Month: February 2024

Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

A group of 74 Republican members of Congress sent a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson demanding that he oppose the reauthorization of the 1988 Undetectable Firearms Act. 

BREAKING: 74 House Representatives urge Speaker Johnson to REJECT a permanent reauthorization of the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988 (a.k.a. archaic gun control) in a GOA-backed letter ahead of the law’s expiration on March 8th, 2024. pic.twitter.com/5R6G7lq7oo

— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) February 1, 2024

For those unaware, the Undetectable Firearms Act was enacted in 1988 and bans the manufacture, sale, or import of any firearm that a metal detector cannot detect. 

No firearms that met the criteria to be banned under the law existed at the time of passage.

Additionally, because of a sunset provision in the law, it must be reauthorized every five or ten years. The last reauthorization was in 2013. 

📣Republicans in Congress CANNOT allow the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988 to be expanded or made permanent, lest @JoeBiden weaponize its flaws against any firearm with major components made with plastic.

This is a legitimate and serious threat, and the administration has… https://t.co/ZqUSApfOFX

— Aidan Johnston (@RealGunLobbyist) February 1, 2024

The letter sent to Speaker Johnson states that “The Biden Administration has already demonstrated its ability to weaponize the Undetectable Firearms Act into a widespread plastic gun ban.” 

That’s true. We’ve already seen what harm the Biden administration can do with existing law.

Recently, a one-word change to the definition of “firearms dealer” was enough for the Biden ATF to put forth a rule that, in their own words, moved “the United States as close to universal background checks as possible without additional legislation.”

Gun Owners of America has been fighting the Undetectable Firearms Act since it was enacted in 1988.

Since then, there have been many pro-gun members of Congress who were silent as the UFA was authorized and reauthorized by voice votes and unanimous consent.

When it was last reauthorized in 2013, Congressman Thomas Massie was the only voice shouting “nay,” but he didn’t even have a mere fifth of a quorum there to back him—which is required to demand a recorded vote.

This time, 73 Members of Congress have Rep. Massie’s back with this letter. The historic amount of opposition to the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988 represented by this letter of opposition truly cannot be understated.

Gun Owners of America stands with our allies in Congress in opposition to the reauthorization of the 1988 Undetectable Firearms Act. 

*   *   *

We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.

Food inflation may not be dead. 

Cocoa prices climbed to a 46-year high this week in New York as concerns about dry conditions across West Africa could reduce yields for the Ivory Coast, the world’s largest producer of cocoa beans, ahead of the mid-crop in April. 

In the US, a rapidly shrinking cattle herd, now at the lowest levels in seven decades, has pushed the supermarket price of beef to a record of $5.21 per pound. Rising food prices are the central bank’s worst enemy. 

To end the week, breakfast lovers will be disappointed to learn robusta bean prices in Vietnam, the world’s largest producer of the bean, are absolutely out of control. 

Local robusta prices in Vietnam hit a record on Thursday, topping nearly 80,000 per kilogram. 

“That’s threatening to push prices in London up further, even after the benchmark capped its own all-time high this week at $3,336 a ton,” Bloomberg said, adding the surge in prices was primarily due to farmers “hoarding” the bean. 

To recap this week, cocoa bean, beef, and robusta bean prices have been marching higher. 

More bad news for Biden. Even though overall food inflation has receded, voters have long memories. 

Authored by Callista L. Gingrich via RealClear Wire,

Open Doors International, a nonprofit organization which supports persecuted Christians in more than 70 countries, recently released its annual 2024 World Watch List.

The list highlights and ranks countries in which Christians face the most severe persecution and discrimination. Each year, the report brings vital attention to brave Christians around the world who suffer because of their faith.

Tragically, the 2024 report revealed that persecution against Christians is worsening. The previous year’s World Watch List found that more than 360 million Christians faced severe persecution and discrimination for their faith. Today, this figure has increased to more than 365 million people with “dangerously violent” instances of persecution taking place in World Watch List countries.

Further, the 2024 report recorded a significant increase in the number of attacks on churches and Christian properties last year. According to Open Doors, “More than 14,700 churches or Christian properties such as schools and hospitals were targeted in 2023. It marked a seven-fold increase compared with attacks recorded the previous year.”

Additionally, in 2023 the total number of Christians who were forced to leave their homes for various reasons – including political instability, war, and extremism – more than doubled from the previous year. Nearly 300,000 Christians had to flee their homes and approximately 3 percent of Christians in Sub-Saharan Africa’s most dangerous countries were displaced.

