the past and phony excuses for the Confederate rebellion decades ago. 

Jefferson’s DNA test inadvertently ushered in a new way of looking at history that changed the way we see ourselves. His story was part of what moved millions of Americans to want to know more about who their own ancestors were. Inexpensive DNA tests have allowed millions of Americans to look more closely at their genetic ancestry resulting in a 276 percent jump in the number of people who reported identifying with more than one racial group in the 2020 Census. According to Pew Research,  easy access to DNA tests have given Americans a much broader perspective on who they are and where they come from. Almost 20 percent report finding racial links they were not aware of. These findings are expanding what we know about America’s past. 

Writing history requires collecting facts and painstakingly stitching them together to build something that gets us closer to the truth of times past. It is not memory or myth and it is certainly not a politically driven agenda pretending to be a “journalism project.”  

Real history is the exact opposite of The New York Times 1619 Project and Americans have rejected it. When it comes to history, they want so much more.  

Is Democracy Dying or America Disintegrating?

 “What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people.”

What did John Adams mean when he wrote this to Thomas Jefferson in 1815, after both had served as president?

Adams was saying that America, the country that took up arms and fought for its independence from the British, was already a nation — before 1775.

America preexisted the Constitution, Adams is saying. America had been conceived and born before he and Jefferson began to write its Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776. America had come into being even before Lexington and Concord in 1775.

A corollary of what Adams wrote is that America, and the republic created by the Constitution, are not the same thing.

While America is a country, a republic is the form of government created for that country in Philadelphia in 1787.

“A republic if you can keep it,” said Ben Franklin to the lady who had asked what kind of government they had created for the already existing nation, when he emerged from that constitutional convention.

What, then, are our elites bewailing when they say that populists, rightists and Trumpists have put “our democracy” at risk?

Answer: It is not America the country or America the nation they are referring to, but our political system as it has evolved.

And what is the nature of the threat they see?CARTOONS | AF Branco View Cartoon

A precondition of democracy is that the results of elections be recognized and respected, and if repeatedly challenged, this is a mortal threat. And this is the present peril. 

Yet, there are other preconditions, not only for democracies but for countries, that were enumerated in The Federalist Papers:

“Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people — a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs … “

“This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.”

John Jay was describing the preconditions of a nation, a country, a people. Do these preconditions still exist in America?

“One united people”? “A band of brethren”? A common ancestry, common religion, common language, common customs and manners?

That may describe the America of 1789. Does it describe the America of 2022? Or does Jay’s phrase, “a number of unsocial, jealous and alien sovereignties,” better describe the America of today?

Hillary Clinton once wrote off half of Trump’s supporters, nearly one-fourth of the nation, as “a basket of deplorables … racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic … bigots,” who are “irredeemable.”

Assume that our elites, who often echo what Hillary Clinton said of the populist Trumpist right, agree with her.

Why would virtuous liberals wish to continue in political association with people like this? Why would they not declare that, if an election again delivers rule to such people, we want no part of the system or polity that produced so intolerable an outcome?

Why would the capture of all three branches of government by people such as Hillary Clinton describes not be cause for dissolving the Union?

How could democracy be a superior form of government, if it could deliver the republic to people such as these, and perhaps twice?

If the progressives’ enemies are “Nazis” and “fascists,” why would progressives not rise in resistance and reject their rule, rather than cooperate with them in the governance of the country?

Why would good people not battle to overturn an election that produced a majority for such “deplorables”?

Do the commands of democracy take precedence over the demands of decency? Rather than govern in concert with people like this, why not get as far removed from them as possible?

The point here: Not only may the preconditions of democracy be disappearing, but the preconditions of nationhood may be disintegrating.

Again, the American right is today routinely compared to Nazis, fascists and Klansmen. Why would good liberal Democrats accept an electoral victory and future rule by Nazis and fascists rather than seek to overturn it, by whatever means necessary?

And how do you hold up American democracy as a model to mankind if, after two centuries, it has produced scores of millions of citizens like those described by Hillary Clinton?

And, again, if the preconditions of democracy are vanishing, and the preconditions of nationhood are disappearing, is not secession of some kind inevitable and even desirable?

Ultimately, the logic of our situation must lead us to consider something like this. Western Maryland’s attempt to secede and join West Virginia, and Eastern Oregon’s attempt to secede and join Idaho, may be harbingers of what is to come.

What the Bible Says About Friends

 

If you are blessed with close friends, you love them dearly and know the feeling is reciprocal. Love of friends is rooted in God’s love – the creator of love. He loves us, we love Him, and we shower our friends with that God-given emotion. 

Having a friend(s) means we are engaged in a relationship where we positively and sometimes negatively influence each other while negotiating life’s ups and downs. Unfortunately, close friends can also turn into ruthless enemies, which is heartbreaking. As we know, life is complicated, ever-changing, and reflected in the arc of our friendships.   

With those thoughts in mind, we begin with verses addressing how friends can impact each other. Do these verses prove that our mothers were quoting the Bible when they warned us about falling in with the “wrong crowd” and how we would be judged by the company we keep? The Hebrew Bible book of Proverbs could be the source behind those motherly concerns:

“The righteous choose their friends carefully, but the way of the wicked leads them astray” (Proverbs 12:26)

“Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm” (Proverbs 13:20).

“A perverse person stirs up conflict, and a gossip separates close friends” (Proverbs 16:28). 

“Do not make friends with a hot-tempered person, do not associate with one easily angered, or you may learn their ways and get yourself ensnared” (Proverbs 22:24-25). 

Always remember this sound advice from St. Paul in the New Testament:

“Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character’ ” (1 Corinthians 15:33).

Now we turn to verses about the love, joy, and comfort that friends offer each other: 

“My intercessor is my friend as my eyes pour out tears to God; on behalf of a man he pleads with God as one pleads for a friend” (Job 16:20-21).

“A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity” (Proverbs 17:17).

“Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart, and the pleasantness of a friend springs from their heartfelt advice” (Proverbs 27:9).

Never forget this timeless, biblical advice about how to sustain long term friendships: 

“Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3:13).

“Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).

“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 

Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms” (1 Peter 4:8-10).

We are reminded that there are Godly consequences for not being a good friend:

“Anyone who withholds kindness from a friend forsakes the fear of the Almighty” (Job 6:14).  

The Hebrew Bible tells us why we should value our friends:

“If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up” (Ecclesiastes 4:10).

Praying for your friends is highly recommended:

“After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before” (Job 42:10).

For believers in Christ – St. Paul justifies why we must encourage our friends:

“For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing ” (1 Thessalonians 5: 9-11).

St. Paul also teaches us how to be a good friend:

“Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves” (Romans 12:10).

Most important of all is Jesus’s “command” about love and friends, but with a caveat: 

“My command is this: ‘Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command’ ” (John 15:12-14).

