Daily Broadside | Islamic Jihad Is Still A Thing and We Should Pay Attention

A story that dropped off the radar several years ago is back in the news.

NEW YORK — An Islamic extremist was given 10 life sentences and another 260 years in prison on Wednesday for killing eight people with a truck on a bike path in Manhattan and severely injuring 18 others.

“The conduct in this case is among the worst if not the worst I’ve ever seen,” said U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick. He cited the unrepentant nature of Sayfullo Saipov, who, given a chance to speak, said the tears of victims and family members in the courtroom were small compared to the blood and tears that those in the Islamic faith have suffered.

Saipov’s sentence came after a jury in March rejected the death penalty for the Uzbekistan citizen and onetime New Jersey resident, leaving him with a mandatory life prison sentence for his Oct. 31, 2017 slaughter of tourists and New Yorkers.

Other countries are definitely sending us their best! “A former long-haul truck driver, Saipov moved legally to the U.S. from Uzbekistan in 2010 and lived in Ohio and Florida before joining his family in Paterson, New Jersey.”

Saipov’s first name, “Sayfullo” means “sword of Allah.” But don’t you dare notice that, you Islamophobe!

The jury couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict on the death penalty, so the prosecutors argued for the strongest possible sentence, which the judge accomodated. We the People will now support this mass murderer for the rest of his life while he spreads the Islamic faith to his fellow prisoners. Fortunately, he’ll be incarcerated in Colorado’s Supermax facility, the most secure federal prison in the U.S., so he won’t be able to do (much) more damage to our society.

I’ve warned for a long time (at least a decade) that Islamic extremism is a very real threat to our country. There have been several jihadi attacks within the United States since 9/11, our politicians have imported tens of thousands of Muslims, and our FBI, DOJ and local law enforcement refuse to acknowledge the threat that Islamic extremists pose to our society.

It is true that there have been relatively few jihadist attacks in recent years and, in fact, the number of general terror attacks in the U.S. have decreased significantly since 1970 with a slight uptick in the last couple of years.

However, there have been enough that we should be paying attention, especially with regard to Islamist terrorism. Note that not all the killings I list below are mass murders. Some of them are “honor killings” that have shown up in America in the last fifteen years.

January 1, 2008: Yaser Said murders his two daughters, 18-year-old Amina Said and 17-year-old Sarah Said. He shot them to death because, as Muslims, they brought disgrace on his family because of their western lifestyle that included dating non-Muslim boys. The murders are considered an honor killing.

July 6, 2008: Pakistani-born Chaudhry Rashid admitted to strangling his daughter, Sandeela Kanwal, because she “disgraced his family by seeking a divorce from an arranged marriage to her cousin.” The murder is seen as an “honor killing.”

February 12, 2009: Pakistani-American Muzzammil Hassan brutally stabbed and beheaded his wife, Aasiya Hassan, in Buffalo, NY. because six days earlier she had filed for divorce. In a bit of irony, Mr. Hassan “founded Bridge TV in 2004. The American-Islamic station was designed to combat the negative stereotype of Muslims post-9/11. His wife was its general manager.” The murder is considered an honor killing.

November 2, 2009: Faleh Almaleki runs down his daughter, Noor Almaleki, as she walked across a suburban parking lot to a Mexican restaurant with a friend. “Local police characterized the incident as an attempted ‘honor killing’ — the murder of a woman for behaving in a way that ‘shames’ her family.” The Almalekis immigrated in the mid-1990s from Basra, Iraq to Phoenix, Arizona. The murder is seen as an honor killing.

November 5, 2009: Maj. Nidal Hasan killed 13 members of the military at Fort Hood. “Attorneys for the victims … said that the alleged shooter’s admission this week that he gunned down his countrymen to defend the Taliban proves that the assault was a terrorist attack and not, as the government has implied, ‘workplace violence.'”

