May 12, 2023 by Dave Olsson

Daily Broadside | ¡Adios America! You’re Now a Third-World Sh*thole

I’ve said it many times before on this blog, but illegal aliens from third-world countries being allowed to invade ours is one of the most loathsome acts of treachery the men and women who hold power in this nation have ever committed. It’s criminal, it’s an act of sabotage, it’s wrecking our country and both parties are responsible for it.

(See other posts about this issue here, here, here, here, here, here and here.)

Our “immigration” “system” favors anyone who manages to get across our border and declares that they want asylum — once they do so, they are given a court date and released under their own recognizance. What’s a reasonable amount of time for someone to wait for a court date, do you think? Three months? Six months? Twelve? Maybe 18 months at the outside? If that’s what you think, you’d be wrong.

BROWNSVILLE, Texas — Migrants processed into the US as asylum seekers are being given immigration court dates more than a decade away.

In Brownsville, migrants who arrived in the US Thursday showed The Post their paperwork with designated court dates set as late as 2032 and 2035 in Chicago and Florida.

Now they have been admitted to the county and given a court date, the migrants can receive a work permit and legally live and work in the US until their case comes up.

Others who had immigration court hearings set for August 2023 in a Maryland immigration court and March 2027 at a Dallas immigration court.

Two people heading to New York City had dates listed for 2025.

Backlogs at immigration courts currently stand at 2.1 million cases waiting to be heard.

There are around 600 immigration court judges deciding asylum cases, and in the last financial year, they closed approximately 312,000 cases.

It’s not just that it could be 12 months, but it could be 12 years until your request for asylum comes up before a judge. In the meantime, you’re allowed to legally live and work here until your case is called. And, if you have a child with your girlfriend while you’re waiting, guess what? You now have an “anchor baby” who automatically gains citizenship because mom was present in the U.S. That means the authorities are less likely to deport you. Think I’m kidding?

Yes, it’s true most of those folks are officially claiming asylum but that’s a 7-year process for most of them. By the time a judge tells them to leave, they’ll have American children and they’ll never be asked to leave unless they commit a serious crime. So the word is out and now the migrants who’ve been dodging Title 42 have heard that’s ending as well. So expect some new records of border crossings over the coming week that make this week’s records look tame by comparison.

This is ludicrous. All a foreigner has to do is jump the border, claim asylum, and start working and collecting welfare checks while having a family here. No vetting, no process, no oath of citizenship, just living la vida loca.

In what other sovereign nation does this happen? There isn’t another country where I could walk across the border and simply settle down, get a job and raise a family without being arrested, jailed, fined and deported. A year ago I wrote of the punishments some countries mete out to trespassers.

Why do aliens target America? Well, besides being the freest and richest country in the world, there aren’t any consequences for entering illegally. In this report, we learn that crossing the border illegally in Singapore is punishable by six months in prison and three strokes with a cane. In Russia, you can get two years in a prison labor camp. In Pakistan, trespassers can get up to 10 years in prison, while India allows for up to eight years behind bars.

The U.S.? Illegal entry in the U.S. is a misdemeanor, with a maximum of six months in jail.

Guess how many “migrants” are waiting to rush across the border just as soon as Title 42 ends?

The scope of this disaster really is amazing. With Title 42 set to end Thursday the everyone from border state governors to blue city mayors is getting ready for a new influx of migrants. There may not be a long wait because more than a hundred thousand people are already camped out on the Mexican side of the border waiting for the right moment.

The federal government estimates more than 150,000 migrants were waiting in shelters and on the streets of northern Mexican states bordering the US this weekend, a source familiar with the estimates told CNN.

That includes 60,000 migrants in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, 35,000 in the state of Tamaulipas and 25,000 in the state of Coahuila, among others, the source said Monday, adding the government estimates hundreds of thousands of migrants were in the “pipeline” in southern Mexico and Central American countries.

So 150,000 people on the doorstep and maybe more than that on the way. Shelters in Tijuana are overflowing. The director of migrants affairs said a “humanitarian crisis” is near.

By the time you read this, Title 42 will have expired. Here’s the very latest:

After days of panic, with thousands of migrants crossing over the southern border in a last-minute attempt to claim asylum before the rules changed, Title 42 has ended.

In the final hours before the pandemic-era measure expired, forces along the border fortified their posts with barbed wire, concrete barriers and heavily armed teams patrolling their front lines.

Agents in tactical gear also performed rehearsals for how to deal with rioters or mobs, should migrants attempt to descend en masse across the border.

Federal agents also remain on standby in case of riots, sources told The Post.

But after Title 42 ended at midnight, border crossings in Texas and California remained quiet — with migrants remaining on the Mexican side of the border awaiting to be processed.

Despite Customs and Border Patrol apprehending over 10,000 people daily this week, there were an estimated 155,000 people still waiting in north Mexico with the intention of making it into the US, according to CNN.

Texas officials had warned of up to 13,000 people a day attempting to make it into the US after Title 42 ended.

Asylum seekers will now be processed under the earlier Title 8 measure instead.

This is no way to run a country. The reason for the invasion being allowed by Democrats and cheered by their media lapdogs is that foreigners primarily vote Democrat, somewhere on the order of 8-2. What the criminal Democrat party is doing is adding new voters on top of the 50 percent of Americans who already vote Democrat to create a super majority. That’s all this is — a way to keep themselves in power. They are disenfranchising the entire country by importing a dependent class of peasants who will vote to keep the largesse coming.

Once these people are here, it’s almost impossible to reverse their presence, unlike a law like Roe v. Wade. Not only is it almost impossible to reverse, the effect of their presence keeps on growing through chain migration and anchor babies.