And the big takeaway this Sunday is acknowledging that Jesus is your best friend on Heaven and earth. To remind us, is country singer Alan Jackson with his rendition of the traditional hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” Pay close attention to the lyrics for a lesson that will strengthen and sustain you and your friends through difficult times.

We Are in a Civil War; It’s a War of Good Versus Evil; And Democrats Are the Confederate South

 

The bad news is that this is evil. Look around. What Democrats believe in is not “politics as usual,” it’s not “liberalism,” it’s not “progressive,” it’s not even “socialist lite.” It’s pure evil. It’s the kind of evil we used to fight wars over. It’s a combination of communism, fascism, Nazism and the slavery of the Confederate South. 

Yes, Democrats are the new Confederates.

First, before I define the evil that Democrats represent, let me start with an explanation. Understand I’m not talking about today’s American South. I love the South. If it weren’t for the patriots and conservatives of Southern states today, we wouldn’t have a Republican Party. We wouldn’t have lower taxes, prosperity, plentiful jobs, economic freedom or capitalism. We wouldn’t be America. God bless the Southern states. You are my heroes.

But the Confederate South of the Civil War period is a different story. The Confederate South was built upon slavery. The Confederate South believed one group of Americans was subhuman and had no rights. Enslaving any group, for any reason, is pure evil. Slavery is the biggest stain on America’s history. 

I repeat, today’s Democrats are the new Confederates. 

It’s happening again today. It’s time to admit demonizing one group of Americans, taking their rights away and enslaving them is evil. It’s un-American. These views don’t belong in American politics. They don’t belong in America.

It’s time to tell the raw truth — no matter how ugly. Democrats hate us: Republicans, conservatives, capitalists, and, most intensely, the unvaccinated. Democrats want no dissent. No freedom of speech. They want to destroy our lives. It’s all out in the open now. They want to imprison us, censor us, ban us and take our jobs and businesses away. They even want to take our children away. 

In short, they want to make us serfs and slaves. Over a mild flu, or common cold bug, with a 99.9% chance of recovery. The excuse for slavery in the 1800s was cotton. Today it’s COVID-19. 

You can’t fight FACTS. Here they are. Read them and weep. 

The latest Rasmussen poll is out. 

Fifty-nine percent of Democrats (nearly two-thirds) would support the government confining unvaccinated people to their homes indefinitely. Think about that for a moment. This is madness. This is unlawful imprisonment. This is a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. We fought and died in the American Revolution over this one. This is slavery. We fought a Civil War over slavery. 

But wait, it gets worse.

Just about half of Democrats (48%) believe you or I should face prison, or at best, fines that drive us out of business, for daring to discuss, debate or question the need for, effectiveness, or safety of COVID-19 vaccines. Free speech is out the window. If Democrats say “the world is flat” and you disagree, you must go along with it or go to prison.

About half (47%) of Democrats support the government tracking an unvaccinated person’s movements at all times. How would they do that? Would they install chips under our skin? Would they assign Gestapo agents to follow us 24/7 year-round? 

About half (45%) of Democrats support the government putting unvaccinated people in “designated facilities or locations” (i.e., internment camps for the unvaccinated). 

Almost one-third of Democrats (29%) support the government taking children away from unvaccinated parents. It’s no longer “my body, my choice.” It’s “government’s way or lose your children.”

And never forget Democrats in deep blue cities call their cities “sanctuary cities.” They allow illegal aliens to live, work and vote without ID. Asking for ID would be “racist,” they say. But they demand American citizens show ID to walk into any store, restaurant, bar, movie, sporting event or workplace 24/7. 

Noncitizens can actually board airplanes now with “arrest warrants” or “deportation orders” as their form of ID, while American citizens who are unvaccinated in blue states have lost all civil and human rights. 

This is no longer politics. This is a war of good versus evil. But there is a bright lining. It’s good to know exactly how the enemy thinks. And make no mistake: Democrats with these sickening views are the enemy of good, the enemy of freedom, the enemy of civil and human rights, the enemy of democracy and the U.S. Constitution, the enemy of American exceptionalism. People with these kinds of abhorrent views don’t belong in America. 

It’s clear we’re in a Civil War. A war of good versus evil. 

And Democrats are the new Confederates.

Fueled By Billionaire Dollars, Nuclear Fusion Enters A New Age

 

Having raised more than $3 billion in 2021 from the likes of  Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, fusion developers insist this zero-carbon energy source could be a reality within a decade.

It's clear that nuclear fusion can work at scale — just look at the stars. For 70 years physicists have dreamed of bottling that star power in the form of fusion reactors that would power the electric grid with the same limitless, zero-carbon reactions that make the sun shine. This Holy Grail has long been advertised as just 20 or 30 years away, but fusion fans have refused to give up the faith. And for good reason. Fusion (smashing together hydrogen atoms into helium) promises limitless zero-carbon electric power with zero risk of meltdown and virtually none of the radioactive waste associated with existing nuclear power plants that run on fission (the splitting apart of uranium atoms into smaller elements). 

The dream inspired Ajay Royan, cofounder of Mithril Capital (with billionaire Peter Thiel), who in 2013 first invested $2 million in Redmond, Wash.-based Helion Energy so that it could build a prototype "repetitive pulse power" machine. Mithril has invested in Helion ever since, including its recent $500 million round (valuing the company at $3 billion) — with the promise of $1.7 billion more if the company’s seventh prototype works as hoped. Helion's round was led by Sam Altman of Y Combinator. 

The year of 2021 was a big one for both fusion financings and forecasts, as developers raised more than $3 billion to fund their next round of machines — with some now promising commercially viable fusion in just five years. Royan is happy to see fusion getting more attention; "Sure 2021 may be a turning point for fusion according to Google analytics, but the real turning point happened a decade ago when power electronics passed a threshold." 

CEO David Kirtley explains that the initial R&D work behind Helion was done in federal labs, out of which Helion was spun in 2013. Freed from the federal R&D bureaucracy, Helion has been building new prototypes one after another ever since. “The startup mentality is not nice to have, it’s a requirement. and what we have focused on from the beginning," says Kirtley.

In 2020 Helion completed its sixth prototype reactor, dubbed Trenta. It’s now building a seventh, Polaris, while already designing the eighth, Antares. Helion intends for Polaris to be the first fusion machine to produce net electricity — generating more energy that it takes in. Alongside fast iteration, Helion benefits from local expertise. It’s building Polaris in Everett, Wash., near Boeing’s biggest factories, where they can tap a welcoming ecosystem of contract engineers and precision manufacturers. Kirtley says they spend the mornings tinkering, updating systems, and powering up capacitors. “Every afternoon at 3 pm we start doing fusion.”