According to the report, North Korea is “the most dangerous place in the world for Christians.” If a person’s Christian faith is discovered, he or she is killed on the spot or shipped to a labor camp where the chances of survival are slim. Kim Jong-un sees Christianity as a threat to the dictatorship and carries out an effective death sentence on believers.

In China, General Secretary Xi Jinping similarly sees Christianity as a threat to the Party’s power. Last year, at least 10,000 churches (mostly underground house churches) were closed in China while other state-sanctioned churches were required to display signs that read, “Love the Communist Party; Love the country; Love the religion.”

In Asia as a whole, two-in-five Christians are persecuted for their faith. Christians in India face violent attacks from Hindu extremists and are punished for violating anti-conversion laws in some states.

Rishi, a church leader in India, told Open Doors, “Though I was attacked twice, still I can feel God’s protection in my life. I was attacked, yet was not crushed. I will continue to trust my God.”

In Africa, one-in-five Christians are persecuted. Somalia was ranked No. 2 for countries in which Christians face the most extreme persecution on the 2024 World Watch List. In Somalia, most Christians are Muslim converts and are consequently targeted by Islamic extremists, namely the terrorist group al-Shabaab which has expressed its objective to eliminate Christians from the country.

Nigeria, according to Open Doors, “remains the deadliest place to follow Jesus.” In 2023, there were nearly 5,000 Christians who were killed for their faith, with 82 percent of the slayings occurring in Nigeria. Ranked No. 6 on the 2024 World Watch List, according to Open Doors, “More Christians are killed for their faith in Nigeria than in all the other countries of the world combined.”

For millions of Christians around the world, the cost of worshipping freely is high. Some even pay the price with their lives.

The Open Doors 2024 World Watch List brings crucial attention to Christian persecution and discrimination – and is a vital tool for those who wish to help Christians around the world.

For more commentary from Callista Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com.

Authored by Scott Sturman and Doug Goodman via The Epoch Times,

Executive Order 14057 justifies the Department of Defense’s (DOD) Plan to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions as necessary to counteract the existential threat of climate change. The program’s comprehensive and prohibitively expensive initiative proposes to transform the operational military by achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2045, purportedly on firmly established “science-based” targets that are validated by computer models and consensus within the scientific community.

The plan’s ambitious yet unrealistic goals, which are presented as an alarmist ultimatum, ignore the foundational principles of physics and battle-proven lessons of military history.

The Plan establishes emission objectives by determining “alignment with the scale of reductions required to limit global warming below 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures and to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C.” These emission reduction targets come directly from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Net-Zero Paris Climate Accord. The IPCC is not a science based organization that conducts its own research but rather a governmental policy organization whose members are countries, not scientists, and whose representatives are bureaucrats who develop and promote international climate policy. The IPCC sponsors and filters climate science research generated from outside organizations to support its primary charter of establishing the man made causes and influences on climate change.

The narrative that the earth’s climate balances precariously on the brink of catastrophe and merits the distinction of a national security priority is constantly presented to the public in familiar, apocalyptic terms. President Biden warns that global warming is the greatest threat to national security. DOD Secretary Austin alerts the public of existential climate threats, including an ice-free Arctic Ocean, although as of January 2023 the Arctic sea ice pack is at its highest since 2003. The DOD and high ranking officials from the navy, army, and air force proclaim that it is incumbent upon the armed services to implement net zero without delay to avert a worldwide catastrophe. Despite the incessant fearmongering, no one appears to pause and consider that the DOD produces only 1 percent of the United State’s CO2 emissions, which in turn is responsible for 13 percent of the world’s total. Even if the DOD achieves net zero, eliminating 0.13 percent of the world’s CO2 output would not detectably reduce global temperatures.

The McKinsey Report details the enormous costs and disruption to society to attain net zero and concedes there is only an even chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C, and it is far from certain whether the world will be able to keep the temperature increase to that level. The transition will require a fundamental change to the world’s economy, costing an estimated $6 trillion per year for the next 30 years. This translates to $11,000 per year for every American until 2050 for a result that cannot be ensured. Most of the sacrifice will come from the Third World, where 1/3-1/2 of GDP will be required to achieve net zero, but at a further cost of killing millions and plunging more millions into extreme poverty and starvation. Bjorn Lomborg warns that a zero fossil fuel solution is expensive, leads to misery and an impoverishment of the planet, and will fail to mitigate temperature elevation appreciably.