The only way to reverse the loss of our country, at least the country that the other half of us like, is to close the border. Once that leak is stopped, then we can determine how to clear the backlog of illegals. THEN, we need to hold our ruling class accountable. Then we need to abandon the idiocy of automatic citizenship for foreign children born to non-citizens. Then we need to stop chain migration.

But it’s not going to happen. Instead of organic growth, receiving and releasing this many people into the U.S. this fast will change the demographics of the country, and not for the better — unless you’re a progressive politician or business.

Have a good weekend.

May 10, 2023 by Dave Olsson

Daily Broadside | Will One of the Bidens Finally Go to Prison?

On Fox News’s program Sunday Morning Futures, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky), the Chair of the House Oversight Committee, declared that today, Wednesday, he and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) will hold a press conference to announce the results of their investigation into the Biden Crime Family.

“When you have the opportunity to see the evidence that the House Oversight Committee will produce with respect to the web of LLCs, with respect to the number of adversarial countries that this family influence-peddled in, and this is not just about the president’s son,” the lawmaker said.

“This is about the entire Biden family, including the president of the United States. So we believe there are a whole lot of tips that the IRS and the DOJ don’t know about because we don’t believe they’ve done a whole lot of digging in this, and we have.”

Comer said he and other lawmakers had heard reports that the Department of Justice might charge Hunter Biden in a way that would amount to a “slap on the wrist,” which the lawmaker asserted would be a “drop in the bucket” compared to what his committee uncovered on proof of wrongdoing.

“Wednesday will be a very big day for the American people in getting the facts presented to them so that they can know the truth, and then the Department of Justice can finally do what they should have done years ago,” Comer said.

So you should be watching for that presser today. I’m not going to get my hopes up, though. No matter what the Republicans come up with, I have zero confidence that either 1) they have the intestinal fortitude to press their case all the way to a conviction or 2) the DOJ will do what they should’ve been doing all along, which is prosecuting Hunter Biden and his morally vacuous father, Brandon, for their obvious crimes.

James Comer & Chuck Grassley will be holding a press conference on Wednesday 👀

Comer just sent a message to the DOJ:

“Do not indict Hunter Biden before Wednesday…

We know exactly what this family was doing…

Wednesday will be a very big day for the American people in… pic.twitter.com/4nT8Spgfkh
— Patriot4Life (@Patriot4Life72) May 7, 2023

Matt Margolis over at PJ Media also reports on Comer:

“My message to the Department of Justice is very loud and clear. Do not indict Hunter Biden before Wednesday,” Comer told Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures.

“We know exactly what this family was doing,” he said. “We’re going to present to the American people all the information that we’ve received thus far pertaining to bank records. We’re going to disclose many of the different LLCs, many of the different transactions that all these different Biden family members have gotten from our adversaries around the world. We don’t believe this was just a coincidence that all these Biden family members were receiving money from these this Web of LLC into their personal bag.”

Comer added, “We believe this was done in exchange for something that then-Vice President Biden and now President Biden would have done. So this whistleblower is going to provide some very crucial information to our investigation. And we’ve given the FBI until May the 10th to produce this document, so the ball is in the FBI’s court with respect to this whistleblower.”

As The Epoch Times reports, “Comer subpoenaed FBI Director Christopher Wray to testify and to produce a whistleblower document that describes an alleged criminal scheme in which Biden, as vice president, received money from a foreign national in exchange for certain policy decisions.” The “exchange” of money for certain policy decisions? Apparently there’s a whistleblower who can provide some of the missing pieces — if the whistleblower doesn’t end up with missing pieces after being suicided.

What galls me is that the very thing the Left, the media, NeverTrump and the Democrats (but I repeat myself incessantly) accused Trump of being — a Russian stooge, a corrupt official offering quid pro quo to foreign leaders — is exactly what we knew Joe Biden is and was while the allegations against Trump were all false. And NOBODY HAS GONE TO PRISON FOR THEIR LIES.

The government has violated the social contract, the Constitution, and many of the laws supposedly governing the government. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and the Constitution was ratified by we, the people. The Constitution was written to limit the reach of the federal government. The officials inhabiting Washington D.C. are subject to the Constitution, which means that they’re subject to us. But that’s not the way it’s working now, is it?

In fact, the way it works is that those in charge ignore reports of corruption when it’s their side that does it or when there’s an election to win.

Explosive bribery allegations involving Joe Biden and foreign nationals were brought to the Department of Justice as early as 2018, two years before similar allegations against the president were made by the whistleblower now talking to the House Oversight Committee.

Bud Cummins, a former federal prosecutor, first reported the bribery allegations to then-New York US Attorney Geoff Berman on Oct. 4, 2018, in an email claiming he had evidence that Joe Biden had “exercised influence to protect” his son’s Ukrainian employer “in exchange for payments to Hunter Biden, Devon Archer, and Joe Biden.”

In the email obtained by John Solomon’s Just The News, Cummins said that Ukraine’s then-Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko wanted to travel to the United States to meet Berman, and could produce two “John Doe” witnesses to corroborate his claims about the Bidens.

But Berman never responded to the email.

An inconvenient truth, I suppose.

May 9, 2023 by Dave Olsson - 2 Comments

Daily Broadside | Speak Up and Call Evil What It Is

Yesterday I wrote that there seems to be a gathering consensus that now is the time to speak up about the cultural revolution that we’re experiencing in the U.S., and that by “speaking up,” I mean getting educated and not being shy to educate others or to take a stand contrary to the woke orthodoxy that currently reigns as virtue in our country.