December 25, 2009: The “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab—who was trained and directed by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula—smuggled a bomb aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam. The device failed to go off, “but AbdulMutallab became enveloped in a fireball that spread to the wall and carpeting of the plane.” He later admitted that “‘I carried with me an explosive device to avenge the killing of innocent Muslims,’ adding that the failed plot was in retaliation for ‘U.S. tyranny and oppression of Muslims.'”

April 14, 2010: Tawana Thompson Larry is killed, along with three others, by her husband. “The suspected gunman told police Allah had told him to kill family members. The man’s sister told reporters at a vigil outside the home that her brother had recently been reading passages from an Islamic text that led him to believe he should kill someone.”

May 1, 2010: Faisal Shahzad managed to place a car bomb in Times Square undetected after training with the Pakistani Taliban. The device did not detonate properly. When he was sentenced to life in federal prison without parole, he said he would “sacrifice a thousand lives for Allah.” Reminded by the judge that he’d sworn an oath of allegiance to the US when he became a citizen, Shahzad replied, “I did swear but I did not mean it.”

April 15, 2013: Two brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who had been in the U.S. for about a decade, targeted the Boston marathon with pressure cooker bombs, killing three and injuring more than 260 people. In one report, “a picture has emerged of the older one as someone embittered toward the U.S., increasingly vehement in his Muslim faith and influential over his younger brother.”

September 25, 2014: Alton Nolen “inflicted a brutal, ISIS-style punishment on colleagues he tried to convert to Islam — cutting one woman’s head off with a 10-inch fillet knife. Jurors also convicted Nolen of assault and battery with a deadly weapon for attempting to behead a second co-worker at the Vaughan Foods plant in Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City. Nolen’s attorneys say he’s mentally ill and believed he was doing the right thing because of his delusional misinterpretations of the Quran.”

December 2, 2015: Tashfeen Malik and her husband, Syed Farook, massacred 14 people at an office Christmas party in San Bernardino, California. “Farook was born to Pakistani parents in Chicago on June 14, 1987, but the family moved to Southern California when he was a child, and he attended La Sierra High School in Riverside, where he joined a campus club for Muslims.” This report says Farook and Malik “were clad in tactical gear and armed with handguns and two assault rifles purchased by his childhood friend, Marquez. The couple sprayed the room with as many as 75 rounds before fleeing.”

June 12, 2016: Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53 more in a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. He called 911 during the attack to pledge allegiance to ISIS and mentioned the Boston Marathon bombers, according to a U.S. official. Mateen’s parents came from Afghanistan; Mateen was born in New York City.

October 31, 2017: Sayfullo Saipov runs down pedestrians on a New York City bike path using a rented Home Depot truck, killing eight. Prosecutors said he had two cell phones with 90 videos of propaganda about the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and 3,800 images related to the terrorist group.

December 6, 2019: Mohammed Alshamrani, a 21-year-old second lieutenant in the Royal Saudi Air Force and a student naval flight officer, opened fire in a Pensacola, Florida naval station classroom building, killing three sailors. Alshamrani was killed after two deputies exchanged gunfire with him. The murders are considered an act of terrorism.

March 22, 2021: Ahmad Al-Issa, a Syrian Muslim immigrant from Raqqa, Syria, killed ten Americans by shooting them to death inside a supermarket. He “spent much of his time in America accusing his classmates and everyone around him of being ‘Islamophobes’. He repeatedly got into furious confrontations with the Americans whom he claimed were disrespecting his Islamic religion.” In the latest news about this case, the courts will hear arguments this month about Al-Issa’s mental fitness to stand trial.

April 2, 2021: Noah Green described himself as a “Follower of Farrakhan.” Green hit two police officers with his car and rammed a security barrier, then was shot and killed by law enforcement after he exited the vehicle and drew his knife. “However, the path has been thwarted, as Allah has chosen me for other things,” Green wrote on his Facebook page.