The hasty evolution to net zero comes at a prohibitive price, and its adherents concoct doomsday scenarios that demand and ennoble mass sacrifice. Depicting a world in complete environmental collapse due to the effects of fossil fuels promotes a theme intended to instill panic. The DOD embellishes adverse weather-related and environmental events but fails to place them in context or provide contrary interpretations. The extent and history of glacial retreat, sea level rise, desertification, forest fires, heat waves, death due to heat as opposed to cold, hurricanes, and tornados are exaggerated and depicted in emotional terms to legitimize drastic action. These contentions have been examined extensively, using the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s (NOAA) and the IPCC’s own data, and refute the hypothesis that there is a climate crisis based on these criteria. The number and intensity of severe climate events have diminished, and for those that occur, poor countries lack the resources to deal with natural disasters, while wealthier societies are able to better mitigate structural damage and human injury.

Computer modeling, a useful tool for conceptualization, forms the heart of climate science. The technique, however, is unable to prove hypotheses and has been wildly inaccurate since its inception. Climate science is a complex subject of interacting variables acting over time cycles that differ by order of magnitudes from the depths of the oceans to the upper stratosphere that are in turn affected by orbital mechanics and solar perturbations. The authenticity of ground-based temperature readings, the raison d’être of climate activists, raises alarm about the IPCC’s most fundamental assessments, since the underestimation of the heat island effect may distort the temperature anomaly data by up to 40 percent.

The major problem with computer models is the resolution and averaging required to make the models computable. The atmosphere is divided into volumes with horizontal grid lengths of tens of kilometers within which parameters like temperature, pressure, and density are averaged to represent the entire volume. Atmospheric processes like cloud physics and turbulence occur at scales well below the resolution of these cells, which compels modelers to estimate the values and effects of these processes. These guesses invariably favor global warming and the deleterious effects of CO2.

Since data collection points rarely align with the grid points required by the numerical models, discrepancies of hundred of kilometers exist, which modelers homogenize to allow the data to fit the grid. This leads to false adjustments and manipulations of the real data. Computational models are inherently unstable and diverge from physical reality. At distances below the grid scale, perturbations multiply and a butterfly effect ensues. Modelers are forced constantly to realign or reset the initial conditions, which mask the deviations and give the illusion that the models accurately predict observed conditions.

DOD officials defend net-zero defense prioritization by claiming that scientific consensus and sham peer reviewed studies validate this contention. Peer review has degenerated into a process that favors a regression to the mean, and has become a form of consensus. The original 97 percent consensus claim from Cook in 2013 that humans are the major cause of global warming that will result in catastrophic climate events has been widely discredited. Investigators point out that the number is closer to 1.6 percent, but the original, inaccurate claim of near-universal consensus, advanced by Barack Obama and John Kerry, remains a favored technique of politicians to inject ideology into science.

John Clauser won the Nobel Prize in physics for his work with particle entanglement and serves as an example that the most distinguished and competent scientists are not immune from rebuke for challenging the climate change narrative. Dr. Clauser stated publicly that there is no climate emergency and the dangerous corruption of science threatens the world economy and welfare of billions of people. Mainstream media outlets allied to climate science activism predictably marginalized the distinguished physicist with ad hominem attacks and inferred that only bona fide climate scientists like Dr. Michael Mann, the originator of the widely debunked hockey stick shaped temperature acceleration profile, are qualified to speak on the subject.

The DOD plan to reduce greenhouse emissions makes no mention of the stabilizing benefits of rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations in terms of food production or the weak correlation between temperature and CO2 levels over the last 570 millions years. There has been a 20 percent increase in the world’s biomass over the past 40 years, and CO2 is responsible for 70 percent of this benefit. Some of the world’s most unstable regions have achieved an element of food security, as exuberant plant life has reversed desertification and conferred a degree of economic stability—a benefit for developing more accurate military contingencies.

A nation’s military priorities must optimize its access to natural resources, develop war plans that allow for flexibility and maximum projection of power, and to conclude that one’s enemies will not be concerned with carbon footprints when it comes to surviving and winning a major military conflict. No commander purposely informs potential enemies that the armed forces will be restricted for decades to specific, unproven technologies and untested operational strategies that are established solely to comply with climate change dogma. Future and present adversaries are under no such constraints and will devote resources predicated on the best opportunity for success. Virtue signaling climate scientists and their dutiful DOD disciples, whose premises are based on computer modeling, enact policies that weaken the military and serve as classic examples of those who hijack science to advance political agendas.