One of the authors and speakers I follow is Doug Wilson, pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. I’m going to mash together what he wrote yesterday with a sprinkle of thoughts from Tucker Carlson and Naomi Wolf. First, here’s some of what Wilson said in his blog post:

All societies are grounded in the will of their God or gods, no exceptions. And when a society (like ours) pretends to be exempt from this iron law, the thing that results is massive amounts of confusion. In our case, the time of that confusion was lengthened and drawn out because we had an enormous amount of that moral capital. The prodigal son was truly disobedient, but he also had a really big inheritance to squander. It took him a while.

But our confusion about who is the god of the system does not mean that the god of the system is confused about it. We might think that we are all being decent bipedal carbon units in our Judeo/Christian faith tradition, when we are actually in the process of being enslaved to the service of Mammon. But our confusion is not shared by Mammon. Mammon knows all about it. Mammon knows the game.

So with that being the case, why am I being upbeat about our hot mess of a culture? The thing that has happened is this. Our situation has grown dire enough that when I now say it is Christ or chaos, an ordinary Christian can look at that and know exactly what I am talking about. Twenty-five years ago, this stark and very binary choice would have been very hard to explain to rank-and-file Christians—but now many of them are out looking for an explanation, and when someone gives it to them, they grasp it in under a minute.

This is an encouraging observation. He’s saying that people — and, in particular, Christian people — are beginning to notice that something is very wrong. And not only are they noticing that something is wrong, they are noticing that it is so wrong, so dire, that there’s really only two ways to go from here: continue into the chaos, or reverse course by throwing up roadblocks and barriers to any further progress down that road by intentionally standing on, and for, Christ.

In other words, Wilson says, we’re starting to pay attention.

But you know who else is paying attention and wondering what in the world is going on? Opinion leaders and influencers outside of the Christian faith. Neither Tucker Carlson nor Naomi Wolf would necessarily be expected to describe what is happening in distinctly Christian terms, but that is what has happened.

Carlson, by his own admission, is Episcopalian, “the shallowest faith tradition that’s ever been invented.” Yet, listen to what he says during his speech at the Heritage Foundation, the Friday night before his show was cancelled by Fox News.

Well, what’s the point of child sacrifice [abortion]? Well, there’s no policy goal entwined with that. No, that’s a theological phenomenon.

And that’s kind of the point I’m making. None of this makes sense in conventional political terms. When people, or crowds of people, or the largest crowd of people at all, which is the federal government, the largest human organization in human history decide that the goal is to destroy things, destruction for its own sake, “Hey, let’s tear it down,” what you’re watching is not a political movement. It’s evil.

That seems like a courageous act to me. In a culture where “tolerance” and “diversity” and “inclusion” are the highest values, making a moral judgement about someone else’s behavior is tantamount to a declaration of war. It’s deeply offensive to a society that is steeped in moral relativism. Carlson’s observation comes out of a conservative political viewpoint with at least the trappings of a Judeo-Christian worldview.

Naomi Wolf, on the other hand, has been, for most of her political life, a hard-left feminist of Jewish extraction, who considered her faith unimportant and, anyway, deeply personal. But during the Chinese Lung Pox hysteria, she did her research and began to discover that there was something much bigger and darker going on. Here’s what she wrote more than a year ago:

I told the group that I was now willing to speak about God publicly, because I had looked at what had descended on us from every angle, using my normal critical training and faculties; and that it was so elaborate in its construction, so comprehensive, and so cruel, with an almost superhuman, flamboyant, baroque imagination made out of the essence of cruelty itself — that I could not see that it had been accomplished by mere humans working on the bumbling human level in the dumb political space.

I felt around us, in the majestic nature of the awfulness of the evil around us, the presence of “principalities and powers” — almost awe-inspiring levels of darkness and of inhuman, anti-human forces. In the policies unfolding around us I saw again and again anti-human outcomes being generated: policies aimed at killing children’s joy; at literally suffocating children, restricting their breath, speech and laughter; at killing school; at killing ties between families and extended families; at killing churches and synagogues and mosques; and, from the highest levels, from the President’s own bully pulpit, demands for people to collude in excluding, rejecting, dismissing, shunning, hating their neighbors and loved ones and friends.

I have seen bad politics all of my life and this drama unfolding around us goes beyond bad politics, which is silly and manageable and not that scary. This — this is scary, metaphysically scary. In contrast to hapless human mismanagement, this darkness has the tinge of the pure, elemental evil that underlay and gave such hideous beauty to the theatrics of Nazism; it is the same nasty glamour that surrounds Leni Riefenstahl films.

In short, I don’t think humans are smart or powerful enough to have come up with this horror all alone.

So I told the group in the woods, that the very impressiveness of evil all around us in all of its new majesty, was leading me to believe in a newly literal and immediate way in the presence, the possibility, the necessity of a countervailing force — that of a God. It was almost a negative proof: an evil this large must mean that there is a God at which it is aiming its malevolence.

And that is a huge leap for me to take, as a classical Liberal writer in a postwar world, — to say these things out loud.

Grounded postmodern intellectuals are not supposed to talk about or believe in spiritual matters — at least not in public. We are supposed to be shy about referencing God Himself, and are certainly are not supposed to talk about evil or the forces of darkness.

Here are two secular personalities who have both come to the conclusion that our society is so broken, so twisted, so upside-down, that they’re forced to conclude that there is a force at work that transcends what we can see, and they label it “evil,” a theological term associated with, at minimum, the Jewish and Christian faiths. What I find so remarkable is that they’re so awestruck by the sinister nature of what we’re experiencing that they’re forced to use a theological term that many in the Christian faith themselves aren’t willing to utter for fear of being labeled a nutter.

