Tag: democrats

The Neocons’ Primary War Tactic: Branding Opponents of U.S. Intervention as Traitors

One of the most bizarre but important dynamics of Trump-era U.S. politics is that the most fanatical war-hungry neocons, who shaped Bush/Cheney militarism, have become the most popular pundits and thought leaders in American liberalism. They have not changed in the slightest — they are employing the same tactics they have always invoked, and for the same causes — but they have correctly perceived that their agenda is better served by migrating back to the Democratic Party which originally spawned their bloodthirsty ideology.

The excuse offered by Democrats for their embrace of neocons — we did it only as a temporary coalition of convenience to oppose Trump — is false for many reasons. This unholy alliance pre-dated Trump. In 2014 — long before anyone envisioned Trump descending down an escalator on his path to the White House — the journalist Jacob Heilbrunn wrote a New York Times op-ed entitled “The Next Act of the Neocons.” He predicted, correctly as it turned out, that “the neocons may be preparing a more brazen feat: aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to the driver’s seat of American foreign policy.”

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Twisted: Dem Gov Enacts Sick Law That Punishes Seniors with Unvaccinated Grandchildren

Connecticut’s Democratic Governor Ned Lamont officially mandated that all nursing homes in the state must require visitors to show proof of vaccination for entry.

Issued in an executive order, Lamont said the highly contagious omicron variant is dangerous for the elderly.

“[T]he impact of COVID-19 outbreaks in nursing homes may be devastating based on the experience from prior COVID-19 surge periods where residents of nursing homes and persons over 65 experienced the highest morbidity rates,” the executive order read.

Lamont’s executive order also outlined that while nursing home residents do have the right to receive visitors and designate support persons and caretakers, it’s not unreasonable to ask these visitors to be vaccinated.

“[I]t is reasonable and necessary during the present spike in COVID-19 cases to require visitors to continue to wear a mask and show that they have received a booster vaccine, if eligible, or proof of a negative COVID-19 test to protect the public health of nursing home residents,” the order stated.

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Rep. Hakeem Jeffries pays just $200 in property taxes thanks to sweetheart subsidy law

Brooklyn Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, a potential replacement for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, already lives in a “People’s House” — that’s heavily subsidized by taxpayers.

Public records show that Jeffries and his family reside in a condo unit in red-hot Prospect Heights, paying just $213 a year in property taxes thanks to a sweetheart deal under a law he supported when he served in the state Assembly.

The condo the Jeffries bought in 2007 in the six-story, 40-unit complex on Underhill Avenue benefits from a massive property tax break granted under the 421-A abatement program that housing advocates have long complained is skewed toward wealthy developers and well-to-do tenants.

The law provides developers and residents property tax breaks over 25 or 35 years in exchange for making at least 20 percent of the apartments “affordable” for moderate- to low-income residents.

The generous subsidy program costs the city treasury up to $1.6 billion a year in property tax revenues, according to the comptroller’s office. The median property tax for city homeowners is more than $5,000.

One Staten Island condo owner told The Post their annual property tax bill is $5,000. A Queens homeowner said his bill is more than $9,000.

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Why Does the Media Keep Blaming the Russians for JFK’s Assassination?

In mid-December, the Biden administration released nearly 1,500 documents related to the John F. Kennedy assassination. Out of all the intelligence agencies memoranda, dossiers, and interview transcripts, the media has seized upon one: a CIA memo about Lee Harvey Oswald’s supposed in-person meeting with Valery Kostikov, a notorious KGB official, in Mexico City in September 1963.  

There’s nothing new about the memo in question. The same is true for most of the JFK records released in December. But as a round of fresh press coverage indicated, the encounter suggests Oswald was working for the Soviets, and that America’s Cold War nemesis was responsible for Kennedy’s killing — not the mob, anti-Castro Cubans, the CIA, or the military-industrial complex.  

The theory that Oswald was a KGB asset has persisted for decades, despite a lack of evidence. Even the CIA concluded that any contact Oswald had with KGB-affiliated Russians was a “grim coincidence.” (A man claiming to be Oswald did contact the Soviets in Mexico City — but that man was an impostor.) 

This most recent recycling of the “Oswald and the Russians” story — the JFK assassination’s very own Russiagate — follows a predictable pattern that appears every time there’s a release of JFK records. It happened in 2017 and during the 1990s.

So, what gives? Why does the media gravitate toward the Oswald/KGB “revelation” every few years rather than any of the other more plausible theories? 

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FBI agents descended on Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar’s house, but won’t say what they’re investigating

The FBI was on the scene Wednesday near the Laredo home of U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar for what authorities described as a court-authorized ongoing investigation.

FBI spokesperson Rosanne Hughes confirmed law enforcement’s presence in the area but did not clarify what authorities were investigating.

Hughes said in a statement that the FBI was present on two streets around Cuellar’s house in Laredo “conducting court-authorized law enforcement activity.”

“The FBI cannot provide further comment on an ongoing investigation,” she said.

On Wednesday evening, Cuellar’s office released a statement: “Congressman Cuellar will fully cooperate in any investigation. He is committed to ensuring that justice and the law are upheld.”

Agents were seen taking cases and other items from the congressman’s home, according to MyRGVNews. FBI officials were also present at a downtown building owned by Cuellar that reportedly houses his campaign office as well as other private businesses, according to KGNS News.

First elected in 2004, Cuellar is a longtime representative of his Laredo-based 28th District.

