The Founding Fathers Greatest Error. Lifetime Appointments to the Federal Judiciary!

By Rich Kozlovich

How many Founding Fathers were there?  There were 115 Founding Fathers.  Shocked me also.  I ask this because I read the article, by Andrea Widburg, Biden is establishing radical leftist, anti-Constitution control over the federal judiciary, and commented on the need for a 28th Amendment, and listed what should be in it saying:

It's time to fix the one really big error made by the Founding Fathers, lifetime tenure of the federal judiciary. It's time to pass a 28th Amendment creating age and term limits for the federal judiciary, and if possible, all federally elected officials. If we can't have both, at least get age and term limits for the federal judiciary.

There are three levels of the federal judiciary- the District level, the Appeals level and the Supreme Court. Each level should have a ten year limit with a review after five years requiring a majority approval by the Senate. At each level each nominee would have to go through the same process, even if nominated to a higher court before they finish their term in a lower court. If their term runs out and they’re not nominated to a higher court they may be nominated at some point in the future.

No jurist can return to a lower court if their term runs its course at a higher level, and no jurist can ever be appointed to a court if their nomination to any court has ever been rejected by the Senate. No jurist may serve after the age of seventy. And make 9 Justices a Constitutionally fixed number to avoid the kind of court packing Joe Biden and the Democrats are attempting to do.

Pass this 28th Amendment, repeal the 16th and 17th Amendments, and everything else will fall into place.

A reader came back saying:  

It wasn't really an error when average lifespan was less than 40.

Well, depending on the situation, I'm not impressed with average lifespan arguments because average lifespan is misleading.  Well up into the 20th century Child mortality was high. My grandmother had seven children and two died before the age of three from pneumonia.  So while he was right about the "average" lifespan, normally, the lifespan was, and is,  the "Biblical four score and ten", and a lot of people lived that long. However, as I said, his argument intrigued me so I took some time to find out how long the Founding Fathers lived, all 115 of them.

Many of the Founding Fathers lived long lives, however, two died in their thirties, the youngest 30 dying at sea.

• 15 died in their forties. 
• 24 died in their fifties.
• 37 died in the sixties,. 
• 20 died in their seventies.
• 12 died in the eighties.
•  4 died in their nineties,  the oldest being 96. 

Their average life span is rounded off at 64. 

• If you eliminate all those who died in their thirties, forties and fifties, that leaves 74 Founding Fathers with an average life span of 73. 
• If you eliminate those who died in their sixties, that leaves 37 with an average lifespan rounded off at 77.  
• If you eliminate those who died in their seventies, that leaves 16 with a rounded off lifespan of 86. 
  

As I said, his argument intrigued me, however, in none of the arguments presented in the Continental Congress for or against lifetime appointments, was life span ever bought up. The argument was all about unbridled power.  

That was the argument.  That was the issue, and it was fought vigorously, and the arguments used by those who fought against lifetime appointments were absolutely prescient.    It's time to put age and term limits on the federal judiciary. 

 

It Was a Special Military Operation. Now it's a War!

By Rich Kozlovich

Putin never declared war on Ukraine, because it was a Special Military Operation.  Why is that important? 

Okay, to explain that I'm going to cover what I've been reading regarding the Russo/Ukrainian War in this piece, but I'm going to go back in time and lay more foundation, and I think my six rules about understanding geopolitics, which blend naturally, are essential in such a discussion. 

1. My First Rule of Geopolitics: All geopolitics is about geographics, demographics and economics. 
   
2. My Second Rule of Geopolitics:  Everything is about the basics.  
3. My Third Rule of Geopolitics:  History is everything. 
4. My Fourth Rule of Geopolitics:  People are like nations, and will act in their own best interests, unless they don't.  
5. My Fifth Rule of Geopolitics: Nothing is ever as it appears.  Look behind the curtain.
6. My Sixth Rule of Geopolitics:  Everyone lies.    
   

There's been all this talk about Putin using nuclear arms in his war with Ukraine.  Initially I thought that was never going to happen.  Then as the war turned against Putin, I thought maybe he will use them in a small strategic way.  Then, as it got worse, I began to think if Putin's rationalized using them in a small way he might adopt the mentality, "in for a dime in for a dollar", and go all out, although even China and India, which are considered allies of a sort, have warned against such an action.  

One of the things I wrote about 10 years ago or so was Russia's very real and primary problem.  Demographics!  Russia believes it has seven defensive gaps it must maintain, and two of them were around Ukraine.  Ten years ago they only had the manpower to maintain three of them.  At that time it was estimated by 2040 ethnic Russians may well be a minority in their own country, and strange is it sounds, I think Putin loves Russia and wants to save Russia.  But there's the rub.  