And that brings me back to Wilson’s commentary. It’s great that believers are waking up to the ugly reality of our situation, but we need to be willing to say so. We also need to not only recognize that what we’re seeing is evil; we need to articulate that it is so. Christians, of all people, have the theological language, history and book to back up our claims.

The other thing that both Wolf and Carlson admit to is that the power of evil is so overwhelming that they both suggest that prayer is essential. From the same linked sources:

Carlson: “[M]aybe we should all take just 10 minutes a day to say a prayer about it. I’m serious. Why not? And I’m saying that to you not as some kind of evangelist, I’m literally saying that to you as an Episcopalian, the Samaritans of our time. I’m coming to you from the most humble and lowly theological position you can. I’m literally an Episcopalian. And even I have concluded it might be worth taking just 10 minutes out of your busy schedule to say a prayer for the future, and I hope you will.

Wolf: “I confessed at that gathering in the woods with the health freedom community, that I had started to pray again. This was after many years of thinking that my spiritual life was not that important, and certainly very personal, almost embarrassingly so, and thus it was not something I should mention in public.”

If secular types like Wolf and Carlson are willing to call evil, evil, and to call on God for help in resisting it, shouldn’t we be willing and ready to do the same?

May 8, 2023 by Dave Olsson - 3 Comments

Daily Broadside | Speak Up Now

I’ve occasionally been asked, in light of the woke threat that we face, “what do we do?” I’ve attempted to give some guidance here, here, here, here, and here. Lately I’ve been feeling more urgency about being more vocal because it’s not getting any easier. True, conservatives have had an impact on Bud Lite and Fox News in recent weeks (let’s call them “Fox Lite”), but those are minor victories and they aren’t by themselves diverting the flow of the cultural revolution we’re currently facing. More will be needed, and it is needed now.

I’ve referenced James Lindsay before here, and in that post I encouraged all of us to adopt a “you’re not the boss of me” attitude toward our woke superiors. For many of us, that may mean we risk losing our job, which Lindsay acknowledges is one of the most common responses he gets from people who are wondering what they can do to resist the cultural revolution.

He has a newer podcast out which I encourage you to listen to, and he also suggests that now is the time to speak up. He claims the fight against Marxism is not going to get easier and uses the Maoist take over in China as an example. As I’ve also covered, following Doug Wilson (here and here) Lindsay tells us not to take the bait. We need to “resist without over-reacting.”

Here’s the podcast, and below I’ve pulled a couple of quotes that I think are important for this moment.

The way that a cultural revolution unfolds is that it gets worse the longer you wait. The longer you wait to resist, the harder it gets. The things you’re afraid of now, in a year, are going to look like no big deal.

This is where urgency comes in. Time is of the essence, because it won’t get any easier to take a stand and, while we wait, the Left continues to set up the surveillance state and put in place the mechanisms for controlling the people. If we wait too long, it becomes too late and even more dangerous and risky to speak up.

You actually have two choices right now. You can either listen and start to speak up, or you can live through it and hope you can speak up. Those are your only two choices. What’s happening is a cultural revolution. Therefore you can either listen to people who are telling you, “now is the time to get involved, now is the time to start educating people, now is the time to start sharing ideas, now is the time to resist, now is the time to say you won’t go along with it.” Or, you can live through it and maybe if you’re lucky, you can do something. You’re not really going to have very many places to run.

That quote follows from a conversation he had with two Chinese women who lived through the Maoist revolution but were able to flee to America. Many of us notice what is going on, but feel a little insecure about whether we’re the only ones who are seeing it. If we’re to take a stand, we may have to do it on our own, and that feels more risky than standing with a group. But whether you are alone or with a group doesn’t change your two choices.

People want to know what to do. There are lots of things that are going to involve lawsuits … depending on whether you’ve been wronged, there are lots of things that may involve legislation, there are lots of things that are going to involve taking back, especially, local institutions, getting on county boards, county commissions, getting elected, getting appointed, filling out prosecutor roles, depending on if you’re an attorney … running for office, helping political campaigns, all the things that we think are going to be the solution. But there’s also a lot of stuff that you need to be doing, much more simply and much more close to home, which is educating yourself and educating others on this so that the base of people who understand the problem, recognize what it means, and are willing to stand up, increases and increases rapidly. The more people that stand up the easier it gets for everybody to stand up. The fewer people that stand up, the harder it is for everybody to stand up. The more people who are aware of the problem, the more people who are going to weigh out the risks and decide it’s worth standing up.

Standing up takes courage. Not to make an example of myself, but I’m out here taking a stand on the world wide web under my own name. I know it’s a risk. As I’ve taught my kids, the internet is forever.

But if not me, who? If not now, when? I couldn’t not say anything anymore, so I bought myself space on the internet and have been adding my opinion to the voices out there for the last three years, trying to educate and encourage readers to recognize what’s happening in our country, and to do so through the lens of Christian faith.

Standing up for your family, making sure you have a connection to your family. Getting to know your kids again, really well. Getting to know your kids’ friends. Spending intentional time with your children and their friends. Helping them understand the world and the values. Helping them understand communism … Nourishing what’s at home is a big way to stand up. They have to break the family. They’re doing a great job of damaging families. That’s something that you can do.

If we survive this cultural revolution, the next generation needs to know what happened and be prepared to guard against it happening again.