December 31, 2022: Trevor Bickford is charged with federal crimes in connection with his efforts to wage jihad by killing U.S. Government officials and his knife attack on three NYPD officers in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. “I wanted to kill an officer in uniform,” Bickford allegedly told police, according to the criminal complaint. “I saw the officer and waited until he was alone. I said ‘Allahu Akbar.’ I walked up and hit him over the head with a kukri. I charged another officer but dropped the knife and I tried to get the police officer’s gun but couldn’t.”

These are some of the attacks that we know about since 9/11.

Apart from attacks like these, we should also be watching for other signs of Islamic separation from American culture. Democrat congresswoman Rashid Tlaib swore her oath of office on the Koran, as did Ilhan Omar. Tlaib’s mother came from the West Bank, Omar came with her family from Somalia. We should also be watching certain cities, such as Hamtramck and Dearborn, MI, where Muslims make up more than 40 percent of the two cities in the Metro Detroit region. We should also pay attention to Minneapolis, home to 70-80,000 Muslims, which just became the first major city to “allow broadcasts of the Muslim call to prayer at all hours, becoming the first major U.S. city to allow the announcement or ‘adhan’ to be heard over speakers five times a day, year-round.”

Not all Muslims are terrorists, of course; in fact, the vast majority seem to practice their religion in peaceable ways. But we should be wary, especially with the invasion through our southern “border.” Every day that our border stays open, it’s possible more migrants enter from terror states. No one knows who is coming in, but every now and then, an extremist pops off and people die.

Seems to me we would want to prevent that.

Daily Broadside | The Durham Report Tells Us Little We Don’t Know And Doesn’t Punish Anyone for Their Crimes

I mentioned the John Durham report in yesterday’s post and wanted to spend a little more time on it. When former Attorney General William Barr appointed Connecticut’s U.S. Attorney Durham in May 2019 to investigate the origins of the FBI’s Russia! Russia! Russia! investigation, Durham was a veteran federal prosecutor with a good, nonpartisan reputation. Durham’s work turned into a criminal probe, with Barr eventually appointing Durham as Special Counsel on October 19, 2020, to protect his work no matter the outcome of that year’s presidential election.

Most importantly, if Durham at any time believed “it is necessary and appropriate,” he was authorized to prosecute federal crimes arising from his investigation. That’s what most conservatives hung their hats on — that Hillary Clinton and Christopher Wray and any other actors in the hoax would be punished. But, as you know, the Deep State and the Uniparty are all smoke and mirrors when it comes to actually holding someone accountable, even if it’s a conspiracy to take down a duly elected president.

Special counsel John Durham’s highly awaited report was released on Monday, in which he harshly criticized the FBI for its handling of an investigation into former President Donald Trump and noted that former CIA Director John Brennan briefed former President Barack Obama and other top national security officials regarding intelligence about a plan to “stir up a scandal” targeting Trump and Russia.

The 300-page report, which faulted the FBI for opening its probe into allegations that Trump colluded with Russia, at one point cited handwritten notes from Brennan, who had briefed Obama about the “alleged approval” by then-candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign in July 2016 of a proposal to “vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.”

Durham specifically made mention of “highly significant intelligence” that the FBI “received from a trusted foreign source pointing to a Clinton campaign plan to vilify Trump by tying him to Vladimir Putin so as to divert attention from her own concerns relating to her use of a private email server.” During the 2016 contest, Trump and Republicans had criticized Clinton, a former secretary of state, for her use of a private server that they said was insecure and should have brought about felony charges against her.

Brennan briefed not only Obama, but also then-Vice President Joe Biden, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI Director James Comey, according to Durham’s report. It suggested that top officials in the Obama administration were aware of the plan to denigrate Trump and paint him as a Russian asset, which the former president has long described as a witch hunt meant to harm him politically.

[…]

In Durham’s report, no charges have been recommended for any of the aforementioned individuals. Durham, a former U.S. attorney in Connecticut, also did not recommend any FBI policy changes.