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Congress’s 1/6 Committee Claims Absolute Power as it Investigates Citizens With No Judicial Limits

In its ongoing attempt to investigate and gather information about private U.S. citizens, the Congressional 1/6 Committee is claiming virtually absolute powers that not even the FBI or other law enforcement agencies enjoy. Indeed, lawyers for the committee have been explicitly arguing that nothing proscribes or limits their authority to obtain data regarding whichever citizens they target and, even more radically, that the checks imposed on the FBI (such as the requirement to obtain judicial authorization for secret subpoenas) do not apply to the committee.

As we have previously reported and as civil liberties groups have warned, there are serious constitutional doubts about the existence of the committee itself. Under the Constitution and McCarthy-era Supreme Court cases interpreting it, the power to investigate crimes lies with the executive branch, supervised by the judiciary, and not with Congress. Congress does have the power to conduct investigations, but that power is limited to two narrow categories: 1) when doing so is designed to assist in its law-making duties (e.g., directing executives of oil companies to testify when considering new environmental laws) and 2) in order to exert oversight over the executive branch.

What Congress is barred from doing, as two McCarthy-era Supreme Court cases ruled, is exactly what the 1/6 committee is now doing: conducting a separate, parallel criminal investigation in order to uncover political crimes committed by private citizens. Such powers are dangerous precisely because Congress’s investigative powers are not subject to the same safeguards as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. And just as was true of the 1950s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that prompted those Supreme Court rulings, the 1/6 committee is not confining its invasive investigative activities to executive branch officials or even citizens who engaged in violence or other illegality on January 6, but instead is investigating anyone and everyone who exercised their Constitutional rights to express views about and organize protests over their belief that the 2020 presidential election contained fraud. Indeed, the committee’s initial targets appear to be taken from the list of those who applied for protest permits in Washington: a perfectly legal, indeed constitutionally protected, act.

This abuse of power is not merely abstract. The Congressional 1/6 Committee has been secretly obtaining private information about American citizens en masse: telephone records, email logs, internet and browsing history, and banking transactions. And it has done so without any limitations or safeguards: no judicial oversight, no need for warrants, no legal limitations of any kind.

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Conspiracies as Realities, Realities as Conspiracies

American politics over the last half decade has become immersed in a series of conspiracy charges leveled by Democrats against their opponents that, in fact, are happening because of them and through them. The consequences of these conspiracies becoming reality and reality revealing itself as conspiracy have been costly to American prestige, honor, and security. As we move away from denouncing realists as conspiracists, and self-pronounced “realists” are revealed as the true conspirators, let’s review a few of the more damaging of these events. 

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When is a conspiracy theory not a conspiracy theory?

It is fascinating how the meaning of the phrase “conspiracy theory” changes depending on who is using it. Or more specifically, it depends on how Democrats are using it to advance their political goals.

For years, if not decades, some Americans were noticing behind-the-scene, well-concerted efforts to impose on our country a form of semi-totalitarian regime, not unlike the one that collapsed in the Soviet Union three decades ago. However, anyone who pointed to facts that supported claims of coordinated attempts to reduce the governments’ accountability to the American people, restrict individual liberties, expand governmental powers, and strengthen federal law-enforcement agencies was promptly branded as a “conspiracy theorist” (think of the character Mel Gibson played in Conspiracy Theory) who might belong in a mental hospital and certainly shouldn’t be taken seriously.

There were no conspiracies in America, we were told, and anyone who suggested that there were such conspiracies was insane, evil, or both.

That “mainstream” rhetoric changed a bit in 1998 when Ms. Hillary Clinton, defending Bill against charges of sexual misconduct with Monica Lewinsky, claimed he was the victim of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” No one in the “mainstream” called her a “conspiracy theorist,” never mind asking for factual proof of her claim. Nineteen years later, when we were suddenly told that President Donald Trump “colluded with Russia” (another name for conspiring with Russia), despite (as we learned later) zero credible evidence supporting them, no “mainstream” narrator referred to House impeachment managers and their Congressional supporters as crazy “conspiracy theorists.”

But the progressive “mainstream” did not permanently abandon—at least, not permanently so—its disdain for “conspiracy theories.” It was back to its usual modus operandi during the 2020 presidential elections. Then, everybody who was concerned about plans to facilitate election fraud and cheating and, after the fact, was concerned about the swift destruction of evidence and the refusal to investigate to allay voters’ fears, was promptly relegated to the “conspiracy theorist” category.

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False Flags Suddenly No Longer A Crazy Conspiracy Theory

In a drastic pivot from typical denunciations of false flag operations as conspiratorial nonsense that don’t exist outside the demented imagination of Alex Jones, the US political/media class is proclaiming with one voice that Russia is currently orchestrating just such an operation to justify an invasion of Ukraine.

“As part of its plans, Russia is laying the groundwork to have the option of fabricating a pretext for invasion,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Friday. “We have information that indicates Russia has already pre-positioned a group of operatives to conduct a false flag operation in eastern Ukraine.”

“Without getting into too much detail, we do have information that indicates that Russia is already working actively to create a pretext for a potential invasion, for a move on Ukraine,” Pentagon Spokesperson John Kirby told the press on Friday. “In fact, we have information that they’ve pre-positioned a group of operatives, to conduct what we call a false flag operation, an operation designed to look like an attack on them or their people, or Russian speaking people in Ukraine, as an excuse to go in.”

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