You may remember this oft-quoted confession of Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

The time for speaking up is now. As Carl Trueman said about protecting women and children,

The time for evangelical leaders and institutions to speak is now. The moment to use the platforms we have to protect women and children has come. If J.K. Rowling has the courage to stand for the truth and to call for the protection of children and women, then so should we. Silence in the face of this evil is culpable and, make no mistake, will be noted by future generations.

The same is true for all of us on the side of truth.

May 5, 2023 by Dave Olsson

Daily Broadside | Fox News and Anheuser-Busch Deserve To Be Left By Conservatives

Happy Friday and happy Cinco de Mayo. According to Wikipedia, the holiday “generates beer sales on par with the Super Bowl.” That’s unfortunate for Bud Light, which is going to miss out on that annual bonanza!

Bud Light has hemorrhaged sales in recent weeks after executives partnered with Mulvaney, a biological man who claims to be a woman, and chronicled his purported gender transition on social media. Doukeris told analysts that social media users are spreading “misinformation” about the nature of the partnership, according to a report from Fox Business.

“We need to clarify the facts,” the executive for the Belgian conglomerate remarked, adding that the controversy is about “one influencer, one post and not a campaign.”

Sales for draft beer products marketed by Anheuser-Busch InBev nevertheless fell in the immediate aftermath of the partnership and continues to decline weeks after the controversy as beer enthusiasts search for alternatives. Doukeris revealed that Anheuser-Busch is now “providing direct financial support” to delivery drivers, sales representatives, wholesalers, bar owners, and other workers affected by the boycott.

Doukeris is minimizing the partnership with Mulvaney, dismissing it as “one influencer, one post and not a campaign.” Gosh, good thing it was only “one post” — no telling what a full blown campaign would’ve done!

This is the kind of tone deaf response that corporations flirting with wokeness toss out in their defense. Does he actually think that consumers care whether it was “one post” or a national campaign? It was the violation of the brand bond that sunk them.

But it’s even worse than that as they ignored—or are ignorant of—a key feature of the beer drinker, the incredible bond the consumer has with the product.

Not all products have the same level of bond with their consumers as others. But the beer or booze you drink, the vehicle you drive (as an example, Ford, Dodge, or Chevy pickups), and back when it was acceptable, the cigarette you smoked, all said something about you.

Thus, these types of products have a much higher customer bond than say the bathroom cleaning products you use. Few products have a higher bond than beer.

They have thousands and thousands of interactions with the brand every year . . . for years. Parties, birthdays, going to bars, football games, NASCAR, just sitting around at home watching TV, and through good times and bad with a friend who’s always there for you.

This brand bond is a reflection of what consumers perceive themselves to be. And having a role-playing guy who says he’s a woman sitting in a bubble bath and crowing about becoming the brand ambassador of your favorite beer is not what these consumers view themselves to be. It is a jarring affront to their perception of reality. It was an almost universal, WTF moment for all Bud Light drinkers.

Thus, ABI violated this bond and set off a firestorm like none before in the beer world, most likely forever changing the beer competitive landscape.

Most analysis focuses on the guy playing a gal, but that is where they are wrong. It’s not fundamentally about Dylan Mulvaney. It’s about the violation of this bond. And the stronger the bond, the greater the feeling of betrayal.

Worse yet, Doukeris is blaming “social media users” for “spreading ‘misinformation.'” Got that? It’s your fault that this happened. But Anheuser-Busch is confident it can overcome it’s consumer’s mistakes.

“We believe we have the experience, the resources and the partners to manage this. And our four-year growth outlook is unchanged,” Doukeris said.

“We want to reiterate our support for our wholesaler partners and everyone who brings our great beers to the market. I can tell you that we have the agility, resources and people to support the U.S. team and move forward,” he added.

“We will continue to learn, meet the moment in time, all be stronger and we work tirelessly to do what we do best: Bring people together over a beer and creating a future of more cheers.”

That sounds just like another corporation that deliberately torpedoed it’s brand by firing its top broadcast personality. Fox News has lost nearly half its audience in what used to be Tucker Carlson’s 8:00 PM slot.

Ratings for Fox News have dropped considerably in the wake of popular anchor Tucker Carlson departing from the network.

During its 8 p.m. hour, the network has dropped from a three million viewer average to a 1.65 million viewer average since the departure of Tucker Carlson; the hour was previously filled by Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade, which will then be filled by Fox News personality Lawrence Jones. Per the Washington Post:

The disparity was most stark on Wednesday, when Kilmeade’s 8 p.m. hour received an average of 1.3 million total viewers, compared with the 3 million Carlson received a week earlier — a decline of 56 percent. Overall, the network experienced a 45 percent viewership decline last week without Carlson in the host’s chair.

When Fox announced Carlson’s forced departure April 24, the network said that “rotating Fox News personalities” will fill in until a permanent 8 p.m. host is selected. The network did something similar with the 7 p.m. hour, after it was vacated by anchor Martha MacCallum, and ultimately settled on Jesse Watters as the permanent host. “Jesse Watters Primetime” has been a major success for Fox News, and Watters, who also co-hosts “The Five,” is considered a possible candidate for Carlson’s old slot.

Beyond the 8 p.m. slot, the network has also seen a sharp decline in the 25-54 demographic in the 6 p.m., 7 p.m., and 9 p.m. time slots.

Imagine Tucker Carlson as Bud Light and Fox News as the parent company, Anheuser-Busch. Now imagine A-B cutting off production of its top-selling beer without explanation, and you begin to get a sense of what Fox News has done. Just as the abandonment of Bud Light consumers has created a halo effect on other A-B brands, so has Tucker Carlson’s firing affected other shows, notably Hannity and Ingraham, which have both lost about a third of their audiences without Carlson’s lead-in.