But he did sharply criticize the bureau for departing from previous norms in how it opened the investigation into Trump, dubbed Crossfire Hurricane. The FBI, the report said, failed to take several necessary steps before that investigation was launched.

Ah, yes … sharp criticism. That’s the ticket! Our government agents are all about issuing strongly worded letters denouncing bad behavior, but nobody ever goes to jail for their crimes. Nobody really loses their job. Of course, Republicans are vowing that NOW they’re going to provide the necessary “oversight” and “accountability” so that “this never happens again”!

“Those responsible need to be held accountable, not just for meddling in the presidential election but also for the damage done to our institutions.” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

“To ensure Americans can maintain faith in our legal system, those responsible for this miscarriage of justice must be held accountable.” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas).

“While I’m glad this report debunks yet another false narrative pushed by the Left and liberal media, the House will conduct vigorous oversight and do everything within its power to ensure this never happens again.” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.).

Isn’t that precious?

I’ll tell you what all that posturing means: nothing. Nothing will change.

At least Vivek Ramaswamy understands what it means.

Ramaswamy responded to the report telling The Epoch Times, “Enough is enough. Root out the corruption & shut down the FBI.”

“This is achievable,” the Republican presidential candidate went on. “At the local level, we have police & prosecutors. At the federal level, we have U.S. marshals & the DOJ. An intermediary bureaucracy is rife with risk for politicized corruption & it’s been happening since J. Edgar Hoover in the 60s.”

I’m all for abolishing the FBI and any number of other three-letter agencies that shield unelected bureaucrats from accountability while regulating every aspect of our lives. The FBI has become a corrupt, partisan, armed agent of the Left.

But the GOP and GOPe don’t have the spine to do it. That’s why we’ll only hear strongly worded denouncements.

Jeff Carlson’s op-ed speaks for me:

But it’s what Durham doesn’t cover that’s far and away most notable. Durham doesn’t appear to even touch on notable high-level events such as the White House meeting on Jan. 5, 2017, that included then-President Barack Obama–a meeting that appears to directly implicate both Obama and now-President Joe Biden in the coming attacks on Trump’s administration.

There’s also no effort to address the NSA’s collection of data and the unmasking of members within the Trump campaign that were highlighted by then-Rep. Devin Nunes in early 2017. While we know that some of the actions taken by the FBI and other three-letter agencies required high-level decision-making, Durham not only fails to address the actions of these high-level individuals, he didn’t even identify them.

Durham didn’t even address the supposed hack of the Democratic National Committee servers. This lack of information is made all the more frustrating by the fact that Durham’s team conducted “more than 480 interviews” and reviewed “more than six million pages of documents.” It seems clear that a big part of the story remains untold.

There’s also a generalized absence of information on anything post-January 2017. We didn’t find anything material on the Intelligence Community Assessment, which was used to push the narrative that President Trump had been compromised by Russia. We also didn’t find anything regarding the Obama administration’s targeting of Trump’s national security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn.

Nor did Durham address the FBI’s leadership briefing of the Justice Department (DOJ) and Congress in March 2017, in which James Comey misrepresented not only the entirety of the FBI’s investigation but also failed to disclose Danchenko’s information and his complete lack of suitability as a confidential human source—which invalidated the entirety of the Steele dossier.

Importantly, there’s a complete failure on the part of Durham to provide any measure of accountability. There are virtually no criminal referrals contained in Durham’s report nor are there any material recommendations for criminal investigations into these individuals.

Once again, there’s no accountability for those who are truly guilty—and those who are truly privileged.

There’s no accountability because the entire system is built to protect the guilty. Hunter Biden, anyone? Hillary Clinton? James Comey? Barack Hussein Obama? Brandon? They are all clearly guilty, but none of them will ever truly face any justice.

As a Christian I feel frustrated when I see evil and powerful men and women getting away with their wickedness. But I return to the Psalms where I learn what I am to do:

Be still before the Lord
    and wait patiently for him;
do not fret when men succeed in their ways,
    when they carry out their wicked schemes.
(Psalm 37:7)

Some time ago I wrote the word “Democrats” in the margin next to that verse in my Bible.