To understand Helion’s approach, first consider the magnetic repulsion that occurs when you try to force the positive poles of two bar magnets together. It’s the principle that enables “mag-lev” tech like Japan’s famous bullet trains, which utilize magnetic repulsion to float on a cushion of air. 

Fusion researchers for decades have sought to devise the world’s strongest electromagnets, with which they engineer reaction chambers with magnetic fields so strong that they can contain, and compress, an injected stream of positively charged protons into a ball of plasma so hot that they fuse into helium. 

In Helion’s novel system, the energy released in the fusion reactions continuously pushes out against its magnetic containment field, which pushes back — causing oscillations (“like a piston,” says Kirtley) that generate an electric current, which Helion captures directly from the reactor. (For more, read up on Faraday’s law of induction.) 

 

Royan of Mithril says perhaps the biggest attraction of Helion’s direct electricity generation method is its simplicity. Other fusion approaches aim to generate heat, in order to boil water and power steam turbines, which make electricity — like at traditional nuclear power plants. “We can do it with no steam turbines or cooling towers. We get rid of the power plant.” 

To be sure, Kirtley understands fusion skepticism, especially around his aggressive timetable. He started his career in the fusion field, inspired by scientists at national labs in the 1960s who made big advances in magnetic containment (vying with Russian scientists to devise donut-shaped reactors called tokamaks) even before the invention of transistors. But Kirtley lost faith after determining early approaches just couldn’t evolve fast enough to yield a commercial solution — so he went to work on advanced spaceship propulsion using plasma jets controlled by electromagnets. He came back to the field in 2008 to help commercialize Helion’s tech. 

In time he envisions manufacturing fusion generators in a factory. A 50 mw scale system, packaged into three shipping container-sized units would power 40,000 homes. “In 10 years we will have commercial electricity for sale, for sure.” 

That puts Helion in a race with Boston-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems, an MIT spinoff, which raised $1.8 billion from investors including Bill Gates and George Soros. CEO Bob Mumgaard says they’ll have a working reactor in 6 years. His optimism is buoyed by Commonwealth's successful summer test of new electromagnets engineered with superconductors made from rare earth barium copper oxide. 

Mumgaard says these super powered magnets will enable Commonwealth to perfect their somewhat more traditional fusion approach of building a donut-shaped “tokamak” reactor, which Mumgaard calls a “big magnetic bottle" where powerful magnetic fields control balls of 100 million degree plasma — "star stuff." 

There are roughly 150 tokamaks around the world; the biggest one is under construction in France for $30 billion by an international consortium called ITER. The 20,000-ton machine, the size of a basketball arena, is slated to be complete by 2035. 

But Mumgaard intends for Commonwealth Fusion to make ITER obsolete before it’s even completed. Its edge is in the application of “high temperature” superconductors made with rare earth barium copper oxide (aka ReBCO). 

Superconductors move electrical current with virtually zero loss (far more efficiently than copper, for example). And they are key to making powerful electromagnets. Commonwealth has found that by making its magnets using a special barium copper oxide tape (like the tape found in a VHS cassette) it can achieve magnetic fields more powerful than the ones anticipated at ITER, but at 1/20th the scale. 

Whereas ITER’s primary magnets (called solenoids) will weigh some 400 tons and achieve fields stronger than 12 tesla, Commonwealth is eyeing 15-ton magnets, each using 300 km of ReBCO thin-film tape, that will generate 20 tesla (for comparison, a magnetic resonance imaging machine does 1.5 tesla). 

“This unlocks the fusion machine,” says Mumgaard. CES tested the magnets last summer and declared it “proof” that the science of fusion was now virtually complete and all that’s left is to build the reactor. “We understand the material well and think we can do this in three years,” says Mumgaard. “By 2030 we will see fusion on the grid.” 

CES is set to construct its fusion machine on a 47-acre site in Massachusetts, and is already working to source thousands of kilometers of ReBCO tape. Could availability of the rare earth become a limiting factor in fusion’s rollout? No says Mumgaard. “A fusion plant will have less rare earths than a wind turbine. Fusion is not about a resource you need to mine or pump. It’s about a technology.” 

There should be room for more than one fusion winner. Other leaders include General Fusion, based in Canada and backed by Jeff Bezos, which raised $130 million this year. Other notable billionaires in the fusion game are Neal and Linden Blue, who own San Diego-based General Atomics, which for decades has operated a research tokamak on behalf of the DOE, and which this year delivered to ITER the guts of its tokamak electromagnets — a 1,000-ton central solenoid. And there's TAE Energy of California, which has been experimenting with $1 billion for the past decade, and raised $130 million during the pandemic.

Fusion tech may have gotten its start in government funded labs, but its fruition will have to rely on private funding. Amy Roma, partner at Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C., says that the recently passed federal Infrastructure Act did include funding for an Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program — which only helps fission projects, not fusion. Roma suggests that if the federal government did want to support fusion advances, a good place to do it could be via the Act’s newly established “Office of Clean Energy Demonstration” within the Department of Energy. Zero-carbon energy from fusion would also benefit from President Biden’s recent executive order calling for the Federal government’s energy purchases to be “net-zero” by 2030. 

Legendary tech investor Steve Jurvetson, a Commonwealth Fusion backer who wrote his first check toward fusion research 25 years ago, is nearly giddy that this dream long deferred could soon become reality. “There’s plenty of naysayers until it’s done. Then they say it’s obvious.” 

Mithril's Royan says he's already working to adjust his framework to consider how different the world will look when fusion is real — "Think of the opportunities for water desalination, and fertilizer production. This fundamentally alters water economics overnight, and thus the economics of agriculture." It's all part of humanity's path, he says, "to keep proving Malthus was an idiot."

How the Left Uses Fear to Control Your Life

 In the book “We Didn’t Fight for Socialism,” we warn of the left’s overriding goal to control every aspect of our lives. The constitutional freedoms guaranteed all Americans are anathema to leftists. They want to control the government and use the government to control us. Their favorite tactic is fearmongering, creating panic and using it to convince Americans to give up their freedoms for the sake of security.

Rahm Emanuel, the quintessential leftist and chief of staff for President Barack Obama, made no secret of the socialist’s nefarious methods when he said: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.” The kinds of things Emanuel refers to include convincing naive citizens to surrender control of their lives to the government.

Emanuel was honest about the left’s methods if not their intentions. What he should have said but didn’t was: “If there is no crisis, invent one.” This is precisely what President Joe Biden and his leftist puppet masters did with the COVID-19 pandemic. The previous administration left the country in such good shape, Biden and the Democrats found themselves with no crisis to use for their scheming purposes. Lacking a legitimate crisis, Biden and “progressive” Democrats manufactured one.