The hit is broader than just Tucker's show — Hannity and Ingraham are both down 33% or more in total audience and more than 40% in the demo.
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) April 28, 2023

“The demo” is that audience bloc of 25-54-year-olds coveted by advertisers. It’s the key metric that analysts watch to gauge how well a show is doing.

Like A-B, Fox News issued a cheery and defiant statement to address concerns over the fallout of its decision.

“For more than 21 years, Fox News Channel has been cable news’ most-watched network in all categories with more Democrats, Independents and Republicans now tuning in than either CNN or MSNBC,” the company said.

“Attracting more than 50 percent of the cable news viewing audience with the top 12 programs in cable news, Fox News’ powerhouse team of journalists, analysts and opinion hosts are trusted more by viewers than any other news source,” it added.

Not if conservatives abandon the network.

Since firing Tucker Carlson, Fox News Channel’s ratings in the all-important 25-54 demo have fallen off a cliff:

•6pm ET: -42%
•7pm ET: -62%
•8pm ET: -75%
•9pm ET: -70%
•10pm ET: -66%
•11pm ET: -49%

Oof. pic.twitter.com/mjCyaF8zGI
— Tyler Carditis (@TyCardon) May 3, 2023

So both Fox News and Anheuser-Busch are hemorrhaging consumers. I consider that good news. In fact, I want conservatives and other like-minded adults to not just boycott, but to ABANDON both companies. They need to hear from us.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the life blood of any company is money. Unless they suffer a significant financial loss that sticks, they won’t change their behavior. It’s great that by mid-April A-B had lost some $6.5 billion in value since their ill-advised attempt to break from their “fratty, kind of out-of-touch” consumers. But A-B is a beverage juggernaut with a net worth of $130.73 billion.

Fox Corporation, parent company of Fox News, lost $1 billion, or about 5 percent of its stock valuation following its announcement canceling Tucker Carlson’s show. But they, too, are a corporate behemoth, with a net worth of $16.26 billion.

Neither of these corporations are going out of business, but they need to hear from conservatives. Leftists take off the gloves and throw their weight around, demanding that companies toe their woke lines or that they fire any employee that doesn’t. Corporations fear the woke, but they don’t fear conservatives because we tend to be kind, be reserved, mind our own business, and despise hurting anyone or anything.

If Fox News loses its audience in the 8:00, 9:00 and 10:00 PM slots and they don’t come back, that sends a message. If Bud Light loses its consumers and they don’t come back, that sends a message. The message is that “we’re not going to take it.” But if consumers have a fit of pique then return to the beer or the program, that sends a message, too. The message is, “we’re offended, but also we love our beer and whatever replacement bobble head you give us.”

Other corporations will take note and act accordingly.

If you want to know how to participate in the “culture wars”, ABANDON those companies that cater to the Left. Let them know by your ABSENCE that you won’t give them money to ruin your children and our society by promoting men who pretend to be women or that if they have such contempt for you that they’d rather cut the top-rated cable host in all of television than cater to your interests that you’ll go find your news somewhere else.

It has to be done.

Have a good weekend.

May 4, 2023 by Dave Olsson

Daily Broadside | Did Ol’ Joe Sell Us Down the River?

It’s seems like an open secret that Brandon has been on the take for years and there is compelling evidence that he sold access to himself and other influential executives in Washington for millions. Or, as Hunter Biden’s laptop coughed up, “10% for the Big Guy.”

Well, now there’s a possible smoking gun.

NOW – FBI record allegedly reveals then-VP Biden was engaged in a criminal bribery scheme with a foreign national.pic.twitter.com/xRBz800BbX
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) May 3, 2023

“A highly credible whistleblower says the Justice Department and FBI have a form that “describes an alleged criminal scheme involving then-president (sic) Biden and a former (sic) national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions. It’s been alleged that the document includes a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose.”

Daily Broadside | It Isn’t the Government That Will Save Us

I haven’t always been interested in, or paid much attention to, political matters in the U.S. I was born in the tumultuous sixties, grew up in the seventies, and came of age in the 80s during one of the most prosperous and peaceful decades the U.S. has seen while Reagan was president. It wasn’t until Clinton was caught lying about his “sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky” that I started having strong opinions about our government. I remember distinctly feeling like I needed a shower after Clinton left office. Then came the 9/11 attacks and I began paying even closer attention to what our government was doing.

Every four years I found myself hoping that a new “conservative” administration would be the answer to the unravelling that I saw starting to take place across the country. But, with a few exceptions, it was disappointment after disappointment until I realized: there isn’t any “conservative” administration that is going to rescue the American experiment. The Republican party isn’t really “conservative” but Democrat-lite. They’re like the Washington Generals basketball team, the perennial losers who played straight man to the Harlem Globetrotters who played “basketball” with the knowledge they could “do whatever they wanted — pull their pants down, pull off intricate passing displays, dunk it, hit shots worth 4 or 10 or 100 points, whatever” about 60 percent of the time.

All of that to say that over the years I came to realize that putting my hope in the government saving these United States was absolutely the wrong thing to do. Not that politics doesn’t have its place, but government isn’t the solution — government is the problem.

Looking to government as the only solution—as was perhaps appropriate in the pre-industrial era—ignores that today we in the U.S., at least, are two-plus generations into a functional meritocracy, which has largely erased structural impediments to individual advancement (if it has not eradicated all unearned privilege). Moreover, modern government has attained such a scope in the industrialized democracies that not only are substantially all legitimate public goods already being provided, but the government itself is now far more likely to be the cause of, or at least a significant contributor to, any given issue, rather than an instrument for its solution.