There's a reason they call Russia "Mother Russia".  In the United States you've never heard the terms Father America, or Mother America because in America the people are America, and America is the people.  In Russia they don't have that mentality, and most assuredly Putin most certainly doesn't have that mentality now, and Russian rulers never have going back to Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union.  Russia, as a land and a nation is what's sacred, and the people merely have the privilege of occupying that nation, and would be used as they saw fit.  

That's what Putin loves, Russia, not the people of Russia.  We find that kind of thinking to be totally alien to us, and that's why we make so many mistakes in dealing with Russia, and China for that matter, as their leaders have much the same mentality.

“The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic.” Joseph Stalin

After the fall of the Berlin wall, the collapse of the Warsaw pact, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and long before Putin came to power the Russian leadership knew it needed Ukraine to be part of Russia in some form for a number of reasons, but the number one reason was demographics. Russia's demographic  decline is dramatic and with so many fleeing Russia to avoid conscription, it's worse than ever.  They're allegedly planning a new push, which I don't think will happen, and in order to meet their needs they've been using non-Slavic migrants.  But the fact remains their army is demoralized, ill trained, ill equipped, and worse yet, led by an incompetent corrupt military hierarchy. 

Napoleon once noted:

In war, three-quarters turns on personal character and relations; the balance of manpower and materials counts only for the remaining quarter.

If that's true, and considering he fought and won more battles over more diverse terrain than anyone in history, I think we can be assured it is.  That can only mean one thing.  Any future Russian initiatives will be in trouble. 

Ukrainians and Russians are of the same Slavic ethnic stock, and the Russian leadership at the collapse of the Soviet Union, attempted to form a "New Soviet Union" out of the 15 former Soviet Republics, but they didn't desire to have the non-Slavic nations become more powerful in this "New Soviet Union", so they needed Ukraine.  Yeltsin, a typical communist thug,  thought they could intimidate all these Republics into agreeing to this new "looser" tyranny, but they needed a Slavic Ukraine to agree to this new tyranny.  While President George H.W.  Bush tried to persuade Ukraine to accept this new union, they didn't.  All the threats backfired.  

 "Bush delivered his infamous “Chicken Kiev” speech as a result, hoping to prevent Ukraine from pulling out. “Freedom is not the same as independence,” Bush lectured the Ukrainian parliament. “Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism.” The irony of the speech was sharp: a U.S. president was actively trying to prolong the existence of the country that had been, until recently, the United States’ greatest foe."

So, with Ukraine refusing to join Yeltsin's "new and improved" Soviet Union, he realized other republics would do the same, so, what to do?  All of a sudden Moscow and Washington were allies, what in the world would cause such a scenario? 

Ukraine had a massive stock pile of nuclear arms, the third largest stockpile in the world with 1,900 nuclear warheads and 2,500 tactical nuclear arms, large  uranium deposits.  They also had a large technical and production capacity to manufacture such missiles.  In fact every one of the ballistic missiles delivered to Cuba in 1962 were manufactured in the Ukraine.  There were also nuclear arms in Belarus and Kazakhstan, and in short, and according to Secretary of State Jim Baker, that amounted to: 

“A Yugoslavia-type situation with 30,000 nuclear weapons presents an incredible danger to the American people—and they know it and will hold us accountable if we don’t respond.”

The last thing the U.S. wanted was more nuclear armed independent nations and no one controlling the switch, so they supported Ukraine giving up their nuclear arms to Russia, even offering....sort of....some kind of NATO assurances, which the Russians would have never agreed to.  We'll come back to that.

What followed?  Negotiations, lot's of negotiations! 

They argued over denuclearization, Crimea, the Soviet Black Sea fleet, financial compensation, formal recognition of Ukraine’s borders, security guarantees, and eventually what followed was what has been called the Budapest Memorandum, where if Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons they would get "assurances" for their territorial integrity.  No "guarantees", just assurances, and the Russians agreed to that!!!  

That's important to remember. Secretary of State Baker agreed not to expand NATO, but that agreement was with the "Soviet Union", it was an unofficial agreement, and the Soviet Union no longer exists.  "Russia" made "assurances" to honor Ukraine's borders, that agreement was official and that agreement still exists. 

So, after all the bickering and bargaining why did Ukraine agree to this?  They were broke, badly broke. They signed away much to avoid isolation and bankruptcy.  While this agreement, now signed by Bill Clinton, seemed like a triumphant moment as a final end to the cold war, and peace in Europe, the Ukrainian government had no delusions about Russian compliance with any agreement, but this agreement gave them time!!!

Also, Yeltsin made it clear they would never accept Ukraine joining NATO, which shocked Clinton, effectively ending the Partnership for Peace initiative, but efforts to expand NATO went ahead.  

That's important to remember. 