We can know for sure that the evil will get what is coming to them, but it it tough to be patient while watching the wicked prosper.

Daily Broadside | Trump May Have Historical Precedent Going For Him, But 2020 Is Historical Precedent Now, Too

We’re still 17.5 months away from the next presidential election, enough time for the Resident to do more considerable damage to the nation of which he is the titular head. I won’t say that he “leads” the U.S. because as we all know, he doesn’t have that capacity.

Nevertheless, we can begin fretting about how the political fight among Republicans will shape up and start making some observations. Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and conservative radio host Larry Elder have officially declared their candidacies to be the Republican nominee for president.

Of course, the presumptive nominee to beat is president-in-exile Donald J. Trump.

Historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Niall Ferguson, makes a prediction about Trump that has caught the public’s attention

Former President Donald Trump is likely to become the next U.S. president, according to Scottish-American historian Niall Ferguson.

“A second Trump act is not just possible. It’s fast becoming my base case,” Ferguson, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, wrote in a May 13 op-ed for The Spectator.

Ferguson explained that there is a “campaign of lawfare against Trump” but the effort “has already started to backfire.”

“It may seem paradoxical that the Democrats are harassing Trump in the courts if they want to run against him. But it makes sense: the prospect of him performing the perp walk attracts media coverage, and media coverage is the free publicity on which Trump has always thrived,” Ferguson wrote.

Ferguson added, “Every column inch or minute of airtime his legal battles earn him is an inch or a minute less for his Republican rivals for the nomination.”

We already know that the DNC, the media, NeverTrumpers and social media giants like Facebook are all in to prevent Trump from becoming president again, and they’ll abuse the law in service to that end if it keeps him out of office.

I’ve said before that the greatest service Trump did for the country, perhaps apart from appointing conservative Supreme Court justices, was to expose the Deep State and their lawless activities, even if he did it inadvertently. Did you see John Durham’s report yesterday? It proves that the FBI knew the Steele dossier was garbage, but they used it as a pretext to open the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into whether Trump was a Russian stooge. It also proves that Hillary Clinton was in on the scam from the start. Think anyone will go to prison for conducting a psyops campaign during a presidential election, or nah?

Norms status: R E S T O R E D.

If Trump wins the White House again, it will be the same harassment and false charges all over again to hamper any effectiveness he might have.

What about Ron DeSantis?

Ferguson also argued that if it were a two-man race between Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, there would be “a good deal more uncertainty around the outcome,” given that the governor “still looks to be in contention” in head-to-head polling.

“When voters are polled about this crowded field, Trump is the clear frontrunner, leading DeSantis by an average margin of nearly 30 points, 52.1 percent to 22.9,” Ferguson wrote.

Currently, the Florida governor has not indicated when or if he will announce a 2024 White House bid.

I like what I’ve seen of DeSantis, but I also like what I’ve seen of Ramaswamy. As you know if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, I’m very mixed on Trump. Although if he’s the nominee, I’d crawl over broken glass and spilled vinegar to pull the lever for him.

Ferguson places the betting odds on Trump.

As for the primaries, Ferguson notes that Republican candidates that have an early lead in the polls, as Trump does, typically end up the nominee. “Early frontrunners have won Republican primaries in six out of eight competitive races since 1972, when the modern system of primaries was introduced,” he notes. “The two exceptions were John McCain in 2008 and Trump himself in 2016.”

If Donald Trump maintains his current average polling numbers throughout the first half of 2023 but fails to become the Republican Party’s choice for the presidential nomination, he would become the highest-polling candidate ever to be unsuccessful in securing the nomination. So the odds are clearly in his favor.

As for the general election. Democrats assume that Trump can’t beat Biden — and that’s probably the only reason they’re tolerating nominating a vegetable for president — particularly in light of the results of the 2022 midterms. Of course, while Joe Biden likes to take credit for that, the abortion issue was a much more significant factor than Joe Biden.