From RealClearWire

Authored by Simon Watkins via OilPrice.com,

• China is over the halfway mark in completing its strategically vital oil project in the critical Iraqi energy hub of Nasiriyah.

• This facility will act as a storage hub and supply conduit for 3.0-3.5 million barrels of crude oil.

• Even before the huge strategic importance of the new Nasiriyah facility, China will benefit from its massively enhanced presence there in the matter of increasing its oil supplies from southern Iraq, with the DhiQar Province being home to several huge fields

China is over the halfway mark in completing its strategically vital oil project in the critical Iraqi energy hub of Nasiriyah, at the heart of the some of the country’s biggest oil and gas fields and close to its main export terminal of Al Fao in Basra. According to the Iraq Ministry of Planning, the China Petroleum Pipeline Engineering Company (CPPEC) is now over 55 percent complete on the construction of the country’s biggest crude oil storage facility, located in Nasiryah city in DhiQar province.

This facility will act as a storage hub and supply conduit for 3.0-3.5 million barrels of crude oil that will then either go to export out of Basra Port or will be transported through pipelines to refineries and power plants in central and northern Iraq. It will also act as a logistical command centre for all of China’s extensive oil and gas projects in Iraq and for the build-out of multiple non-oil projects connected to the all-encompassing ‘Iraq-China Framework Agreement’, as analysed in full in my new book on the new global oil market order. 

Even before the huge strategic importance of the new Nasiriyah facility, China will benefit from its massively enhanced presence there in the matter of increasing its oil supplies from southern Iraq, with the DhiQar Province being home to several huge fields. The Gharraf field is one, holding around 1.3 billion barrels of oil reserves and currently producing around 130,000 barrels per day (bpd), with plans to increase this to 230,000 bpd within the next two years. Lead operator Petronas of Malaysia said last May that it wants to sell its stake in the field. However, China already effectively controls what goes on at the site through major ‘contract-only’ awards secured by its companies.

The winning of multiple contract-only awards by Chinese firms at major oil and gas sites in Iraq was for a long time the preferred way for the country to covertly gain control over a site without provoking the ire of the U.S., while it still retained a strategic interest in Iraq, as also analysed in full in my new book on the new global oil market order. In Gharraf’s case, the China Petroleum Engineering and Construction Corporation (CPECC) was awarded a US$308 million engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning contract a while ago. Additionally, July 13 saw China’s Zhongman Petroleum and Natural Group sign a separate engineering and construction project for Gharraf. Back in 2015, Zhongman was also awarded a US$526.6 million drilling deal for Iraq’s supergiant West Qurna 2 oilfield. Further emboldened by the effective withdrawal of the U.S. from Iraq at the end of its combat mission in December 2021, the beginning of this year saw PetroChina take over the lead developer role at the neighbouring supergiant West Qurna 1 oilfield from the U.S.’s ExxonMobil. This was followed just a week later by the awarding of a major build-own-operate-transfer contract to a subsidiary of PetroChina to develop the Nahr bin Umar onshore gas field.

At the other end of the development scale in DhiQar Province is the supergiant Nasiriyah oilfield, discovered by the Iraq National Oil Company in 1975, with an estimated 4.36 billion barrels of reserves in place. Coming on stream in 2009 and listed on Iraq’s 2009-2010 fast-track plan, which aimed to raise its output to about 50,000 bpd, the first half of 2009 saw ENI, Nippon Oil, Chevron, and Repsol submitting bids to develop the field on an Engineering Procurement Construction (EPC) contract basis, with a consortium comprised of Nippon Oil, Inpex, and JGC Corporation looking set to win the contract before negotiations broke down again. The departure in 2014 of the divisive figure of Shia Islamist Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister, and his replacement by the seemingly more inclusive, although also Shia, Haider al-Abadi led to optimism in Iraq that the Nasiriyah project could move ahead again, but these hopes were also dashed.