As for the Ukraine government, it went it's merry corrupt way, and the consequences of only having assurances of their border security and independence has now come to fruition, all of which the Russians understood all during those negotiations.  And what exactly did Russia understand?   Ukraine belongs to Russia, and nothing must stand in the way.  That's why he didn't declare war on Ukraine, in his mind and the minds of his myrmidons, Ukraine isn't an independent nation.  It's just a province of Russia, and one with an attitude problem, that makes it a Russian internal issue not requiring any silly declaration of war, hence, a Special Military Operation.  Ukraine disagreed.  And now it's a war.

All this clabber about how Putin had to attack because of NATO expansion, and their need for "much-needed strategic depth" justified this invasion as "an act of premeditated self-defense", is nothing but a load of horsepucky.  Not one of the NATO, or non-NATO countries bordering Russia had any intention of attacking Russia and absolutely didn't have the resources to do so.  Putin knew that. 

This attack was blatant revanchism, plain and simple, and the foundational foreign policy of Russia for centuries, and if Ukraine joined NATO they couldn't risk such an attack as that would trigger a military response from NATO members, preventing their planned revanchist aggression.  Russia understood the war to be against the West from the beginning, not because the west wanted to attack them but to keep nations from joining NATO, which would prevent Russia from invading them as they saw fit.  They were not going to stop until they absorbed all of Ukraine and officially make it a part of Russia.  That's Russia now, just as it was in the past.

So, will Putin resort to nuclear war?  As I said, Putin loves Russia, but cares little for the Russian people.  But he has to know if he resorts to nuclear war, he will have destroyed Ukraine, and he will have failed in his primary objective, that being gaining the Ukraine population.   In the course of this he has seriously undermined his own demographics, as he's probably lost up to 200,000 young Russians, people are fleeing Russia to avoid conscription, and that includes the best and brightest, which is being called a "brain drain", and he cannot possibly rebuild the Ukraine's infrastructure and cities he's destroyed.  He can't even build his own military equipment, as he's having to buy them from other nations, including the Taliban, Iran ,and now China has agreed to sell him military hardware.  And he's broke.  Even if he wins, he loses, and China will be ascendant on his border, which will be interesting to see how that plays out.

Also, Putin must be convinced the west will retaliate with nuclear weapons.  But he lives in a bubble of isolation, hearing only what he wants to hear, and what he wants to hear is what he believes, and anyone who detracts from his "visions" is eliminated.   All the upper military ranks in Russia are nothing but Putin's yes men, flunkies and sycophants.  So, I'm not convinced Putin believes the west will retaliate.   

However, I do believe Putin knows if all these failures continue to mount, he's personally doomed.  If he's overthrown, it won't be a kind overthrow as it was with Khrushchev, who didn't play the monster role Stalin did while in power, which is what I think saved him. 

Putin has been a vile murderous KGB thug, and modern Russian history is replete with coups and the violent elimination of political opponents, and I'm of the opinion there's a Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg cabal within the Russian military.  If he attempts to go nuclear, I think that may well trigger a coup. 

 

Let Me Tell You About Sisyphus, and Our National Debt

By Rich Kozlovich 

In Greek Mythology Sisyphus was the first King of Corinth, and was known for his cleverness, deviousness, and callous disregard for others, but worse yet, he really offended Zeus because he thought he was more clever than Zeus.  Imagine that. Now that's just unforgivable.  

But in no way was that all he did, he was guilty of committing a lot of crimes, so Hades published him in Tartarus by making him push a boulder up a hill, and then cast an enchantment that made it roll down as soon as he got to the top, and this was an eternal punishment.  Hence the term, Sisyphean Task.

Currently our national debt is over 30 trillion dollars, and no matter how much money the federal government takes in, it's never enough to pay all the bills so it keeps borrowing, and borrowing, and borrowing.  

Now, this isn't a new problem, it was decided in the past all this borrowing and debt wasn't a good thing, and in .....watch out now.....here in comes......in 1917 they created something called a national debt limit which would prevent the federal government from borrowing over a certain amount.  If that was installed in 1917, how in the world did the debt get so high?  

Well, I'm sure everyone is shocked to hear they found ways around that limit, and in recent years they resolved this problem with something called the '"Gerhardt Rule," a parliamentary rule that deemed the debt ceiling raised when a budget was passed", which was really convenient.  But it was decided that was a bad thing, and when the Republicans took over and Gingrich became Speaker of the House in 1995 that rule was a done away with.  But just like Hades' enchantment that made the rock keep rolling back down hill, it was resurrected when the Democrats took over. 

It's claimed the debt limit has been raised: 

"at least 90 times in the 20th century and 74 times from March 1962 to May 2011, including 18 times under Ronald Reagan , eight times under Bill Clinton , seven times under George W. Bush , and five times under Barack Obama. In practice, the debt ceiling has never been reduced, even though the public debt itself may have reduced."

Let’s try and get this right. National debt isn’t the problem. It’s the symptom of the very real problem, and that problem is spending. Spending money we don’t have, money we're borrowing. The United States recorded a Government Debt to GDP of 129 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product in 2022, according to initial estimates."

