Anthony Fauci Was America’s Warmup Dictator

 MATT TAIBBI:

 Anthony Fauci Was America’s Warmup Dictator: He institutionalized the purposeful lie, suppressed critics, mastered emergency politics, even sold himself as a sex symbol. Anthony Fauci gave the next monster a playbook.

Actually, our press had the playbook, he just gave them an excuse to run with it. And though Taibbi may not be ready to admit it, they ran that playbook with Obama, too.

W

Dems and Dark Money (Arabella)

 

Mark Hemingway: The Progressive Foreign Mega-Donor Who Evades Campaign Fianance Laws Prohibility Foreigners From Donating to Political Causes

—Ace

You'll never, ever guess which party he donates to.

The Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss has a profound interest in American politics. Over the years, he has pumped $475 million he has earned manufacturing medical devices into left-wing advocacy groups -- $72 million in 2021 alone, according to a new report from the conservative watchdog group, Americans for Public Trust.

According to a biography of Wyss written by a sister, Wyss' goal is not to bend laws to his business's advantage but to "[re]interpret the American Constitution in the light of progressive politics."

Although foreigners are prohibited from donating money directly to political causes, Wyss has donated lavishly to progressive political organizations. The New York Times reported in 2021 that these include the "Center for American Progress and Priorities USA, as well as organizations that ran voter registration and mobilization campaigns to increase Democratic turnout, built media outlets accused of slanting the news to favor Democrats, and sought to block Mr. Trump's nominees, prove he colluded with Russia and push for his impeachment."

Since 2016, some $245 million of his spending on American politics has gone to Arabella Advisors, which controls a vast network of progressive nonprofits which, among other activities, has financed hundreds of smaller groups that campaign for specific issues and candidates. Arabella, which raised $1.6 billion in 2021, was dubbed by The Atlantic "The Massive Progressive Dark-Money Group You've Never Heard Of."

Critics argue that Wyss' largesse illuminates a gaping loophole in political finance that essentially allows wealthy foreigners to launder their contributions -- one that has been exploited far more robustly by Democrats than Republicans. That may help explain why the issue became more prominent on Aug. 14, when House Republicans announced an investigation "into whether entities that qualify as tax-exempt under Section 501 of the U.S. Code are abiding by the statutory and regulatory prohibitions against ... foreign sources of funding ... being funneled through such organizations to influence America's elections." As part of that probe, the House Ways and Means Committee produced an open letter detailing the problem and requesting information from the public. A significant portion of the letter discussed the political donations of a single foreigner -- Hansjörg Wyss.

Ah. I remember the Committee noting that new investigation into foreign donations, but I didn't know specifically want it was about.

This scumbag's organization says that they donate to these groups only with the stipulation that their grant money will not be used to support individual candidates or to fund get-out-the-vote efforts. Such uses of dirty foreign money are banned by US law.

In theory, at least. Once you donate to the dark money front group, the SPECTRE of leftwing funding, who knows where the money goes to?

And money is fungible. If this guy's donations are supposed to be used for purposes other than direct support of a candidate or GOTV efforts, Arabella can just use other donors' money for that, while using this guy's money for the stuff that other donors' money would have been used for.

"There's no way for us right now to even check up on, let alone stop, wealthy foreign interests, say from China or Russia, from cutting a check to an American foundation that disappears into its coffers and winds up in the hands of a political nonprofit," says Hayden Ludwig, Director of Policy Research at the Restoration of America, a right-leaning nonprofit that investigates the undisclosed donations to nonprofits commonly disparaged as "dark money." "And if it's 501I4 [the IRS tax designation for organizations that can engage in activity supporting political candidates and electoral issues] that money can absolutely be used for independent expenditures, running political ads, hammering Republicans and electing Democrats."

Arabella, along with its subsidiary organizations, declined to comment for this article.

...

Arabella was founded by Eric Kessler, a former Clinton White House appointee, as well as a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, which was plagued by fundraising controversies. Under Kessler, Arabella achieved great success in wrangling wealthy liberal donors and thereby making many organizations on the left dependent on its largesse: The Arabella network spent $1.2 billion in 2020. "Altogether this is absolutely one of the largest fundraising machines I have ever come across," Robert Maguire of the left-leaning watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told Politico in 2021. "I am really struggling to think of any other group, especially recently, that could rival it,"

The structure of Arabella Advisors is complicated and opaque by design.