China has long seen Nasiriyah as an important part of its overall plans for Iraq, which are essentially to turn it into a client state, as it has done with Iran, to create one giant oil and gas station for it in the Middle East, which it can also use for geopolitical pressure purposes against the U.S. In Iran’s case, China has been successful so far into effecting this transformation from it as sovereign state into a Middle Eastern equivalent of Hong Kong (a Special Administrative Region of China) through the all-encompassing ‘Iran-China 25-Year Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement’ , as first revealed anywhere in the world in my 3 September 2019 article on the subject and analysed in full in my new book on the new global oil market order. China is using the same sort of arrangement for Iraq, as evidenced in the equally all-encompassing ‘Iraq-China Framework Agreement’ of 2021. This in turn, was an extension in scale and scope of the ‘Oil for Reconstruction and Investment’ agreement signed by Baghdad and Beijing in September 2019, which allowed Chinese firms to invest in infrastructure projects in Iraq in exchange for oil.

Following this, Iraq approved nearly IQD1 trillion (US$700 million) for infrastructure projects in the city of Al-Zubair in the southern Iraq oil hub of Basra. The Al-Zubair announcement came around the same time as the awarding by Baghdad of another major contract to another Chinese company to build a civilian airport to replace the military base in Nasiriyah – the capital of DhiQar Province. This airport project, China announced, would include the construction of multiple cargo buildings and roads linking the airport to the city’s town centre and separately to other key oil areas in southern Iraq, which it now controls. In the later discussions involved in the 2021 ‘Iraq-China Framework Agreement’, it was decided unanimously by both sides that the airport could be expanded later to be a dual-use civilian and military airport. The military component would be usable by China without first having to consult with whatever Iraqi government was in power at the time, a senior source who works closely with Iraq’s Oil Ministry exclusively told OilPrice.com at the time.

President Biden’s planned trip to East Palestine, Ohio, is pure politics as the election cycle begins. The White House plans to do a victory lap on its response to the train derailment that nuked the small town with toxic chemicals one year ago. Yet, a new report reveals the federal government’s response has been sub-par, with cancer-causing chemicals still found in surrounding rivers and streams. 

One year after the Norfolk Southern train derailment, NewsNation found toxic chemicals in rivers and streams around East Palestine. This comes even as the Environment Protection Agency has given residents the all-clear to return. 

As residents return, some are developing “rashes, chronic nose bleeds, respiratory infections and many other side effects,” according to NewsNation. 

“I undressed to get into the shower, and I had a rash all over the side of my face on both sides and all over my chest,” East Palestine resident Kaitlyn said.

Jessica Conard, another resident, said, “We are still experiencing some acute health care impacts” after the train derailment one year ago. 

“Ultimately, what we need to understand is that there are still unmet needs here in terms of medical, and the health of this community needs to come first,” Conard said. 

Dr. Arthur Chang, the chief medical officer in the CDC’s environmental health division, confirmed to the media outlet a chemical exposure blanketed the town and persisting symptoms from residents are proof:

 “We may not know how to get rid of the vinyl chloride from the body, but we know how to treat those cancers.” 

Meanwhile, shortly after the incident, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine asked the Biden administration to issue a disaster declaration after 116,000 gallons of the carcinogen vinyl chloride exploded after the train derailment. The White House has since ignored this request while residents continue to suffer health problems. 

NewsNation pointed out, “Despite calls for concern, the CDC is not testing the health of East Palestine residents or collecting samples.” 

We have questions:

• Why is that?

• Why is the federal government ignoring the suffering in East Palestine?

However, separate from the federal government, Erin Haynes, a professor at the University of Kentucky, has been tracking the health of 400 residents. 

Haynes said, “Three out of four of the participants reported having at least one new health symptom,” adding, “Eighty percent of the respondents reported an upper respiratory health symptom.”

“The main question is if these symptoms remain. And half of the residents, even in our follow-ups, are saying that their symptoms remain,” she said.

Shockingly, NewsNation said, “Haynes is the only person tracking the short and long-term health effects in the community.” 

“Unfortunately, I have not seen an organized public health response from our federal agencies,” Haynes continued, noting, “The public health response was severely lacking.”

More from NewsNation:

Americans have witnessed the Biden administration’s neglect of East Palestine, prioritizing endless foreign wars and a border invasion while their own citizens suffered in what could be one of the worst chemical disasters in years. 

Someone needs to tell the clueless Biden team their victory lap is not only premature but a disgrace to the residents who are suffering. Clearly, Ukraine was more important than East Palestine.