Worse yet, we’re printing money that has no value, which inflames inflation, a cancer that eats away at the very fabric of a stable economy, and destroys society.  Let’s also understand this isn’t a partisan issue, it’s an issue that encompasses both parties and the nation’s leaders.

Mitch McConnell wanted to give Ukraine another 45 billion dollars, Biden gave away $858 billion American taxpayers hard earned money “subsidizing prosperous, populous Europeans, superfluous Middle Eastern monarchs, and cheap-riding Asian defense dependents.” Biden Secretary of State Blinken wants to give Turkey $185 million aid because they had an earthquake.  And they don't even like us.  As Senator John Kennedy (R) Louisiana asks, "Why are we giving money to countries that hate America? They should be able to hate us for free."

"The total interest payments on the government’s debt could come in at nearly $580 billion this fiscal year, up from $399 billion in recently-completed fiscal 2022.” "The Peter G. Peterson Foundation figures that interest payments will run $8.1 trillion over the coming decade. That’s an average of $810 billion a year. By 2032 interest payments will be about $1.2 trillion a year, above expected military outlays."

In 2022 the federal government confiscated over $5.0 trillion dollars, and most would think that should be more than enough to pay for everything, but not in the fantasy world of Washington.  They spent 6.5 trillion, and don't think that's sufficient, in either taxation or spending.  

This has become our ultimate Sisyphean task, only this isn't mythology, its reality, and unlike that mythical characterization, this can't, and won't keep going on eternally. 

No matter how much the federal government takes in there will never be enough.  Making drunken sailors look fiscally responsible they spend wildly, irrationally, acting as if there are no consequences, and there's no need to pay that money back. 

Spending, that's the Sisyphean curse, and it's time the Republican's did something they're not very good at.  Standing firm! This is the time to force the Senate and the President to either make some massive cuts in spending, or shut down the government and be prepared to defend that position, and that position is defensible.

The federal government has assets so massive one has to be astounded, and this was in 2013.

The Institute for Energy Research estimated the worth of the government’s oil and gas technically recoverable resources to the economy to be $128 trillion, about 8 times our national debt.Further, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that state and national coffers could generate almost $150 billion over a 10 year period from royalties, rents, and bonuses if these resources were immediately opened to oil and gas leasing. 

The CBO study estimates are considered to be conservative when compared to historical data and estimates by other analysts and do not consider the earnings from taxes paid by these industries. IER estimated the government’s coal resources in the lower 48 states to be worth $22.5 trillion for a total worth to the economy of fossil fuels on federal lands of $150.5 trillion, over 9 times our national debt.

Most of the coal resources in Alaska are deemed to be federally owned and are estimated to be 60 percent higher than those in the entire lower 48 states but are not included in these estimates. 

If they have the guts they can refuse to increase the debt limit, and they can demand the federal government liquidate some it's 150 trillion in assets.  With that money they could pay back the money they've taken from Social Security to fund social programs, fund Medicare and easily pay off the national debt. Otherwise, the national debt is the Sisyphean boulder that will keep rolling down the hill, eventually crushing all in its path. 

The curse is spending.  The cure is guts!

Truth and Time Are On the Same Side

By Rich Kozlovich 

"What we've got here is a failure to communicate!" That has been, in my opinion, one of the truly great lines ever spoken in all of Hollywood movie history.  Mostly because it's entirely too true.  The truth keeps being thrown out there and people keep refusing to catch it.  Why? 

Because like the two trails story, we find it easier to travel down the well worn paths of our minds rather than cutting new trails that are mentally and emotionally difficult.  As a result, we fail to "look" deeper, farther and wider.  The outcome?  We fail to "see" farther, deeper and wider.  The result?  Insanity.  

A form of insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different outcome.  If you put your hand on an open flame 1000 times, you will get burned 1000 times.  Why would you think doing it the 1001st time would be different?  

We have law and order crumbling all over America, and as Alan West notes in his article,  What is the Law?:

The reason the progressive socialist left has embarked upon this crusade of lawlessness is that they have no regard for individual rights, unless they align with their ideological rights....... grounded in the rantings of Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Saul Alinsky, and other proponents of collectivism....making decisions to release violent criminals back onto our streets.......allowing millions of illegal immigrants to violate our national sovereignty which endangers our lives by way of drug, human, and sex trafficking, not to mention the destruction of private property...........

"The law has been perverted through the influence of two very different causes -- naked greed and misconceived philanthropy...he may live and enjoy, by seizing and appropriating the production of the facilities of his fellow men. This is the origin of plunder. It is easy to conceive that, according to the power of the legislator, it destroys for its own profit, and in different degrees amongst the rest of the community, personal independence by slavery [physical and economic], liberty by oppression, and property by plunder."