The COVID-19 pandemic gave the ideologues who control Biden the supposed “crisis” they needed to institute unconstitutional mask and vaccine mandates. Thankfully, the mandates are being challenged in court by Americans who value freedom more than a false sense of security offered by the government. Dissatisfied by creating unwarranted fear of the virus, the president and his cronies added losing one’s job for refusing vaccinations and being attacked as an “anti-vaccination neanderthal” to their list of threats.

Psychiatrist Mark McDonald, author of “United States of Fear: How America Fell Victim to Mass Delusional Psychosis,” makes the following points about the vaccine mandates and the left’s ongoing efforts to gain complete control over individual Americans:

–The government and large corporations have for decades engaged in a systematic process of “grooming” Americans to be susceptible to irrational fears.

–Without fear, the government cannot rob individuals of their constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.

–The underlying intention of the left’s fearmongering is to create and nurture a sense of dependency on government.

If the Biden administration and far-left Democrats were interested in public health instead of government control, they would use encouragement, incentives, leadership and trustworthy data rather than fearmongering to increase the percentage of Americans who accept the vaccinations.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president in 1933, he inherited a nation gripped in fear because of the Great Depression. Banks were failing, tens of thousands of unemployed Americans stood daily in bread lines and the nation’s top investors faced financial ruin. In the middle of this real crisis, FDR uttered the most famous line of his four-term presidency: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Had Biden quoted his fellow Democrat president in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, his words would have been prophetic. Instead, he copied FDR’s actual response. In reacting to the depression, FDR ignored his own words and set the country on a course continuing to this day: respond to crises, real and imagined, by instituting new government programs and controls.

We give Benjamin Franklin the final word on surrendering freedom for the sake of security. In 1755, he and his colleagues in the Pennsylvania Assembly challenged the colony’s Biden-like, royal governor with these words: “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” We agree.

Hospitals, Stop Hiding Your Prices

 

Most people using hospital services must sign a form indicating that they will pay whatever their health insurance doesn’t. Federal transparency rules can help defend us against the consequence of that signature.

Federal price transparency rules require hospitals to post all negotiated rates, including cash prices for the uninsured, every single commercial insurance plan that they’ve contracted with, and even rates for government programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare and the Veterans Administration.

Those rules require hospitals to display:

• Pricing in a prominent place on the hospital website—if it’s hard to find, the hospital is out of compliance.
• A machine-readable file (usually an .xls or .crv file) with this information. Interactive tools that only show you your plan’s price aren’t good enough.
• Negotiated charges with EVERY insurance plan or program—if the hospital is “in-network” but you don’t see your plan listed in the columns of the posted price chart, as well as every single service they provide in the rows, the hospital is out of compliance.

Ignoring these rules is a bullying tactic to make you think you’re contractually bound to pay whatever the hospital charges. Unless the hospital makes its pricing accessible, the form you signed is what courts would find an “open price” contract, meaning a seller (hospital) may only expect the buyer (you, the patient) to pay if a court would find the price to be a fair market rate.

Most hospitals are not complying with federal transparency rules. If yours is not complying, you can make the case that you should not pay a dollar more than fair market price. Here’s how:

Step 1: Next time you go to the hospital, instead of signing your name on that form, write “I did not read this.” The clerk taking the forms probably won’t notice. It won’t disrupt an electronic registration process. When you’re billed, ask to see the form with your signature.

Step 2: If you did not sign the form, skip to Step 3. If you did, check the hospital website to see if the pricing information is posted and is in compliance with federal price transparency requirements. If it is, steps 3-6 below will help. If it isn’t, you can argue you were charged unfair market pricing and you’re only bound by an open price contract. Be prepared to argue for lower charges.

Step 3: Determine fair market rates. If you have health insurance, hospitals charge an average markup of 150% above their “cost,” which is benchmarked to the Medicare rate (Medicare=100%). Without insurance, the average markup is 317%. You can multiply your billed charges by a “fair market multiplier” and get a price that allows a “mere” 50% markup:

• If you have insurance, multiply your billed charges by 0.60.
• If you don’t have insurance, multiply your billed charges by 0.24.  

Step 4: Pay your fair market rate. If you have insurance, check the Explanation of Benefits from your insurance plan—it’s possible that the insurance company already paid more than the fair market rate is (in which case, you owe nothing). If not, pay the difference between the insurance payment and the fair-market rate. Use the instructions on your bill. Keep a screenshot of your online payment confirmation or take a photo of your check or payment stub before you mail it. Pay this amount on time!

Step 5: Send a letter like this one to the hospital’s registered agent demanding your balance be zeroed out. Explain you are in an open price contract because of the hospital’s non-compliance. Explain how you arrived at the fair price. Provide a screenshot or photo proving you paid that fair price (or a screenshot of your Explanation of Benefits showing that your insurance company already paid the fair price), and demand that your balance be zeroed out. You can find the agent by searching your state’s Secretary of State site.

Step 6: Check your patient portal to ensure the hospital zeroes out your balance. Be prepared to dispute bills if the hospital continues to send notices. Call the number on the bill or the patient billing office number from the hospital’s website promptly and have it recorded in your file that 1) you are disputing the bill, 2) you called to demand a response to your letter, and 3) that you are not obligated to pay anything beyond what you already paid. Insist the hospital commit not to sending your account to collections while the dispute is being resolved and have this noted in your file.

Just don’t give in and pay an unfair bill!

Australia Is A Mess, But Who Cares?

 

It’s tempting to look at any major city in this country and think, “This is horrible, these corrupt politicians need to fix this.” It would also be wrong to do. Because no matter how huge parts of bad Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Los Angeles, etc., get, it is important to remember that the people who live there voted for the moronic politicians who did it to them. The same goes for Australia, France, Canada, New Zealand, Germany, etc. Citizens voted for the totalitarian boobs arresting them or promising to “piss them off” if they don’t comply with every whim of the government. 

People assume places like Australia are very similar to the United States because we share a language, like the same movies, and so on. But Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, anywhere else, is nothing like the United States. Our government does not grant us rights like these other places. Our Constitution guarantees our government cannot infringe upon the rights with which we were born. If our rights were granted by the government, there would be no rational case against the government taking them away. Nothing would make Democrats happier than to be able to do that. Thank God our Founding Fathers had the foresight to protect us against that.

The rest of the world, even the parts of it that are similar to us, aren’t so lucky.

Canada is making moves against citizens who won’t get the COVID immunity booster shot (it’s inaccurate to call it a vaccine), as is France, where their President has pledged to use the power of government to “piss off” anyone who won’t obey. 

And then we have Australia. It’s tempting to think of them being just like us – Nicole Kidman married a country music singer, what could be more “American”? Hugh Jackman IS Wolverine! But they aren’t anything like us when it comes to individual rights.

The former prison island has reverted back to one, not only for those who haven’t gotten the shot, but even for those who have. The elected officials there are quite vocal about what they’re willing to do to anyone who won’t obey. 