Recall days after the derailment…

East Palestine, Ohio Mayor Trent Conaway: “I found out today through one of the briefings that [Biden] was in the Ukraine giving millions to people over there and doing nothing for us. I’m furious.”pic.twitter.com/8jn32aI4kc

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) February 21, 2023

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“This will not stand, ya know, this aggression will not stand, man.”

– Jeffrey (“the Dude”) Lebowski

Pity the poor president.

“Joe Biden” must decide now whether to go to war with Iran or Texas.

Which will it be? Or might it be both?

That Governor Abbott turns out to be the Putin of the purple sage!

How does he dare interfere with the orderly flow of new voters — fine people! — across that filthy little river of his?

Does he not understand that we need at least a couple million more live bodies allocated around the swing states to ensure a free and fair election?

What does Hunter (“the smartest person I know”) make of Dad’s quandary, I wonder. With enough eau-de-coca on-board, Hunter must think in Biblical terms. . . great flowing Jacobean passages of elevated language: in my father’s house are many mansions: Verily, verily, I say unto you, somewhere there is a room I left that little baggie in. . . but where. . . ? The works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Dad.

Well, forget Hunter. Everybody else has, thank goodness, at least for now. Let’s face it: having a rage-filled addict in the family is tiresome. Anyway, Merrick Garland has got him covered with “an on-going investigation.” (Questions? Sorry, can’t answer any.)

“Joe Biden,” in his on-going delirium-of-age wanders from room to room in the empty mansion that is his mind. How did I get in this room? he wonders. And how do I get out of it? Can somebody please point the way? Alas, his position is the loneliest in the world. There is no one to point the way out. There is only this ceaseless wandering from room to room in this vast emptiness. Where is the room with Texas in it? The room where Iran sleeps? The room where Ukraine lies a’gasp with a sucking chest wound? Watch out, he’ll start shouting soon. Calling Dr. Jill: Code Blue. . . !

The world may be a disaster these days, but the White House is a bigger disaster.

Can you name the White House chief of staff? Betcha can’t. Know why? He never, ever comes out and speaks to that mob in the press room. He might have to answer some difficult questions, such as: if the president’s brain is switched off more than half the time, who decides what to do with that ‘nuclear football’ they carry around with him. Is it. . . you? By the way, the chief of staff’s name is Jeff Zients. Ever heard him? Of course not. He has a page on “X”. The most recent thing he posted was July, 25, 2023. Good thing not much has happened since then.

The question then: should “Joe Biden” just go ahead and nuke Texas? “JB” is thinking: What good is the place with that Putin wannabe running it? Buncha cattle and those ridiculous hats! The official head-gear of white supremacy! Probably millions of them down there, clutching their beloved guns! I’ve got news for you. Wanna play hardball? We’ve got F-16s. Try shooting one of those Vipers down with your 30-ought-6 when it’s coming in low over Plano on after-burners at eleven hundred miles an hour, bristling with Sidewinder missiles. Anyway, for a nice strip steak, go to Kansas City. Fuggedabowt Texas. Kaboom! Not a joke!

As for Iran. . . another $6-billion could keep them quiet for a while. Turns out that mullahs really like money. Do you know how many virgins you can buy for $6-billion here on Planet Earth? Why blow yourself up for them? Especially since you don’t know for a hundred percent sure that there is a place called heaven, or that it’s mainly a seraglio? By the way, why does our country (that’d be the USA) have all these little military outposts scattered around the desert wastelands of Jordan, Syria, and other lands of the Middle East? Did the one called Tower Two that got blown up a few days ago have a target painted on it? Might as well have. You think the “other side” doesn’t have satellite imagery of the terrain? Kind of looks like we’re asking for trouble. And, also by the way, how come two of the three US soldiers killed there were girls? Is that how we do war these days? With a girlie army? Who actually thinks that’s going to work?

Apparently, “Joe Biden.” Be advised: there is chatter coming out of this mysterious White House about bringing back the military draft. Remember what that is, Boomers? Remember Country Joe and the Fish singing: “Be the first one on your block to have your boy come home in a box.” That was back in the Vietnam days. Fifty-thousand-plus KIA. Only now we’ll be drafting girls (and probably some boys who want to be girls). I guess we’ll figure out now how gung-ho Gen Z really is.