We unendingly see the misuse of language and the corruptible influence the left has had on it.  We're told Diversity Improves Performance — So They Say .  But when we replace merit with false parameters for judgement what do we get? Take a look at the Biden Administration, all the way from Biden down to the least of those he's appointed to positions of responsibility, including the courts, and reality tells a different story.  

Finally!  Truth and Time are on the same side.  Imagine that.  I stated from the beginning this "pandemic" was a load of horsepucky.  The numbers were all lies, the predictions were all wrong, and having lived through the Asian flu of 1957, which if they'd tested everyone then as we're doing now, I'm will to bet the numbers would have been massively larger, and no one saw the need to shut down the world.  I said so.  

While I've never had a flu shot, I was always a pro-vaccination guy, and I wasn't opposed to these vaccinations. However, I was opposed to them being mandated.  Then it was shown these weren't vaccines at all, and could only be called vaccines because they changed the decades long definition to accommodate these pharmaceutical companies.  These were unproven and inadequately tested chemicals, and I said so, stating these were gene altering chemical compounds that are not true vaccines, and there was evidence they were having a negative impact on the body.  

There's that Time and Truth thing again, and now it's clear, these compounds are our Thalidomide era, only far worse and far longer lasting.  We will see a serious negative impact on humanity for decades to come.   I was criticized for my position early on by former friends in the scientific community.   And it turned out.... the bug man was right again........imagine that!

So, think about this.  If the bug man could see all this, and from very early on, why didn't all these highly trained and highly educated professionals see it?  Actually some did and spoke out, and suffered for it, financially and some government agencies and state administrations wanted to criminalize their views, and now what are we seeing? Follow the Science: MIT Brainiac Calls for Immediate End to Covid Jabs, and guess what?  It appears Fauci wasn't science after all, but based on Fauci's definition of science, it appears the bug man was!!!  I mean, ya just gotta see the humor in that.  

Two rules.  People will always be people, and nothing is ever as it appears.  Ever!  There's always something behind the curtain.  It may be positive or it may be negative, but we need to look behind the curtain in order to define things properly.  

So, from this point on, the Bug Man is science.  Is everyone okay with that? 

When Tyranny Comes to Call

This could be the case of a generation that determines the direction of the country for many years to come

By David Robb ——Bio and Archives--December 14, 2022

• Brazil seems poised on a knife edge between being a free and democratic nation, and falling to a communist dictatorship.  
• The once free nation of Canada has succumbed to a tyrannical cabal in Ottawa headed by Mr. Trudeau.  
• Farmers in the Netherlands are protesting the theft of their farms to satisfy the Marxist agenda of certain European parliamentarians.  
• Klaus Schwab wants to establish a one-world government, with those he selects in charge.  
• The Communist Party of China controls its people with social credits and lethal punishment for dissent.  Everywhere we look, including within our own borders, there seems to be a plethora of leaders with the idea of totalitarian control. 

Whether it is called Communism or Socialism or Fascism or Marxism, or some other ism, it is all about the control of a populace by a small number of “elite” rulers - with the best of intentions, of course. Whatever name it is called by, the end result is a return to a primitive time of kings and aristocracy and autocratic rule even though we don’t use those terms any more.  The end result is still the same.

Who rules? ............To Read More....

 

Losing Our Culture

December 18, 2022 By Jim Hollingsworth   Losing Our Culture

America was founded by religious Christians who believed the Bible and followed it in their daily lives.  We have gradually reached the point where Christianity has no place in public discourse.

American culture is gradually being destroyed by left-wing socialist ideas and a foreign invasion that is working against everything that we hold dear.

America was founded by folk who were persecuted because of their religion.  They founded the  Plymouth Colony.  The Mayflower left England on September 6 and arrived in America on November 9 — 66 days.

To provide a guide for their government, they wrote The Mayflower Compact, the first legal document in the United States.  The document, signed by 41, left little question as to why they came.

IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia ...

The Declaration of Independence (1776) made it clear that our rights come from God alone............LTo Read More...

My Take - The left has not only infested and corrupted all the secular institutions of western civilization,  they've infiltrated and infected the foundation of western civilization.  The  "Christian" churches. 

• Father Frank Pavone, a Conservative Pro-Life Activist, Dismissed From Priesthood by Woke Vatican
• Catholic Bishop Condemns Vatican Dismissing Pavone: “the Blasphemy Is This Holy Priest Is Canceled”  
• What the 'Respect for Marriage Act' Really Respects Tanya Berlaga Hint: It's not marriage. More
• A Michigan Church Defends its Religious Liberty T.R. Clancy Without any protections for religious liberty, the new interpretation of Michigan’s civil-rights law means faith-based organizations are faced with discrimination charges for everything under the sun. More

Surrendering to the far-left fascists’ war on language is a losing strategy

December 18, 2022 By D. Parker

Everybody has their own special talents and as a collective, the anti-liberty Left has a distinct ability to promulgate big and little lies with language.