In other words, they deliberately obscure where their money is ultimately directed towards. They have created over 500 front groups which pretend to be grassroots, "pop-up" organizations.

With Arabella, donors' money is extremely fungible. Because it is routed through two or three organizations before it gets spent, it is difficult to determine how donations from foreigners such as Wyss are disbursed.

...

And despite the broad freedom Citizens United created for political spending, serious questions about the legality of these arrangements remain. Two years ago, Americans for Public Trust filed a complaint with the FEC regarding Wyss and Arabella. "Foreign nationals cannot give to Super PACs, but what we'd see a pattern where the foreign national gives to a nonprofit, that nonprofit turns around and gets the money to a Super PAC. We've been calling this the foreign influence loophole," says Sutherland. "So we filed an FEC complaint that basically argued just that, that the money flow needs to be investigated by the FEC."

Read the whole thing. Democrats are literally selling this country to foreign billionaires. And they had the chutzpah to accuse Trump of "colluding with Russia!"

Hemingway notes that Barack Obama deliberately turned off the credit card verification system when soliciting donations online in 2008 and 2012. Without the three-digit credit card code, the system could not tell which donations were being made from accounts inside the US and which were being made from foreign accounts.

Of course that was deliberate. It is completely routine and customary to ask for this code, the CVV, in every online transaction. As was reported at the time, the software Obama was using for campaign donation solicitations asked for the CVV by default. Obama made the active, deliberate choice to turn off this normal verification precisely so he could take illegal donations from his foreign friends and handlers with plausible deniability.

You know all that.

What you probably don't know is that the biggest Democrat online fundraising group, ACT BLUE, still has credit-card verification turned off on its software, to this very day.

That's in the article too.

Posted by Ace at 03:50 PM Comments

Oliver Anthony : Rich Man North of Richmond

 THE FAILURE OF THE ELITES IS WIDELY APPARENT: 

Oliver Anthony Strikes A Chord Where The Right And Left Agree: Our Failed Elites.

It’s not that they refer to meat and cheese plates as charcuterie or that we have elites, Gabriel notes, but that the quality of our current crop has gotten so poor. “Elites of previous eras won world wars, established lasting peace, raised prosperity around the globe and transformed a backwater set of colonies into a global hegemon,” he adds. “Today’s crew can’t defeat third-world foes, police our cities, pay their bills, or keep the power on.”

I’d add they can’t even do corruption right. The elites used to be competent when it came to greasing their pockets, maintaining plausible deniability, and the illusion of playing by the same rules as everyone else. Now, every representative who plays Wall Street is a wizard and the White House can wave away obvious influence-peddling schemes with “well, everyone does it.” Long gone is any sense of circumspection or noblesse oblige, which is something that people without special privileges tend to notice.

Our tastemakers in the media and D.C. can pretend that people’s natural responses to those changes is an act of faux outrage at those new truths. They can howl about how only they get to be the populists’ rebel musicians, speaking truth to power. Or they can acknowledge that they’re not very good at being elites and that failure invites such populist sentiments as those Anthony articulates.

Don’t expect them to, though.

They’re awful, and so full of themselves at the same time.

Posted at 7:25 pm by Glenn Reynolds  

Oliver Anthony, "Rich Men of Richmond" Lyrics:

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day / Overtime hours for bullshit pay / So I can sit out here and waste my life away / Drag back home and drown my troubles away.

Pre-Chorus:
It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to / For people like me and people like you / Wish I could just wake up and it not be true / But it is, oh, it is.

Chorus:
Livin' in the new world / With an old soul / These rich men north of Richmond / Lord knows they all just wanna have total control / Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do / And they don't think you know, but I know that you do / 'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end / 'Cause of rich men north of Richmond.

 I wish politicians would look out for miners / And not just minors on an island somewhere / Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat / And the obese milkin' welfare.

Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds / Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds / Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground / 'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down.

Repeat Pre-Chorus

Repeat Chorus

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day / Overtime hours for bullshit pay.

Read More: The Lyrics to Oliver Anthony's 'Rich Men North of Richmond' | https://tasteofcountry.com/oliver-anthony-rich-men-north-of-richmond-lyrics/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral

readmore

Marine Rapper

Rapper Drops Remix of 'Rich Men North of Richmond,' and WOW

Vivek's TRUTH

 Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) tweeted at 1:32 PM on Sat, Jun 03, 2023:

TRUTH.