So when tennis star Novak Djokovic was going through the drama of trying to play in the Australian Open, it wasn’t a surprise. Australian citizens are routinely placed under house arrest and tethered to a small radius around their homes, why should some rich tennis player have it any better?

Djokovic was eventually deported because an example had to be made. Honestly, I don’t really care because I’m not Australian, nor do I like or watch tennis. But the concept is worth noting – they are not like us. 

You can sit there and be shocked by how Australia and these other countries are acting, how they’re treating their citizens, but you have to remember that the people in these countries elected these politicians. 

It’s tempting to look at Detroit and feel bad for the people living there, but the people living there empowered the politicians who ripped off and ruined the city, reelecting them over and over. How do you look at someone banging their head against a wall while complaining about having a headache and give a damn? Once you tell them their head might not ache if they’d stop hitting it against the wall, you’ve done all you can. You’re not obligated to buy them a helmet, get them therapy, put a pillow against the wall, nothing. 

Some actions or decisions have to be arrived at on their own, and throwing off tyrannical or corrupt politicians is one of them. Liberty given is never as appreciated or protected and liberty won. That’s true for war, and it’s true for politics. 

As you watch the various dramas unfold down under, know the same things could be happening nearly anywhere you think of as “just liked us.” Because nowhere is “just like us.” America is unique, and it is that uniqueness that makes us special. It is our tradition of, and commitment to, individual liberty that separates us from the rest of the world, making us the target of envy. 

It is also what needs to be protected from those on the left who would love nothing more than to make us like the rest of the world. That cannot be allowed to happen.

The Moment Joe Biden Finally Lost His Credibility

If President Joe Biden’s disorderly and lethal Afghanistan withdrawal was the moment that fractured voters’ regard for him, then his vicious Atlanta speech last week may be the moment that defines his presidency.

Speaking Tuesday at Morehouse College and Clark Atlanta University, Biden uttered venomous, brutal accusations lacking factual basis. His shouting-in-the-wind delivery was inexplicable, and his decision to lash out at members of his own party — Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema — appears to have only strengthened their resolve not to give in to his demands.

Biden called those who disagree with his political views on legislation “domestic enemies.” He compared them to Confederate President Jefferson Davis and former Alabama Democratic Party Committeeman and ardent, violent segregationist Bull Connor. In American politics, that is about as divisive as one can get — at least he didn’t mention Hitler.

Biden bears no resemblance today to the man who ran for president, pledging over and over again to unify the country and restore a sense of calm and normalcy to politics. From the day he was sworn in to office and signed executive orders putting thousands out of work in the energy industry, he ceased to be that guy from Scranton that people thought he was.

He has not been that guy since he invited, through ill-considered policy changes, untold numbers of illegal immigrants across our borders. He has not been that guy since he miserably failed the troops and the nation’s image during his catastrophic tail-between-his-legs retreat from Afghanistan.

Biden, despite having no mandate and only the barest legislative majority for his party, has turned divide-and-conquer politics into the solution for everything, including the pandemic.

You don’t warn a nation that a winter of “severe illness and death” is coming for the unvaccinated because your aim is to bring people together; those words are intended as a threat and a slight, just like his resurrection of George Wallace in last week’s speech to score cheap political points.

The scope of Biden’s fall from grace — from glib middle-class Pennsylvanian to venomous, lying politico who will say anything to please left-wing activists — has been staggering.

This has not gone unnoticed by voters. Last week’s Quinnipiac poll showed that a plurality of voters (49%) now believe Biden is doing more to divide the country than to unite it.

Biden’s approval rating among adults was at an abysmal 33% points; independents gave him 24%; Hispanics a bit more at 28%. His approval rating within his own party has fallen 12 points since November.

The media tried to write off his fall as temporary last August, when a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed the public disapproving of his incompetent performance in Afghanistan by a 2-1 ratio. At the time, this event marked the first time in his presidency his approval rating was net negative.

But in the time since, Biden has only kept losing support.

This moment and the associated loss of credibility that Biden is suffering will have lingering effects in the American psyche. They might not remember all of the words, but they will remember Biden’s vicious, nasty, bad-faith accusations, his flagrant falsehoods and his petulant tone.

As with Afghanistan, the media and the people who surround Biden will dismiss the public reaction, and Biden will be worse off for it.

 

Biden Should Declare NATO Membership Closed

 

In 2014, when Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to a U.S.-backed coup that ousted a pro-Russian regime in Kyiv by occupying Crimea, President Barack Obama did nothing.

When Putin aided secessionists in the Donbass in seizing Luhansk and Donetsk, once again, Obama did nothing.

Why did we not come to the military assistance of Ukraine?

Because Ukraine is not a member of NATO. We had no obligation to come to its aid. And to have intervened militarily on the side of Ukraine would have risked a war with Russia we had no desire to fight.

Last year, when Putin marshaled 100,000 Russian troops on the borders of Ukraine, President Joe Biden declared that any U.S. response to a Russian invasion would be restricted to severe sanctions.

The U.S. would take no military action in support of Ukraine.

Why not? Because, again, Ukraine is not a member of NATO.

Clearly, by its inaction, America is revealing its refusal to risk its own security in a war with Russia over a Ukraine whose sovereignty and territorial integrity are not vital U.S. interests sufficient to justify war with the largest country on earth with its huge arsenal of nuclear weapons.

This is the real world.

And as Ukraine is not a NATO ally, and we are not going to invite it to become a NATO ally, Biden should declare so publicly, urbi et orbi, to remove Putin’s pretext for any invasion.

Biden has already declared that we will not put offensive weapons in Ukraine. If, by declaring that we have no intention of expanding NATO further east by admitting Ukraine or Georgia, we can provide Putin with an off-ramp from this crisis that he created, why not do it?

Speaking last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, “They must understand that the key to everything is the guarantee that NATO will not expand eastward.”

If what Lavrov said is true — that the “key” for Moscow, the crucial demand, is that the eastward expansion of NATO halt, and Ukraine and Georgia never join the U.S.-led alliance created to contain Moscow — we ought to accede to the demand.

If this causes Putin to keep his army out of Ukraine, admitting the truth will have avoided an unnecessary war. If Putin invades anyway, the world will know whom to hold accountable.

The purposes of the Biden declaration would be simple: to tell the truth about what we will and will not do. To remove Putin’s pretext for war. To give Putin an off-ramp from any contemplated invasion, if he is looking for one.

A Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war that would inevitably follow would be a disaster for Ukraine and Russia, but also for Europe and the United States. It would ignite a second Cold War, the winner of which would be China, to whom Russia would be forced to turn economically and strategically.