Lying leftists — yes, we know that’s both repetitive and redundant — are masters at mendacity and the greatest at gaslighting. Anti-liberty authoritarians of the fascist far-Left tend to be failures at everything in life except being able to lie with the best of them.

But of course, this is a survival skill for them. White-tailed deer can quickly move through the forest. Cuttlefish can blend in with their surroundings, and leftists must lie because no one with a modicum of sanity would support them (other than in the cemeteries) if they knew the true nature of their national socialist agenda.................To Read More...

‘Six ways from Sunday’ – the intelligence community goes to war

By Michael Bertolone  December 17, 2022 

“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”–Sen. Charles Schumer, January 2017

Chuck Schumer said the above quote shortly after President-elect Donald Trump criticized and mocked his “intelligence” briefers for being unprepared and for delaying a scheduled briefing on Russia for several days.

Given the FBI and CIA social media shenanigans that have recently come to light through the Twitter files that new owner Elon Musk has allowed to be released, it appears that Trump’s instincts regarding the “intelligence community” were correct.

Schumer’s statement has also proved to be prophetic, as the intelligence apparatus was clearly used in a sustained assault against both the Trump administration and the Trump reelection campaign effort. An early tell was the text messages between FBI attorney Lisa Page and FBI agent Peter Strzok, with whom she was having an extramarital affair. This exchange between the two sums up, I submit, a prevailing attitude within the Bureau:..................To Read More...

Goodnight, Poor Harvard!

December 16, 2022 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

Yesterday I got two emails from Harvard University, as I presume all other Harvard alumni also did. There’s big news: the Presidential Search Committee has announced who will become the next President of the University. It’s Claudine Gay, currently Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the largest constituent piece of the institution. She will become President on July 1, 2023, when current President Larry Bacow steps down (after only five years). Have I heard of this person before? More on that in a bit.

But first some of the gushing praise from the official University publicity:

Claudine is a remarkable leader who is profoundly devoted to sustaining and enhancing Harvard’s academic excellence, to championing both the value and the values of higher education and research, to expanding opportunity, and to strengthening Harvard as a fount of ideas and a force for good in the world. . . . As her many admirers know, Claudine consults widely; she listens attentively; she thinks rigorously and imaginatively; she invites collaboration and resists complacency; and she acts with conviction and purpose. . . . Claudine’s own scholarship and teaching have focused on aspects of democracy—political participation, voting behavior, public opinion, and the interplay of race, ethnicity, and politics in America.

And that’s barely a tenth of it. I’m sorry I can’t give you a link to the whole thing; but then, I certainly would not recommend wasting your time reading it.

But where have I come across this name before? Somehow I remembered seeing it on Instapundit, and with a quick search there I find this brief post from April 17, 2022. The link goes to a Substack article by a guy named Chris Brunet, formerly of the Daily Caller, who has gone out on his own at Substack under the name Karlstack. Brunet apparently makes a specialty of exposing corruption in academia, and he is all over the case of Ms. Gay. His April 17, 2022 post has the title “The Curious Case of Claudine Gay.”

The subheading is “She is the common thread in the Epstein, Weinstein, Dominguez, Enos, and Fryer scandals.” That’s quite the list! Is there anything to this?

Before getting to the details of some of those, we should take note of what Gay has been mainly known for during her time in the Harvard administrative bureaucracy, and that is “racial justice initiatives.” For example, there is this article from Harvard Magazine, August 20, 2020, with the title “Claudine Gay Announces Racial-Justice Initiatives.” Brief excerpt:

Claudine Gay, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), announced a series of initiatives to address racial and ethnic equality—including faculty appointments and the addition of an associate dean of diversity, inclusion, and belonging.  “This moment offers a profound opportunity for institutional change that should not and cannot be squandered,” Gay wrote in an email to the campus community. “It is up to us to ensure that the pain expressed, problems identified, and solutions suggested set us on a path for long-term change.” On the academic side, Gay announced a reactivation of the “cluster hire” in ethnicity, indigeneity, and migration that originally launched in October 2019—part of FAS’s response to intense student interest in, and pressure for, teaching and learning in ethnic studies.

It goes on and on from there. Various pieces I am reading yesterday and today also indicate that Ms. Gay’s scholarship, such as it is, focuses on the areas of Critical Race Theory and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging. No surprise there.

So let’s now consider the case of Ryan Enos, including the role of Ms. Gay in same. Mr. Enos was a recently-tenured young professor at Harvard when in 2018 an anonymous whistleblower (with identity protected under a federal statute) submitted a complaint to Harvard accusing him of fabricating his data for his most important works. Four years later, in early 2022, the whistleblower report was leaked to Brunet, who broke the story in this March 2022 post with the title “EXCLUSIVE: Leaked Report Shows Harvard Professor Fabricated Data.” Brunet provides this link to the whistleblower report, but when I go there I find that it is behind paywall, and on top of that is supposedly “archived,” such that it will take 24-48 hours to retrieve it. So I will go with Mr. Brunet’s description of the contents.