Ferguson goes on to say that the economy will be a huge factor in the 2024 election and that, historically, “The Republican frontrunner usually wins the nomination, and a post-recession incumbent usually loses the presidential election.”

I don’t know that post-2020 we can count on historical precedent. We now know that the government uses its political power to favor Democrats and that organizations like Facebook pump money into regions where they can harvest ballots on behalf of Democrats. We are becoming like the corrupt third-world countries run by tin pot dictators who hold political power by cheating and rigging and influencing the elections. I used to feel sorry for those people who voted in vain.

Now I just feel sorry for us.

Daily Broadside | The Intolerable Racial Lies of Joe Biden

Happy Monday. A bit of trivia to start: did you know that our planet Saturn has 145 moons? I didn’t. Last I heard it had, oh, I don’t know … six? Apparently Saturn has taken back the title from Jupiter, which also has dozens of moons.

Back here on earth, the intentional, planned destruction of the United States continues apace. The foolish, morally corrupt sock puppet playing “president” continued stirring up racial animosity with comments he made at Howard University over the weekend.

Biden gave the commencement address to the historically black college of Howard University on Saturday and turned on the pander up to “10” in his bid to win over his audience.

Biden discussed racism and said that hatred “never goes away” and only “hides under the rocks.”  “A vivid demonstration when it comes to race in America, hope doesn’t travel alone. It’s shadowed by fear, by violence, and by hate,” he said.

Biden referenced the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in 2017 and likened the scene to “the same ‘antisemitic bile’ that was voiced in the 1930s in Europe during the leadup to the Holocaust along with Nazi banners and members of the Ku Klux Klan,’” according to The Hill.

Biden said white supremacy is the most dangerous terrorist threat to the country. He said the battle against racism is “never really over,” but enough people come together to stand up to choose “love over hate, unity over disunion, progress over retreat” and against the “poison of white supremacy.”

He said the graduates he was speaking to represent the future who are going to be leading the country.

“In our lives and the life of a nation, we know that fear can shadow hope, but it’s also true that hope can defeat fear,” Biden said.

To compare a few hundred neo-Nazis gathering on a college campus to hundreds of thousands of stormtroopers marching through the streets of Berlin in the 1930s was not only idiotic, but it was also nothing more than an effort to pander to the lowest instincts of his audience. Instilling fear in black voters is a national obsession with Democrats. And that includes trying to identify “white supremacy” as the greatest terror threat.

“And I’m not just saying this because I’m at a Black HBCU. I say this wherever I go.” The audience laughed, knowing the only reason Biden made the statement about white supremacy was that he was addressing a black audience.

Actually, the only reason that Brandon scaremongers whites is because that’s what the brain trust pulling his strings told him to say.

Hear that, fellas? That’s the sound of our norms being restored! That’s what Democrats, the media, NeverTrump and all the institutions that gamed the 2020 election told us we needed, and now we’re getting our norms back, good and hard.

Biden is the very definition of a fool, someone who says whatever will score him the cheap political points and the financial grift he needs to keep his grubby hands on power.

He’s pander-ific!

It’s so interesting that he and his cronies are claiming that it’s white supremacists that are the gravest danger to our society, but we never see videos or large-scale demonstrations of this great white threat trotted out as evidence. Instead, the Left point to parents objecting to the indoctrination and grooming of their kids through pierced, blue-haired LGBT+ activists or CRT curriculum teaching them that 2+2=4 is racist and calls them “domestic terrorists.”

Brandon had to reach back five years to Charlottesville to find an example of “white supremacy” in which one person — a white woman — was killed. Really? Show me all the examples you have from the intervening years. Bring me up to date on the most recent incidents of whites stalking and beating blacks.