Thus, to avert a war, Biden should declare what is the truth:

“Ukraine is not a member of NATO, and neither we nor our allies have any intention or plans to bring Ukraine into NATO or to give Kyiv an Article 5 war guarantee.”

The same holds for Georgia in the Caucasus. We did not come to Tbilisi’s defense when it invaded South Ossetia in 2008 and was driven out by Putin. And we are not going to give Georgia any Article 5 war guarantee. Frankly, the time has come to declare that NATO will expand no further east and that NATO enlargement is at an end.

No more former republics of the Russian Federation — not Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Belarus or Kazakhstan — will be admitted to a NATO alliance whose roster is restricted to present membership.

Indeed, if the purpose of NATO is the defense of Europe from a revanchist Russia, why would we extend NATO so far to the east that it provokes Russia into attacking its neighbors in Europe?

With Russia having issued virtual ultimata, our objective has to be to prevent a catastrophe war that an invasion of Ukraine would ignite.

Such an invasion of Ukraine, a country of more than 40 million, would inevitably end with Kyiv’s defeat. And the longer Ukraine resisted and the fiercer it fought, the greater the number of dead and wounded on both sides and the more enduring the hatred and hostility that would be created between them.

Already, Americans in official circles are reportedly discussing aid to Ukrainians in fighting a guerrilla war against Russian occupation troops.

There is another issue here, and that is the morality of not doing all we can to avoid an invasion and its consequent war.

Would it be moral for the United States to provide arms for a bloody insurgency if there were no realistic chance of quickly expelling the Russian invaders?

Given his problems in Belarus and Kazakhstan, Putin cannot be anticipating happily the military occupation of millions of Ukrainians.

Ending NATO enlargement could be a victory for all of us.

In the News: Civil War Is Coming … Again … or Not

 

Civil war speculation is in the news again. Hardly a week goes by without some “expert” telling us we’re on the literal brink of armed conflict, and only a miracle can save us.

Or maybe not. Maybe we’re projecting our own fears onto the political situation and it’s all a mirage. Or perhaps, in a great, big, grownup industrialized country like the United States, armed conflict isn’t even possible.

What does it say about us that, around every corner, we see signs of a possible violent schism that would rip the country asunder? There are already a frighteningly large number of people on the right and left who think that violence against the government is sometimes justified. More than half of Donald Trump voters think it’s time for a red/blue split.

This is not a question of “cooler heads will prevail.” In case you haven’t noticed, there are no “cooler heads” on either side — not anyone of consequence, anyway. In fact, both sides see cooler heads as traitors to be canceled, or worse.

The most telling evidence is the unpopularity of “moderate” Joe Biden, who ran on being a cooler head than Donald Trump, and instead had his cooler head handed to him on a platter by the partisans.

Recommended: Falling Back into History

But still, there would need to be some kind of seismic event to overcome the stability — fragile though it may be — inherent in the American system.

The Conversation:

Individuals or groups may have grievances with specific state or national policies, or with other groups. As their anger grows, these people may not only use aggressive and demeaning language, but also become more accepting of the idea of using violence.

Anger and grievances are probably the most frequently highlighted issues in the mainstream media, and especially in social media outlets. Studies of social media outlets have found that their algorithms are designed to amplify anger to appeal to wider groups.

Aggrieved people, however, exist almost everywhere, even in the world’s happiest countries. Feeling aggrieved and even using harsh and violent rhetoric does not mean a person is willing to take up arms against the government or one’s fellow citizens.

Then there are the costs of actually joining a rebellion, including the likelihood of being on the losing side and forfeiting everything you’ve built over your lifetime.

Joining a rebellion is extremely risky. You can die or be severely wounded. Your chances of winning are low. If you don’t win, even if you survive unscathed, you still risk prosecution and social alienation. You may lose your job, your savings and even your home and put your family at risk.

It doesn’t matter how angry you are, these considerations are usually prohibitive.

All these calculations are part of what economists call “opportunity costs.” Opportunity costs basically measure how much you would have to potentially give up if you were to engage in a given activity, such as rebellion.

It’s easy to forget that, in the American Revolution, less than a third of colonists actively supported the revolt against the British. Another third actively supported the Crown. The revolutionaries did indeed pledge “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor,” with an emphasis on the first two. Several wealthy signers of the Declaration of Independence went broke supporting the revolution or lost everything when the British took vengeance on their houses and estates.

It’s not impossible to imagine hundreds of thousands of citizens fighting each other for control of the country, but it would take a social or economic cataclysm to make it happen. More likely would be sporadic but still deadly small-scale violence against red or blue forces.

Money for Indoctrination

 

Glenn Youngkin recently was elected Virginia’s governor partly because he promised to ban teaching of CRT.

CRT stands for critical race theory, which argues that every American institution upholds white supremacy.

Before Youngkin’s surprise victory, the media mocked him for complaining about CRT.

NBC’s Nicolle Wallace said it isn’t even taught in public schools. “That is like us banning the ghosts!” she laughed.

She is wrong.

In my new video, journalist Asra Nomani reveals some rather creepy CRT lessons that are taught in many schools.

Nomani filed Freedom of Information Act requests that forced school districts to reveal how they pay consultants to spread critical race theory.

“We found 300-plus contracts,” says Nomani. “Every day, I’m getting a new contract. For them to deny it is just part of their campaign.”

A CNN guest, history teacher Keziah Ridgeway, admits that CRT influences how some teachers teach. “That’s a good thing, right?” she says. “Because race and racism is literally the building blocks of this country.”

Really? The building block?

No!

America does have a long, nasty history of racism. Some racism persists. But it’s not the “building block.”

“They want to look at all of society through issues of race,” complains Nomani. That’s “propaganda that’s claiming our children.”

“Claiming the children?” I push back. “That’s exaggeration.”

She pulled out some of the children’s books that are now part of the curriculum at some schools.

“Woke Baby” teaches kids to be “a good revolutionary.”

“A Is for Activist” reads like a union recruiting manual. “M is for ‘Megaphones Marching.’ … Hooray! It Must be May Day!”

“Not My Idea” calls “whiteness” a deal with the devil. It portrays a white person with a pointy tail and goat hooves and tells children that they sell their souls because “whiteness” gives them “stolen land” and “stolen riches.”

The author, Anastasia Higginbotham, says, “I made a book for white children that encourages them to connect with their heartbreak about racism.”

Nomani says, “Just imagine if a black child was to get a book that said ‘blackness is a bad deal?’ … Shame is used as a lever of control over people. It should not be done with children.”

“America has a history of racism,” I say.

“We have to confront it,” she says. “But America does not have a monopoly on racism. I come from a nation of people of ‘color,’ and they are racist.”

India, her home country, had a nasty caste system for thousands of years. 

Slavery began in the Middle East. It thrived in Africa long before slaves were brought to America. Americans (along with Brits, the French and Mexicans) actually helped end the practice.