You didn’t ask, but things are not going so well in our remote-control war in Ukraine against Russia (Putinland). Our Zelensky team (we own it) got completely rope-a-doped, punched itself out, its knees are buckling. Victoria Nuland, the renowned State Department girlie war-hawk, says she’s confident that Congress will pass the new $61 billion aid package for the Z-team, according to Radio Free Europe, the blob’s official propaganda outlet. The blob wants you to think that Putin wants to turn all of Europe into Putinland. I’m sure. Tori Nuland probably thinks we can save Ukraine with the fabulous girlie army and some snazzy new drones from McDonnell Douglas. Hey, it’s war, war, war. Bomb them all — Iran, Russia, Texas — and let God sort them out.

Speaking of blob propaganda outlets, here’s a doozy from blob tentacle The New York Times  this Friday morning to boost your morale. Blob suck-up, Stephen Colbert, the late-night TV genius-level jester last seen dancing in a chorus line costumed as Covid-19 vaccination syringes, informs us that “Joe Biden” is catnip to the ladies because his aviator Ray-bans remind them of Robert Stack in The High and the Mighty.

Stephen Colbert imitated President Biden talking with women: “They love that thing where I’m the last one standing between them and the Supreme Court putting a GoPro in their uterus.” Credit: CBS

Silly me, I thought they loved the president for his mind.  You know, “Joe Biden” is running for re-election. No, really. Not a joke.

*  *  *

Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page or Substack

Now on the brink of reaching 120 days of war (which will happen this weekend), Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has claimed in fresh comments that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have destroyed about two-thirds of Hamas’ fighting force. 

He said in the remarks that the military has effectively neutralized 20,000 of the estimated pre-conflict total of around 30,000 fighters. He essentially declared the defeat of Hamas in their southern stronghold of Khan Younis, saying that in addition to the 10,000 killed there’s been another some 10,000 wounded. Currently, there is no way of verifying this and Hamas does not publish on its own casualty rates.

“Hamas’ Khan Younis Brigade boasted that it would stand against the IDF,” Gallant said, but then declared instead the group has been “dismantled.”

“I am telling you here, we are completing the mission in Khan Younis and we will also reach Rafah and eliminate everyone there who is a terrorist who is trying to harm us,” Gallant told a gathering of Israeli soldiers in Gaza.

He additionally assessed that IDF gains in Khan Younis are “very impressive” and said the end result has been that Hamas doesn’t “have ammunition, they don’t have the ability to treat the wounded.” The defense chief added: “They have 10,000 dead terrorists and another 10,000 wounded who are not functioning. It’s a blow that is eroding their ability [to fight], but you have to reach all the places.”

According to figures cited in the Jerusalem Post, “If true, along with the close to 2,500 Hamas terrorists who have been arrested, the percentage of Hamas forces out of commission would now be up to between 56-75%, up from 48-64% around 10 days ago, presuming Hamas’ forces pre-war were between 30,000-40,000.”

Gallant concluded his remarks by saying the military will target Rafah next for a ground operation, which is the southern most city in the Gaza Strip, on the border with Egypt.

The IDF’s current death toll since the start of the ground offensive in Gaza is 224; however, many even Israeli sources believe the real death toll could be significantly higher, given Hamas’ demonstrated effectiveness at carrying out devastating ambushes in small teams, often from the tunnel system.

Palestinians say that with hundreds of thousands of refugees crowded into Rafah, and with nowhere to go, they may have no choice other than to climb the border fence and pour into Egypt. 

“Israeli forces shelled the outskirts of the last refuge on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip on Friday, where the displaced, penned against the border fence in their hundreds of thousands, said they feared a new assault with nowhere left to flee,” Reuters writes.

⚡️Absolute destruction of northern Gaza, video from this morning pic.twitter.com/APWiC5KMQp

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) February 2, 2024

“More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are now homeless and crammed into Rafah,” the report documents. “Tens of thousands more have arrived in recent days, carrying belongings in their arms and pulling children on carts, since Israeli forces launched one of the biggest assaults of the war last week to capture adjacent Khan Younis, the main southern city.”

Despite the mounting humanitarian crisis, and a reported death toll which has surpassed 27,000 – mostly civilians according to Palestinian sources, there has been no change in Biden administration policy regarding to support to Israel. This has resulted in fierce backlash among Progressive Democrats especially, and is an issue expected to erode his base going into the November election.

Authored by Patricia Tolson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A Jan. 6 protester who spent 18 seconds inside the Capitol building during the protests has been sentenced to 24 months of probation with 30 days of home detention.