Yet the notion persists that government, not the other actors within civil society, should take the lead in addressing these problems. While this is an understandable reflex, it must be unlearned. In considering the challenges within contemporary American society, ask yourself: Are government policies the proximate or ultimate cause of the issue? And do many (if not most) calls to action in response present solutions involving a larger government role?

Yes, yes, and yes.

Consider student loans. The federal government took over the market for student debt and now proposes widespread debt forgiveness of non-economic loans, many of which cannot be serviced. Or consider the war in Ukraine: the U.S. and the West promote nonsensical energy policies as part of a mythical “energy transition,” thereby empowering rogue nations such as Russia that continue to exploit hydrocarbons and wield energy independence as a weapon, necessitating robust Western financial and military aid in defense of Ukraine. Inflation? Having caused prices to explode through an imprudent monetary and fiscal blowout, Washington passes an inaptly named Inflation Reduction Act, which has little to do with reducing inflation but contains unproductive spending. These are just three examples of government’s creating or contributing to a problem and then posing solutions that make it even worse.

Most Americans have the same opinion.

Almost halfway into 2023, Americans continue to identify the government itself as the biggest problem the United States is facing, the latest results of a Gallup survey suggest.

In survey results released Tuesday, the Gallup polling organization found that 18 percent of respondents named “government” as the nation’s most important problem. The “economy in general” category came in second at 14 percent, followed by “high cost of living or inflation” (9 percent), “immigration” (8 percent), “guns or gun control” (7 percent), and “crime or violence” (6 percent).

Gallup notes in its summary that “government” is a category encompassing a range of response options, such as the dissatisfaction with the president himself, Congress, and party politics and gridlock.

So what’s the solution? The solution is to recognize that God is always in charge, not government. “This is especially true in a democratic society, where it is the duty of responsible citizens to examine public servants with a discerning and critical eye. Nevertheless, Christians are responsible to uphold biblical righteousness in a hostile culture while also expressing respect for its leadership.”

This is underscored in 1 Peter 2:13-17.

Submit to every human authority because of the Lord, whether to the Emperor as the supreme authority or to governors as those sent out by him to punish those who do what is evil and to praise those who do what is good. For it is God’s will that you silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good. As God’s slaves, live as free people, but don’t use your freedom as a way to conceal evil. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the Emperor.

The truth is that our country may never recover its former self. But faith in Jesus doesn’t depend on the condition of the nation, but the condition of the heart. Put your trust in God for the future, no matter what happens to the country.

May 2, 2023 by Dave Olsson

Daily Broadside | The Destiny of Tucker Carlson Is Still Up In The Air

Tucker Carlson’s fate is still a hot topic of conversation and speculation one week after his eponymous show was unceremoniously axed from Fox News. More and more speculation about why his show was terminated is swirling, too.

On December 13, 2018, Tucker Carlson did a segment on the effects of massive, uncontrolled, and often illegal immigration from poor countries. Tucker showed videos of caravans of illegal immigrants coming to our borders, and of the piles of garbage they left behind. Tucker explained how this was hurting America in many ways. He criticized political leaders of both parties and business elites for ignoring the problem.

Tucker agreed that most of the immigrants themselves were “nice people”. However, he concluded:

“But as an economic matter this is insane. It’s indefensible, so no one even tries to defend it. Instead, our leaders demand that you shut up and accept this. We have a moral obligation to admit the world’s poor, they tell us, even if it makes our country poorer and dirtier and more divided.”

Everything Tucker Carlson said was true, undisputed, and reasonable. It had all been said many times by many political leaders and economic experts. In 2016, candidate Donald Trump won widespread, mainstream support by promising to fix these problems. Trump promised a border wall and strict enforcement of immigration laws. Tucker Carlson was correct to remind his viewers of how the leaders of both parties were ignoring this critical issue.

However, the Left used Tucker’s December 13, 2018 program to begin an orchestrated campaign to eliminate Tucker Carlson’s program, and possibly the entire Fox News network, from cable television. [snip]

Within days, at least 26 mainstream corporate sponsors publicly announced that they would no longer sponsor the Tucker Carlson program.

The argument is that without first-tier corporate sponsorship, a primetime slot couldn’t be indefinitely sustained, and Carlson was doomed. If that’s true, then the Leftists got another scalp, even though it took them a while.

On the other hand, I have a hard time believing that it was just a money issue. You can’t tell me that a behemoth like Fox News Corp couldn’t sustain their top rated program? There were other ways to make up the budget, I’m sure. They could cut loose any number of other personalities like, say, Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham.

Surprisingly, Carlson is still employed by Fox News, according to Carlson himself.

Fox’s firing of the most-watched host on cable news, Tucker Carlson, is still roiling Leftists and patriots alike, but now Carlson himself has said that it didn’t actually happen at all. In a text message to the news analysis site 19FortyFive, Carlson said flatly: “I’m still employed by Fox.” This doesn’t mean, however, that all is forgiven and that his show will be back on the air Monday. On the contrary, it could hinder Carlson’s plans to take his truth-telling elsewhere. [snip]

… Fox could conceivably muzzle Carlson and prevent him from being able to go anywhere else. The network could simply pay him to do nothing.

That would depend, however, on Fox having any funds to pay him with, and if it continues to lose viewers at the rate it’s been losing them since it deep-sixed Carlson’s show, it might find it more profitable to release him from his contract rather than silence him, whether out of spite or out of a desire to please the Leftist establishment.

In spite of that, TMZ is reporting that Newsmax has made overtures to Carlson, and not just with money.