But today American students think America invented slavery.

This is “state-sponsored indoctrination,” says Nomani. “It is a bigotry that they are teaching. … It’s just so immoral. I am a brown Muslim woman, an immigrant in America. I know more freedoms in this country than I could in any Muslim country in the world.”

“But they’re not in a Muslim country,” I point out. “They’re in America, and there is still racism here.”

“But to suggest that this is all of America is as racist and bigoted … as being racist and bigoted against people of color,” she responds.

People need to care about this, says Nomani, “because it’s the taxpayers that are funding this.”

Some conservatives want to ban the teaching of CRT. That’s not a good idea. Government shouldn’t be banning ideas or taking choices away from teachers. Bans shield students from important topics.

A better solution is legalizing school choice.

Let parents take our tax money to a school we choose.

The United States Judiciary Is Acting as a Shadow Government and Must Be Stopped

This article is part 3 in an investigative series looking into court corruption in Montana. For the rest of the investigation, visit the full catalog.

The Constitution is not a difficult document to read or understand. The powers of the branches of government are well defined. Article III lays out what the judiciary is supposed to do in the United States.

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

It’s interesting that it says “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour,” which should be obvious but isn’t when judges all over the country are violating ethics obligations and standards of behavior with no consequences whatsoever. Section 2 addresses which courts have jurisdiction and spells out that crimes will be tried in front of juries. Section 3 defines treason and specifies that Congress has the right to attach a punishment to the crime of treason. That’s it. That’s all there is on the judiciary in our Constitution. The rest of the Constitution spells out all the things your branches of government are not allowed to do to you. But where the branches of government are concerned, there are very specific powers granted to each.

The 10th Amendment says, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” It’s important to understand that “the people” are the legislatures. The people are not represented by judges but by their elected representatives. So the 10th Amendment is specifying more power to the state legislatures to make decisions in their state about things that are not specified in the Constitution. There is no amendment that gives judges any more powers than what is already laid out in Article III.

For instance, the judiciary does not have any power to create or vote on legislation. They only have one function: to adjudicate cases before them in a non-biased, impartial way. Sometimes they apply the law in criminal cases, and sometimes in civil. Sometimes they decide if a law that the legislature has passed is constitutional or not, but that is as close as the judiciary is ever supposed to get to making law. They literally can’t make laws. They can decide whether laws measure up to our founding documents, but they are to have no part in making those laws.

So imagine my shock when it was pointed out to me that the Supreme Court justices of all fifty states have created their own legislature, a fraudulent Congress called the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ), where they go twice a year and vote on “resolutions” that they then take back to their respective states and implement through court procedures. These resolutions have a destructive impact on the residents of their states and the litigants in their courts, and they undermine the will of the people by usurping the job of the legislature. Here’s an example where the CCJ resolved to lobby against an amendment that would protect U.S. service members from unfair family court practices that are biased against service members because they are often deployed and can’t come in person to court hearings. The CCJ judges don’t want the federal government telling them they have to be fairer to service members.

Did you know that Supreme Court Justices from all 50 states have set up their own legislative body that meets twice a year to create and vote on "resolutions" that seek to interfere in the legislative process and thwart the will of the people? Here's some judicial meddling. pic.twitter.com/MzASdk1ITb

— No, not THAT Megan Fox 🦊 (@MeganFoxWriter) January 12, 2022

I searched and searched through the Constitution but I did not find any permissions for judges to create a federal legislative body. It doesn’t exist, and yet, the CCJ does exist. And the website is full of their “resolutions.” These are pseudo laws some flunkie (whom we are probably paying for) typed up. And who pays for the twice-a-year junket to go to the fake congress and sit around pretending to be legislators? I BET WE DO! I couldn’t find information on where these conferences are held. Frankly, I’m surprised they haven’t built themselves a fake Capitol somewhere in D.C. where they take their fake votes on fake resolutions that have absolutely no power or authority. I’d love to see this on television, especially if they were wearing fake wigs while tallying their fake votes.

Then there are the offshoot organizations like the National Center for State Courts where they “establish” policies like stymying landlords with “Eviction and Diversity Initiatives” that keep landlords from being able to evict deadbeat tenants. How is this happening outside the legislatures? These people in the video below are dressed up like founding fathers of all things and going on about how they received huge grants to hand out to “court facilitators” to do “a myriad of different things,” from “docket management to developing legal information to thinking about how to implement all the best practices we’ve learned about how eviction diversion and eviction dockets can be structured.” What the fresh hell is this? Someone gave them $11.5 MILLION for this (and it was probably U.S. taxpayers). Is that something you wanted? How did they get these grants? Who is giving the Bar Association members so many millions of dollars to hand out to their friends? A perusal of their website did not divulge the source of the grants.

This guy, Shawn Jurgensen, whom the CCJ recommends court professionals watch, says he works for the chief justice in Kansas and is the “special counsel for legislative affairs.” In the linked video he is hosting a webinar for other court professionals to show them how to get loads of money from the government. Why is there a special counsel for legislative affairs working with any member of the judiciary? According to his job description, he’s there to spy on the legislature and meddle in a process judges aren’t supposed to be meddling in.

As special counsel, Jurgensen’s responsibilities will include serving as liaison for the chief justice, the Supreme Court, and the judicial branch in matters before the Kansas Legislature. This includes monitoring bills and arranging for subject matter expert testimony, making sure courts are informed when bills pass that change how cases are processed, and answering legislator inquiries.

What would happen if the legislature hired lawyers to spy on judges? I can tell you that in Missouri, when legislators themselves try and just observe a family court case, they are told to hit the road, don’t come back, YOU’RE NOT WELCOME. So why on earth are the legislatures allowing court spies in their houses? Something is very, very wrong with the way the judiciary is working. They’ve completely overstepped their authority and scope. And no one in the legislatures in this country appears to even notice. Are our lawmakers aware that the judiciary has no business lobbying for or against bills that positively or negatively affect them like the Montana Supreme Court was caught doing? Why is this allowed? It’s clear that the American judiciary is deeply embedded all over the legislatures in every state lobbying to get more power for themselves. What happened to the “separation of powers?”

A law professor reached out to blow the whistle on judicial collusion and overstepping. He did not want to be named because the retaliation against lawyers is vicious since the judiciaries control the oversight of lawyers (another glaring conflict of interest). For the interest of this article, I’ll call him Professor Smith. “The judiciary has the American Bar Association at their beck and call all day long,” said Smith. “They’re strategizing how to get more power, more control all the time on a national level. They go to meetings twice a year and they talk about how to get more control. They have control over the lawyers too. How do you restrict the free speech of lawyers? You call it ‘anti-discrimination.'”