1. God is real.
2. There are two genders.
3. Human flourishing requires fossil fuels.
4. Reverse racism is racism.
5. An open border is no border.
6. Parents determine the education of their children.
7. The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to…

(https://twitter.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/1665048724245020675?t=rQ2c-cmM4u6i6hfZ8oxV2Q&s=03) 

Bring on the Counter-Revolution - City Journal Christopher F Rufo

 Bring on the Counter-Revolution

America is trapped in the loop of 1968. The politics of that fateful year have set the patterns and bounds of our national life for decades.

It’s as though we have lived an endless recurrence: the Black Panther Party reappears as the Black Lives Matter movement; the Weather Underground pamphlets launder themselves into academic papers; the Marxist-Leninist guerrillas trade in their bandoliers and become managers of an elite-led revolution in manners and mores. The ideology, narrative, and aesthetics of the left-wing social movements of that earlier time, though now often degraded through cynicism and repetition, have maintained the position of a jealous hegemon.

Campaign 2024: Officially Chaos

 

MATT TAIBBI:

 Campaign 2024: Officially Chaos.

At this stage of the cycle three elections ago, on August 1, 2011, President Barack Obama signed a controversial debt deal and headed back on the trail, starting with a pair of birthday fundraisers in Chicago. Meanwhile, Michelle Bachmann left the stump in Iowa to return to Washington and vote against Obama’s deal, saying it “spends too much and doesn’t cut enough.” This was considered campaign excitement once. Boring is too mild a word for those mechanized non-dramas of yore.

A dozen years later, the campaign is pure chaos, Pompeii after the blast. In the annals of presidential races we haven’t experienced many days like yesterday, July 31, which ended with the futures of all major candidates appearing hopelessly clouded. Forget the national debt; there are now not-improbable scenarios in which the main issues in next year’s debates, which could easily involve both nominees in ankle monitors, are nuclear fallout and alien visitation. Our leaders, who once had the election process reduced to scripts more predictable than Everybody Loves Raymond, now seem to have no clue what will happen beyond the next few minutes.

If not for the fact that the disintegration of American society might be imminent as a result, I’d be laughing harder. It might be funny anyway. Consider: the establishment plan for the Republican Party this cycle was clearly Ron DeSantis, but a New York Times/Siena poll published yesterday shows he’s plunging like a stone, falling to 17%, a.k.a. 37 points behind Donald Trump. . . .

The cognoscenti never figured out or accepted that the support for protest candidates like Trump or Bernie Sanders even is rooted in wide generalized rage directed their way. To this day they don’t accept it. They keep thinking they can wish it away, describe it away (see Bump’s description of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as “not at this point serious competition”), indict it away. If you drop 76 charges on a candidate and he goes up in polls, you might want to consider that you might be part of the problem. But they can’t take even that heavy a hint.

They’re emotionally incapable of accepting the truth that they’re awful.

A

Tim Scott - May Not be our man

 A MASSIVE SELF-OWN FOR SENATOR SCOTT: 

“Tim Scott siding with Kamala Harris, wasn’t on my bingo card, but in retrospect, it probably should’ve been.”

You show you’re worthy of the nomination by showing that you’re good at fighting Democrats, not other Republicans. Republican candidates take note. Including you, Donald.

UPDATE: Not a productive path for you guys:

I have vigorously defended Florida’s new education standards and put them in their proper and whole context. It is absolutely true the left has lied about and distorted the standards on slavery.

In fact, they have fixated on one ancillary point and ignored the hundred plus others that require teachers to teach the awful brutality of slavery, how the cotton gin and capitalism made slavery every worse, how capitalism ultimately began helping places move past slavery but the South stubbornly held on to an institution that was cruel, inefficient, and outmoded, and how people in Europe, Africa, and the Americas all collaborated to perpetuate the slave trade.

It is a thorough and comprehensive study of slavery. But it suggests that teachers also note while slave masters kept their slaves illiterate and devoid of mathematical training, the slaves still learned skills they could use to their betterment, both to escape slavery and after the Civil War. Harriet Tubman, for example, developed a strong Christian faith while in slavery and also skills including the use of the North Star for navigation, which she then used both to escape slavery and rescue others.