Sources with direct knowledge tell TMZ … the news channel is doing everything it can to sweeten the deal for Tucker to come on board — including floating the idea of letting him program the whole channel, not just his own show.

That would be a pretty enticing deal point … in addition to having his own primetime show, Tucker would have a say over what shows lead into and out of his show, which can be key in achieving bigger TV ratings.

While our sources stress Newsmax hasn’t formally offered Tucker a job — he can’t have formal discussions due to his current Fox News contract — we’re told the network execs have made it clear to people around him, they would basically give him a big say in rebranding their channel.

I don’t know how much credibility to give what is essentially a gossip site, but if they say, “sources with direct knowledge …” it is probably credible. Newsmax’s ratings have risen since Carlson was shown the door over at Fox.

For example, the week before Carlson’s ouster, Eric Bolling’s 8 p.m. show on Newsmax drew 146,000 viewers while going head-to-head with Carlson. Last week, Bolling had 531,000 viewers and upped that on Tuesday to 562,000, putting his show at what the Times said was 80 percent of Anderson Cooper’s CNN audience that night.

With all of this still very much in play, I was impressed by Doug Wilson’s commentary as he listens to Carlson’s speech to the Heritage Foundation. Wilson suggests we all pray for Tucker Carlson. If you have the time, I highly recommend that you listen to the whole thing.

May 1, 2023 by Dave Olsson - 2 Comments

Daily Broadside | We Know What Time It Is

Happy May 1. Hard to believe we’re already 1/3 of the way through 2023. Of course, changing the months does nothing to cure the abysmal state of our union, other than bring us closer to voting the current abomination of an administration out of office in 2024.

WASHINGTON (AP) — [So-called “President”] Joe Biden on Tuesday formally announced that he is running for reelection in 2024, asking voters to give him more time to “finish this job” and extend the run of America’s oldest president for another four years.

Biden, who would be 86 at the end of a second term, is betting his first-term legislative achievements and more than 50 years of experience in Washington will count for more than concerns over his age. He faces a smooth path to winning his party’s nomination, with no serious Democratic challengers. But he’s still set for a hard-fought struggle to retain the presidency in a bitterly divided nation.

[…]

“We — you and I — together we’re turning things around and we’re doing it in a big way,” Biden said. “It’s time to finish the job. Finish the job.”

He’s turning things around in a big way to the 1970s.

Do Americans really want to give Brandon another four years to “finish the job” he’s doing? To give him four more years to finish the job he’s had “more than 50 years of experience in Washington” to finish?

The soulless moron LARPing as president “finishing the job” means to thoroughly wreck our already shambolic presence on the world stage while forcing us all to bow to the cult of climate change by doing away with gas stoves, gas cars and gas lawn mower and airplanes. He’ll accelerate the dilution of our unique American culture (which is already irreparably damaged) by leaving the southern border open to a foreign invasion of peasants from third-world countries. He’ll keep pushing trans-mania and the grooming of children in our schools, which are little more than Marxist indoctrination camps. China and Russia and Iran will rise to eclipse American dominance as forces of global instability. The surveillance state will continue being built while the Normals (men and women who believe in the nuclear family, God, personal responsibility, merit and other Judeo-Christian values — especially those who are white) are constantly demonized as “domestic terrorists” and the gravest threat to our democracy (*spit*) since the Civil War.

“If voters let Biden ‘finish the job,’ inflation will continue to skyrocket, crime rates will rise, more fentanyl will cross our open borders, children will continue to be left behind, and American families will be worse off,” Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel said in a statement.

It’s a boilerplate statement saying not much — and it’s Ronna McDaniel — but it’s accurate.

Neither of the current front runners say they’re going to debate as incumbents. Trump has already said he won’t.

“I’m leading by 40 points. A lot of people say, ‘Why would you do a debate when you have people at two and three and fifteen and fourteen [percent]?’” Trump told John Catsimatidis, host of the “Cats & Cosby Show” on WABC 770.

“People don’t debate when they have these massive leads. They say, ‘Why would we debate?’ I would have a hostile group of anchors — a hostile network — asking questions. Why would I do that?” the 76-year-old former president said.

The DNC has declared that it will hold no primary debates, which would protect Brandon from having to face Robert Kennedy Jr. or Marianne Williamson, the other two Democrats who have declared themselves as candidates for president.

Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson and others criticized a lack of Democratic primary debates as “undemocratic” and “unfortunate” as President Biden is preparing to announce his re-election bid.

“The DNC ‘plans no primary debates.’ As though there simply ARE no other candidates … no other ideas we should discuss about ways to win in 2024, or other ideas we should discuss about ways to repair the country. Too many people are too smart to accept this,” Williamson said.

Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator and co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, said the DNC’s decision was “undemocratic” and that it “robs voters of choice.”

I don’t think a majority of Americans want what Brandon offers, but (some) polls put him in a dead heat with Trump.

Frankly, I won’t be getting my hopes up. Since the farce that was the 2020 election when Brandon “won” with the greatest number of votes in American election history — 81 million “votes” — and Trump’s 74.2 MILLION VOTES set the record for the most votes ever received by a sitting president … we can’t trust our system of elections.

Brandon can sit in the White House basement and he’ll beat anyone the Republicans put up against him because the entire institutional apparatus is rigged against a fair election. Maybe they’d let a RINO like Nikki Haley or Mike Pence “win” to douse the fires of doubt, but they’ll do whatever they need to to keep mavericks like Trump or DeSantis out of office.

That doesn’t mean I won’t vote, but I know what time it is. And so do you.