I’m not saying that whites don’t harass or beat or kill blacks. They have and they do. The worst one in recent memory was the inexcusable cold-blooded murder of Ahmaud Arbery by two white men in 2020. They and a third man were all convicted of murder and several other charges.

But if there’s an epidemic of “white supremacy,” where is it? I can give you a few examples of just the opposite to show you what I’d be looking for. From Ben Bartee at PJ Media:

As evidence of the White Supremacy™ epidemic, Biden referenced the Charlottesville attack from 2017 in which one single person was killed, which was actually a white lady.

In 2017, in Charlottesville, Virgina, crazed Neo-Nazis… came out of the fields literally with torches, carrying Nazi banners from the woods and the fields… something I never thought I would see in America… Emerging from dark rooms and remote fields… Hate never goes away… it never goes away, it only hides under the rocks.

Just replace “Neo-Nazis” with Jews, and this totally could’ve been a Hitler speech.

It evokes imagery of a Zombie apocalypse movie or something. Where were these “fields” and “dark rooms” from which the “Neo-Nazis” emerged?

Biden didn’t specify how many of the “Neo-Nazis” in Charlotte were feds of the Ray Epps variety.

Try as one might, isn’t it weird that it’s literally almost impossible to track down a gang of White Supremacists™ beating up lone black people on the streets of America?

Yet, with just a few minutes on Twitter, one can track down clip after clip of “urban youths” beating the snot out of white and Asian victims.

Here’s a black man who just shot two white men in the back of the head in two different locations.

Here’s a black man cursing out a white couple and their child on a NY subway:

Here’s a black student knocking a white teacher’s aide unconscious:

Here’s a story of a black 15-year-old student sucker-punching a white teacher over a confiscated phone:

Here’s a story about a black female student pepper spraying a white male teacher over her confiscated phone:

Here’s a black man punching a white Macy’s employee for allegedly calling him the “N” word, which Macy’s strenuously denies.

Here’s a black man who killed three men because they were white:

When one thinks of white supremacy as a movement, as a “terrorist threat,” one thinks of organized whites marching in a show of force. Sort of like this:

What if that headline read, “An all-White group is arming itself and demanding change. They are the NFAC”? How would that play to the country? Would the DOJ open an investigation into them?

My point is that there’s plenty of black on white violence to be found with just a cursory look across the Internet but we don’t hear dire warnings of “Black Supremacy” as the the most dangerous terrorist threat to our democracy when it’s pointed out. Why not? I just showed you an organized militia that armed up and showed up during the mostly peaceful riots of 2020.

Here’s why: the cultural Marxists in power are trying — and succeeding — to divide our country on the basis of race. And Joe Biden is at the forefront of the effort. The tension he’s creating is spilling over into the hostilities above. But the only group labeled a threat are whites.

Show me the white supremacist epidemic you see.

We are tearing ourselves apart at the seams. Christians need to understand what’s happening, denounce the race-baiting of our leaders, and lead the way with love for people of all races. It is only in Christ that the divisions fall.

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  (Galatians 3:26-28)

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.

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?

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

“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.”

More from JustTheNews.

House and Senate GOP investigators said Wednesday they have learned the FBI possesses a document alleging a pay-to-play bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden and have subpoenaed it in an explosive new twist in their long running corruption probe of the first family.

Senate Budget Committee ranking member and long-time whistleblower advocate Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said they learned of the document, known as FD-1023, from a whistleblower.

“We believe the FBI possesses an unclassified internal document that includes very serious and detailed allegations implicating the current President of the United States,” Grassley said. “What we don’t know is what, if anything, the FBI has done to verify these claims or investigate further. The FBI’s recent history of botching politically charged investigations demands close congressional oversight.”

“Botching politically charged investigations.” LOL. That makes it sound like they had good intentions but, darn it!, they just weren’t on their A-game that day.

Said Comer: “The information provided by a whistleblower raises concerns that then-Vice President Biden allegedly engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national. The American people need to know if President Biden sold out the United States of America to make money for himself. Senator Grassley and I will seek the truth to ensure accountability for the American people.”