The left and media together have spun this as Ron DeSantis trying to absolve white people of the guilt of slavery and trying to minimize slavery. As I have previously noted, nothing could be further from the truth and the guidelines were developed by black teachers.

However, four out of five black Republicans in Congress, including Tim Scott, have criticized the guidelines based on the inaccurate press reports. Scott has vocally claimed there is nothing redeeming about slavery.

So either they’re dumb enough to trust the press on an issue like this, or they don’t care if it’s true and are just jumping on it for attention and advantage. Neither is a good look.

D

The Intentionally Provocative Hunter Biden Plea Deal.

 ANDREW MCCARTHY: 

The Intentionally Provocative Hunter Biden Plea Deal.

Biden apologists have tried to minimize that transaction as a “lie and try” case, which they say is often not prosecuted. But such non-prosecution (though it shouldn’t happen) occurs because of what you’d infer from the “try” part — i.e., the liar got caught and failed to obtain the gun. Hunter’s case, to the contrary, is a lie and succeed case. He got the gun. What’s more, he was then seen playing with it while cavorting with an “escort” (see the New York Post’s pictorial, if you’ve got the stomach for it). Shortly afterwards, he and his then-paramour — Hallie Biden, the widow of his older brother — managed to lose the gun near a school (it was later found by someone else).

Those are the kinds of gun cases that get charged by the Justice Department even if the suspect hasn’t, in addition, committed tax felonies by dodging taxes on the millions of dollars he was paid, apparently for being named Biden. Yet after refusing for years to appoint a special counsel despite the five-alarm conflict of interest attendant to investigating the president’s son ( . . . and family . . . and the president himself), the Biden Justice Department is permitting Hunter Biden to dispose of the case with misdemeanor tax charges that will allow for a probation sentence, and diversion — essentially, no prosecution — on the gun felony that would result in imprisonment for most Americans who engaged in similar conduct.

Quite a deal.

Last week, Trump was flirting with 60 percent in GOP primary polling after being indicted, with a 45-point lead in some surveys. Democrats seem bound and determined to get him to 70.

Related: Come see how conservatives are reacting to the Hunter Biden indictment.

MY

 Pete's Friend (Mayor of College Park) is a Pedefile !

LGBTQ-Activist Mayor Linked to Buttigieg Arrested for Child Porn

The Democratic mayor of College Park, Maryland, who is openly homosexual and fancied himself a role model for LGBTQ youth, was arrested on dozens of counts of possessing and distributing child pornography on Thursday morning.

 

Eleven Realities About Trump vs. DeSantis

Trump vs DeSantis

DeSantis / Tulsi Gabbard in 2024

 MICHAEL WALSH: 

Real Americans Not Being Fooled Anymore.

And for how much longer are real Americans going to stand by as COVID-masked gangs empty out everything from the corner drug store to Louis Vuitton and Nordstrom? The Democrats’ goal of decriminalizing underclass violent crime is now reaching its apogee, and even the least political among us have begun to notice.

Well, the Democrats have been begging for a major reduction in force at least since 1860. The question is, who should lead the Republicans?

Former president Trump has all but declared he’s running again—but three years is an infinity in politics, and Trump can only play coy for so long. As memory of him fades, and the nation’s hunger for leadership increases, all eyes will be on DeSantis and his re-election campaign next year. A decisive win will cement the current shadow president of the U.S. front-runner status as Americans look to the future.

All the GOP has to do is nominate someone of relative youth and vigor, who’s not afraid of entrenched Washington, who treats the media with the contempt they so richly deserve, and who’s proven himself in an executive capacity.

Someone, in other words, exactly like DeSantis, who can also tap a plausible vice-presidential candidate with D.C. experience. Someone with military experience as well, and someone who’s already publicly eviscerated Harris on the national stage. A mixed-race woman who checks all the intersectional boxes. Someone exactly like Tulsi Gabbard.

And before you say that it can never happen, because Gabbard’s a Democrat—so was Donald Trump.

Read the whole thing.

 

Trump Nearing the Crossroads

As 2024 approaches, what will Trump do?

By Victor Davis Hanson

November 3, 2021

The Left may not wish to admit it, but the fortunes of a once moribund Donald Trump of January 2021 have now largely recovered—even before the stunning gubernatorial victory of Republican Glenn Youngkin in Virginia. 