From Brunet’s description, a main focus of the whistleblower complaint was an Enos paper that appeared in 2016 in the American Journal of Political Science, with the title “What the demolition of public housing teaches us about the impact of racial threat on political behavior.” In the paper Enos advanced what he called the “racial threat theory.” From Brunet’s description:

[The ‘racial threat theory’] is closely related to "critical race theory," and attempts to quantify the degree to which white people feel threatened by minorities. To study this, Enos examined the demolition of public housing project in Chicago in the early 2000's and concludes that it resulted in white people voting less conservatively.

But the whistleblower points out several problems with Enos’s analysis, of which this is the main one:

The main problem with his analysis — among several problems — is that  800+ precincts in Chicago are missing from the data, with no justification given. It is possible/probable that Enos deleted this data by hand.  Many of these deleted precincts are in Republican leaning areas, meaning Enos' conclusions about voting patterns would likely not hold if they had they not been deleted.

And there’s a comparable problem of alleged data falsification in another one of Enos’s articles. So the complaint is facially plausible, and not difficult to investigate. What happened to it? From Brunet’s April 2022 piece:

Rather than investigate this claim, Claudine Gay had the Harvard Committee on Professional Conduct write a dismissal letter with the justification that CPC is not the appropriate unit to investigate, so the report is dismissed.

“Not the appropriate unit to investigate”? In an October 21, 2022 post Brunet comes up with two rather damning things. One is a screenshot of the newly-leaked text of the October 26, 2018 letter from Peter Marsden of Harvard’s Standing Committee on Professional Conduct of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (i.e., Marsden was a subordinate of Gay) to the whistleblower. This is the letter that informed the whistleblower of the dismissal of the complaint. The letter states that the SCPC declines to investigate the allegations of Enos’s misconduct on the grounds that they “do not fall within the purview of the Standing Committee on Professional Conduct.” The second item presented by Brunet is a screenshot of the write-up from the Harvard FAS website describing the function of the SCPC as including “hand[ing] allegations of research misconduct involving FAS investigators.”

Finally, Brunet points out that, upon dismissing the whistleblower complaint, the SCPC did not refer the complaint to any other body that may have had appropriate “purview.” The matter was simply dropped. Brunet concludes (in the October 21 post):

The smoking gun has been leaked. Claudine Gay & Ryan Enos are toast.

I guess he didn’t get that one right. As we now know, less than two months later, Claudine Gay has just been named the next President of Harvard. As far as I can determine, Enos continues in his cushy job as tenured professor, without a blemish on his record.

Let us next consider the case of Harvard Professor Roland Fryer. In 2007 Fryer at age 30 became the youngest African American (and second youngest person) to ever get tenure at Harvard. He was a young superstar, and quickly came to run a large research operation. Brown University economics professor Glenn Loury describes Fryer this.way in a March 2022 Substack post:

Roland Fryer is the most gifted economist of his generation. Not the most gifted black economist of his generation, the most gifted economist of his generation. Period. He was tenured at Harvard at the age of 30, he was awarded the American Economics Association’s John Bates Clark Medal, he received a MacArthur “Genius” grant, his publications appeared in some of the most distinguished journals in the field, and his scholarship was regularly covered in the mainstream media.

Unfortunately, some of Fryer’s research started to reach the “wrong” results. Most famously, in 2016 Fryer published a paper titled “An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force.” Here is the main conclusion from the abstract of that paper:

On the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account.

In other words, Fryer’s research was becoming threatening to the racial justice crowd at Harvard, not the least to Claudine Gay.

In 2017 Fryer fired a long-time personal assistant (that is, a secretary rather than a researcher). She then brought allegations of sexual misconduct against Fryer, which consisted of some dozens of statements allegedly made by Fryer over the course of several years, either orally or in text messages, that the complainant found offensive. The allegations went before a Harvard administrative body called the Office for Dispute Resolution, or ODR.

At the end of 2018 ODR issued a 71 page Report on the matter. That ODR Report then became the subject of a long piece in the New York Times on December 14, 2018, and of an equally detailed piece by Stuart Taylor at RealClearInvestigations on January 29, 2019. It is fair to say that the Times piece spins the allegations in a way to be as unfavorable to Fryer as possible, while Taylor is highly critical of the Times and supportive of Fryer.

But whichever take you may have, nothing about these allegations was remotely in the category of, say, a Jeffrey Epstein or a Harvey Weinstein. As Taylor notes, “Fryer . . . has never been accused of making a pass at a subordinate or asking for sex.” Rather, the allegations related to some mild sexual banter or off-color jokes. Read the Taylor piece for much more detail. My favorite of the collection, fairly representative of the whole, is an alleged statement by Fryer that “I learned my negotiating skills trying to get laid in high school.”