Nobody has actually seen the document. I mean, besides the corrupt members of the FBI and DOJ who created and hid the document along with Biden’s laptop, the motive for the Las Vagas shooting, Epstein’s client list and the Nashville Covenant School shooter’s manifesto.

All we have is a whistleblower allegation that a document exists that allegedly proves Brandon took foreign bribes. You know, I don’t find that too much of a stretch for my imagination. You?

On top of that breaking news, there’s this:

Joe Biden and his deputy chief of staff held a meeting with three business associates of Hunter Biden, one of whom was a foreign national, at the White House during the summer of 2011 when Biden was serving as vice president. This information was obtained through a review of emails and White House visitor logs by Fox News Digital.

During a July 2011 meeting, Hunter was reportedly attempting to negotiate a deal worth billions of dollars with these associates, one of whom was likely a foreign national, with then-Vice President Joe Biden and his deputy chief of staff Alan Hoffman. The individuals present were energy executive David Gamperl and two relatively unknown businessmen named Xi Wang and Andre Lasserre. The meeting was arranged after the trio had previously pitched a lucrative Brazilian bond deal to Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden. Two intermediaries, including Sean Conlon — who would later become the co-host of CNBC’s “The Deed” and the founder of Conlon & Co. — facilitated the meeting with the aim of helping Conlon and Hunter’s Rosemont Seneca investment firm “get more bonds to move.”

Fox News also had this:

Later that morning, Ghawi emailed Conlon an “RSP – Mercantile Oil & Gas Corporation Proposal” and appeared to suggest that a meeting with the vice president or his chief of staff would have to occur “ASAP” in order to access additional bonds worth billions of dollars through their “Andre Lasserre connection.”

“I would like to confirm that I accept this letter of engagement based on 7% fees + 3% fees as a bonus if the first structured instrument (LTN) is executed within 60 days,” Ghawi wrote to Conlon. “This fee should cover all intermediaries’ fee and any additional fee should come out from this one. We have access through Andre Lasserre connection to at least 10 LTN’s but if we do not perform on the said meeting ASAP, we may not be in a position to have those LTN’s at our disposal.”

Later on in the article, it seems that the three businessmen did meet with VP Biden.

A little more than three weeks later on July 27, 2011, Hoffman met with Gamperl, Wang and Lasserre at the Old Executive Office Building (OEOB), according to White House visitor logs. The three business associates were at OEOB for about 30 minutes, arriving shortly before 5 p.m. and leaving shortly before 5:30 p.m., according to the logs, despite Conlon saying they only needed a “5 min introduction.”

Despite emphasizing the importance of the White House meeting in emails, Ghawi said the “discussion that occurred in the White House I was not informed nor I was briefed.” He also said, “No business and no transaction was done with Mr. Hunter Biden, nor the VP Biden” even though the emails talk about “substantial profit” and how a brief meeting with then-Vice President Biden and his top aide could help them move bonds.

About a year later, on July 30, 2012, Conor McKay, then-special assistant to Biden’s chief of staff, appeared to reference the meeting in an email to Hoffman and White House intern Sam Cohen, saying he received a call from Ghawi seeking a follow-up.

“This guy just called back – his name is Nagi Ghawi, and he is the assistant for Mr. Andre Lasserre and a Mr. Wang,” McKay wrote. “You and the VP met with them at the White House last year? He said he has a message for you as a follow up (sic) to that meeting, and would like to talk to you about it.”

Seems pretty clear that Hunter Biden was leveraging access to his father to financially profit for himself and his company. It also appears that these email about meeting with then-Vice President Biden torpedoes Brandon’s oft-repeated declaration that he never knew anything about his son’s business dealings. In other words, he is lying about it.

Hey, NeverTrump, are our norms restored yet? It’s so much better to have a corrupt criminal family running things than to endure MoAR mEAn TwEEtS, isn’t it?

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.