Angelo Pacheco, a 24-year-old man from Kansas City, will also have to pay $500 restitution for damages done to the Capitol building that day, which the federal government says totaled more than $2.73 million, according to an April 8, 2022, court filing.

Mr. Pacheco’s sentencing was held before Judge Randolph D. Moss on Jan. 31 via video conference in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

He faced a maximum sentence of six months in jail, a $5,000 fine, and five years of probation.

According to the Jan. 6, 2021, criminal complaint, Mr. Pacheco was charged with knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol Building, and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol Building.

As stated in the July 14, 2023 Statement of Facts, “The FBI received a tip from a confidential human source (CHS)” that Mr. Pacheco “was on the U.S. Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021.”

While the informant did not know Mr. Pacheco, the CHS “identified him by comparing images on his Facebook and Instagram pages with open-source photos from January 6, 2021.”

Based on this information, the special agent investigating the case conducted database checks for “Angelo J. Pacheco,” later identifying him as a resident of Kansas City, Missouri. The special agent then compared Mr. Pacheco’s driver’s license photo to the one provided by the unidentified informant and confirmed it was the same individual.

Additional photos showed Mr. Pacheco standing on the scaffolding outside of the Capitol building.

A review of Capitol Building CCV footage from Jan. 6, 2022, showed him standing at the doorway of the upper west terrace of the Capitol building, entering briefly, “approximately six seconds,” before turning around and exiting through the same door.

During an initial interview at his home on Sept. 29, 2022, Mr. Pacheco admitted being at the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021, but told investigators he didn’t remember going inside. During a second interview at Mr. Pacheco’s attorney’s office on March 17, 2023, investigators showed him six images taken from the CCTV footage showing him entering the Capitol for about six seconds. It was then that he admitted going inside briefly.

Based on this evidence, the special agent in charge of the investigation submitted “that there is probable cause to believe that PACHECO violated 18 U.S.C. § 1752(a)(1) and (2), which makes it a crime to (1) knowingly enter or remain in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority to do; and (2) knowingly, and with intent to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions, engage in disorderly or disruptive conduct in, or within such proximity to, any restricted building or grounds when, or so that, such conduct, in fact, impedes or disrupts the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions; or attempt or conspire to do so.”

The special agent further submitted that “there is also probable cause to believe that PACHECO violated 40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(D) and (G), which makes it a crime to willfully and knowingly (D) utter loud, threatening, or abusive language, or engage in disorderly or disruptive conduct, at any place in the Grounds or in any of the Capitol Buildings with the intent to impede, disrupt, or disturb the orderly conduct of a session of Congress or either House of Congress, or the orderly conduct in that building of a hearing before, or any deliberations of, a committee of Congress or either House of Congress; and (G) parade, demonstrate, or picket in any of the Capitol Buildings.”

Democrats are beginning to sound like Republicans about the need to restore common sense southern border security, recognizing that the large-scale migrant invasion their party (plus taxpayer-funded NGOs) allowed could jeopardize President Biden’s re-election prospects in November. 

On Friday morning, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, a Democrat, joined Bloomberg TV, admitting Democrats were “a little slow” in responding to the border crisis. 

A little slow? Let’s try horrendously slow; as a recent opinion piece in The Hill from Merill Matthews, a scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation, said, “another 10 million have entered during Biden’s presidency.” 

Back to Lamont’s interview: 

“We gotta be a lot stricter on the border,” he said, adding, “Maybe Democrats were a little slow to get up to speed on this. Some of us from this part of the region, we weren’t hit as hard by this early on. I think we all know where we gotta be on this.”  

Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont says he’s hoping that President Biden closes the border. “I can’t figure out why they’re pulling back now saying it’s not that much of an emergency.” https://t.co/9upGeDtr4H pic.twitter.com/HUwLl69UPt

— BSurveillance (@bsurveillance) February 2, 2024

With illegals overwhelming Border Patrol on the southern border and sanctuary cities across the Lower 48, as well as, just this week, beating up cops in New York City, the president’s polling data has greatly suffered as Americans are furious with Democrat’s intentional border failures. 

Meanwhile, the border dispute with Biden and Texas has led to 26 Republican attorneys general demanding the White House “enforce the laws that secure the southern border.”

Democrats are recognizing the tide is going out, and they must quickly pivot from open borders to closed borders to stay afloat come November.