Harvard’s ODR dismissed all but six of the allegations against Fryer as either not being credible that they actually occurred, or not offensive. As punishment for the six allegations found credible, ODR recommended that Fryer be required to attend mandatory sensitivity training.

But then ODR’s recommendation went before a committee of Harvard’s highest-ranking administrators for review. Until earlier this year, none of the names of the members of that committee had been made public. But the result of that review was that the punishment for Fryer was changed rather drastically. Instead of some sensitivity training, here’s what he got: two years’ full suspension without pay; his research lab closed; and all his research projects stopped.

In March 2022 film-maker Rob Montz released a documentary about the Fryer affair at Harvard with the title “Harvard Canceled Its Best Black Professor. Why?” Montz’s documentary, which is only 25 minutes long, was posted at Bari Weiss’s Substack and can be viewed here. Most important for current purposes is that Montz was able to identify two members of the committee that changed Fryer’s punishment from some sensitivity training to effective execution. One of them was Claudine Gay. Montz’s comment (quoted by Brunet here):

Roland’s work represents a mortal threat to some of the most powerful black people at Harvard. Consider Claudine Gay, the daughter of an engineer who went from Exeter, to Stanford, to Harvard, She’s a silky-smooth corporate operator… [her] career and reputation were directly threatened by Roland’s work. [She] got to determine Roland’s punishment. Claudine Gay asked the president of the school to revoke Roland’s tenure. The president declined.

Brunet comments:

This documentary revealed that Harvard's own Title IX office dictated a punishment of “workplace sensitivity training” for Fryer, but Gay overruled them and instead set out to destroy Fryer's career. . . . Gay applied differential treatment to Fryer compared to Enos. Fryer was immediately investigated and aggressively sanctioned, while Enos is still not being investigated four years after credible allegations of falsification and fabrication were made known to Harvard officials, with plenty of evidence, including code to verify them.

The picture emerges of Gay as the enforcer-in-chief of wokist orthodoxy at Harvard. I guess that’s the main qualification for the presidency today.

Oh, and did I mention Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein? They have their own Harvard-related scandals, and Claudine Gay is in the middle of both of them as well. Brunet treats both in this April 2022 post. Epstein, you may recall, was a large donor to Harvard, and in return got himself an office and a telephone at the university. That occurred on the watch of Gay’s predecessor as Dean of FAS, one Michael Smith. Gay’s role was to whitewash the whole thing. Brunet comments:

Claudine Gay allowed Michael Smith to get away scot-free in the Harvard-Epstein ties investigation — she came in and nicely whitewashed it all away. Claudine Gay has Epstein coverup stink on her, and Michael Smith has major Epstein stink on him.

In the Weinstein matter, a Harvard Law professor named Ronald Sullivan for some time served on Weinstein’s defense team. That is, until students complained, and Gay weighed in. (Note that Sullivan, a law professor, was not under Gay’s purview as Dean of FAS.). The Harvard Crimson headline in February 2019 was “FAS Dean Claudine Gay Calls Sullivan’s Response To Student Concerns ‘Insufficient.’”

By the way, Sullivan has also represented Fryer in his ordeal with Harvard. And he is also black. At Claudine Gay’s Harvard, there are the right kind of blacks, and the wrong kind. The wrong kind will be taught to know their place.

The head of the search committee that has made this disastrous decision is one Penny Pritzker. You may recognize her as Obama’s Commerce Secretary, Finance Chair of Obama’s campaigns, and sister of the current Illinois governor. Oh, and also as someone who made a big piece of her fortune selling your confidential personal data without your permission (i.e., TransUnion Credit Bureau).

How Russia's 200th Brigade was 'completely wiped out' (Update)

John Sexton December 16, 2022

The Washington Post published a deep dive on how one particular Russian brigade has fared during the invasion of Ukraine. The 200th brigade was considered one of Russia’s best. It’s home was the Russian Kola Peninsula in the far north where Russian submarines and nuclear missiles are stored. At the start of the war the 200th was made up of around 1,400 men. By summer it had been reduced to about half of that number and today there’s basically nothing left, at least not as an effective fighting force.

The decline of the 200th started in January when they were put on trains for a 1200 mile journey south to the border with Ukraine where they were told they’d be taking part in drills.

The troops, like others in the invading force, were led to believe they were deploying to take part in drills, according to Ukrainian officials citing accounts of captured 200th soldiers. Only at 3 a.m. on Feb. 24 were they told, “There will be shooting,” an official said.

A convoy of about 100 brigade vehicles began streaming across the border that morning. Photos taken by civilians show one of the unit’s tanks being used to set up a roadblock on the northern outskirts of Kharkiv — an attempt to impose order that soon proved futile...............To Read More..