This “anti-discrimination” policy was one of the fake resolutions passed by another fake congress, the American Bar Association, which is based out of Chicago. Like the CCJ, the ABA has its own legislative body that they laughingly call the “House of Delegates” and they pass “resolutions” that make their way into every state judiciary. But not in Montana. The legislature stopped it, showing where the real power lies. The ABA’s rule that was so offensive to the state of Montana was Rule 8.4, which attempted to regulate attorneys’ behavior in such a nebulous way that it was sure to allow anyone to be disciplined for anything, stating it would be misconduct to “engage in conduct that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know is harassment or discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or socioeconomic status in conduct related to the practice of law.” These days, everyone is so offended by everything that a rule like that is unworkable and most likely just put there to further tighten the choke collar around the necks of attorneys who might speak out about the rampant court corruption.

The ABA reported on the legislature’s decision to tell them to go pound sand in Montana back in 2017.

The resolution says public comment was overwhelmingly opposed, but the court “relentlessly pursues adoption” of the rule by extending the time to consider it. This, the legislature said, overreaches the high court’s authority to regulate the conduct of attorneys—it says “the word ‘conduct’ clearly does not include the concept of ‘speech’”—and usurps the legislature’s power to make laws.

“Contrary to the ABA’s world view, there is no need in a free civil society, such as exists in Montana, for the cultural shift forced by the proposed rule, and even if such a need did exist, the Supreme Court has no constitutional power to enact legislation of any sort, particularly legislation forcing cultural shift,” the resolution says.

Professor Smith says the action by the legislature was a clear sign to the judiciary that they would not get away with limiting free speech, and the judiciary immediately stopped trying to implement the rule. “The most important thing is to let legislators know that they have this power. They have to start protecting the people,” said Smith. “They have to start enacting impeachment laws against the judges.”

Oversight is a serious problem, one that Montana judges successfully lobbied against recently and got caught doing it. “You guys in the legislature have to look over every single case judges do and when you determine it was an unconstitutional decision, you have to overturn it and then get rid of the judge that did it,” said Smith.

Smith says it’s tempting to blame the judiciary, but it’s the legislators who are the real problem. “I studied this long enough and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s the weak, non-reactive legislators who are the problem. It’s like when your washing machine starts going off the track and you hear that big BOOM, BOOM, you go down and you fix it, right?” he said. “If given the chance, the judiciary will go rogue and the legislature has to be the ones to fix it and they don’t. Legislators have been silent for years. And now there are new guys in there who have no idea what power they have and what they can do,” said Smith.

Smith says there’s hope. “It’s an easy fix. You get state control over the judiciary through the legislature. And you start by passing laws that say that the organizations like the ABA and the CCJ are not allowed to meddle in your state. All rules and laws that govern state courts and lawyers should go through the legislatures.”

It seems simple, but it requires lawmakers who not only recognize that the judiciary is taking over the legislative process but who also have the will to do something about it.

 

Is Everyone On Drugs? People Are Really Floating...Biden-Cheney 2024

 

Liberals must really be afraid about the upcoming 2022 and 2024 elections because some looney toon ideas are tumbling out. First, we have this cockamamie Hillary 2024 war cry that's not going to happen. She's still unlikable. She is still a two-time loser. The progressive left will have nothing to do with her anymore. We're in a "No more Bushes, no more Clintons" era of American politics. 

So, what other ideas are being floated? Oh, that Joe Biden and Liz Cheney can run on a presidential ticket in 2024. Yeah, you read that right. Biden-Cheney 2024—is this the "West Wing"? Because only in an overly idealistic and warped political universe could that ever exist. The New York Times's Thomas Friedman floated this idea, based on the Israeli election system: 

 Is that what America needs in 2024 — a ticket of Joe Biden and Liz Cheney? Or Joe Biden and Lisa Murkowski, or Kamala Harris and Mitt Romney, or Stacey Abrams and Liz Cheney, or Amy Klobuchar and Liz Cheney? Or any other such combination. Before you leap into the comments section, hear me out.

In June, after an utterly wild period in which Israel held four national elections over two years and kept failing to produce a stable governing majority, the lambs there actually lay down with the lions.

Key Israeli politicians swallowed their pride, softened policy edges and came together for a four-year national unity government — led by rightist Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and left-of-center Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid. (They are to switch places after two years.) And for the first time, an Israeli Arab party, the Islamist organization Raam, played a vital role in cementing an Israeli coalition.

What forced everyone’s hand? A broad agreement that Israeli politics was being held hostage by then-Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, who resisted putting together any government that he would not lead, apparently because, if he didn’t lead, he could lose his chance at some kind of immunity from prosecution on multiple corruption charges that could lead to prison.

Sound familiar?

Yeah, it does—and the charges against BiBi, like those lobbed at Trump, were weak sauce. Israel did it so should America. Why should we? Who cares? Who cares if another country does something better? That's good for that country. Not everything that's imported is good. Also, Israel's government is quite different. You already know this. Its election system is also different. It's designed so that no one party can clinch an outright majority. Its proportional allocation of seats in the Knesset means there will always be some form of a coalition government. That's fine. I just don't see how that's applicable here. First, using Israel as an example for anything is anathema to the left. They hate Israel. The Democratic Party has an underreported anti-Semitism problem, so easy with using Israel as an example of how to save the country. 

Also, and this is more to the point, who in their mind right now thinks that super-unpopular Joe Biden's 2024 chances would be buoyed by having a Cheney on the ticket? If anything, it would animate the GOP base to vote against it and motivate hardcore liberals to stay home. The Cheney family is the Galactic Empire to liberals. The former VP is Darth Vader, remember? What is going on here? Are liberals worried that they have zero depth in the presidential pool where serial losses seem to be projected? Maybe. The 2020 pool is loaded with losers, but here's the passage that caught my eye as well. It was buried in the piece: 

Could this play come to Broadway? I asked Steven Levitsky, a political scientist and co-author of “How Democracies Die,” after he presented some similar ideas last week to my colleague David Leonhardt.

America is facing an existential moment, Levitsky told me, noting that the Republican Party has shown that it isn’t committed any longer to playing by democratic rules, leaving the United States uniquely threatened among Western democracies.

That all means two things, he continued. First, this Trump-cult version of the G.O.P. must never be able to retake the White House. Since Trump has made embracing the Big Lie — that the 2020 election was a fraud — a prerequisite for being in the Trump G.O.P., his entire cabinet most likely would be people who denied, or worked to overturn, Biden’s election victory. There is no reason to believe they would cede power the next time.

Ah yes—they just had to get in the "if the GOP wins, we're all going to die" line. If the GOP wins, it's the end of America. It's the same old playbook. While the GOP is focused on fixing the nation's problems, the Democrats are still obsessed with Trump, 2016, and this little January 6 riot that no one cares about. I think I can see who is going to win this year's election.