How and why? 

One, Joe Biden did not, as dishonestly advertised, prove to be good Ol’ “Lunch bucket” Joe. He was no moderate from Scranton. Instead, Biden has served as the clueless gun barrel through which hard-core leftists fired off the most unpopular agenda in memory. 

Open borders, huge deficits, the Afghanistan catastrophe, looming stagflation, empty shelves, bottlenecked ports, soaring energy prices, toxic critical race theory, the disastrous previews of the Green New Deal, a weaponized federal government, and the addled decline of Biden himself have done more than just collapse support for the president and his policies.  

More importantly, Biden’s string of catastrophes endangers the very stuff of life, from the ability to afford gas to finding goods on the shelves. 

Two, for 10 months, Donald Trump has been stripped of all his social network outlets. The progressive Silicon monopolies thought they had silenced the once omnipresent Trump. 

But their muzzles had unintended consequences. The less Trump was on social media, the more the public remembered his good policies rather than his controversial tweets.

 Three, Donald Trump was as responsible or not responsible for COVID-19 deaths as is Joe Biden. On Biden’s watch, more have died each day on average from the disease than during Trump’s tenure from the start of the pandemic. 

Contrary to Biden’s ungracious boasts, Trump is to be credited with the successful vaccination rollout. And the Florida model of Governor Ron DeSantis, not the New York and California model of ongoing near-complete lockdowns, did far less economic and social damage with no more—and in some cases fewer deaths per capita. 

Four, Trump’s low point—the January 6 Capitol rampage—was not, as the Left propagandized, a preplanned conspiratorial “armed insurrection,” and the evidence against that narrative is now becoming apparent. 

The FBI found no conspiracy at the heart of the violent entry into the Capitol. 

No one inside the Capitol itself was arrested for the use or possession of a firearm. Officer Sicknick tragically died of natural causes a day after the riot, not at the hands of Trump supporters as was claimed. 

 The initil headlines of five dead due to the “insurrection” were completely false. Four died of either natural or accidental causes. The fifth, the diminutive, unarmed military veteran Ashli Babbitt, died due to the questionable decision of an officer to shoot an unarmed suspect. 

Five, Trump’s supposed rantings often proved prescient rather than mad. Radical iconoclasts really did move on to attacking the monuments and statues of Jefferson, Lincoln, and Washington. 

The Russian collusion hoax really was a massive fraud. The only collusion was between the media, Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and the FBI to destroy a Republican presidential campaign. 

Joe Biden’s family really was engaged in a grifting enterprise that used Biden’s office to leverage quid pro quo money from foreign governments. 

Hunter Biden’s laptop was really his own—and not a product of “Russian disinformation.”   

As a result, a resurgent Trump is considering another presidential run. Most Republicans want him to run. They welcome a return of his successful pre-pandemic policies and a leader who does not fear the unhinged Left. They believe Joe Biden reversed the Trump agenda and brought misery. Trump promises to restore it and bring back prosperity. 

But Youngkin showed that he could push Trump’s populist agenda, keep the MAGA base, and yet also win back independents—mainly as a Trump-like candidate, but one who gets even with, rather than mad at, the Left. 

So, at the crossroad of the Republican pathway back to power, there are plenty of known unknowns. 

Would possible presidential candidates like Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis, former Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence, or former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo advance the MAGA agenda, but without the fireworks and distractions? 

Or would they prove similar to a once impressive Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker—who nonetheless fizzled on the 2016 campaign stage?  

Or would a battle-scarred and wizened veteran Trump now outsmart rather than merely outrage his enemies by picking his targets more carefully? 

Can Trump, like Youngkin, win back suburbanites and independents to achieve a 51 percent majority—something no Republican presidential candidate has achieved in 33 years?  

Or could his less carnivorous rivals of the status quo be able to keep the Trump base from sitting out the election as they did in 2008 and 2016? 

Would Trump ever be content with becoming the senior statesman basking in the credit of rebooting the Republican Party from a stereotyped wealthy white corporate party into a populist-nationalist movement of the middle class of all races and ethnicities?  

Or will Trump redo 2016, bulldoze to the nomination, go for the jugular of the now hard-left Democratic Party, clobbering his way to a 2016-like Electoral College victory—or a defeat that others who copied his agendas might have avoided?