My wife filled up her gas tank this morning and took this picture:
I filled up this afternoon and took this one:
So we spent $248.71 on gasoline today. We are fortunate: we can still afford to eat dinner, and we aren’t canceling our trip to New Hampshire next week for my college reunion. Most Americans are not so lucky. And most Americans also understand that the Democratic Party is doing this to us on purpose, to advance its perverted political agenda.
Are the Democrats deliberately trying to destroy the middle class, or is the middle class merely collateral damage? I started out believing the latter, but I increasingly wonder whether doing away with the middle class is the Democrats’ long-term objective. That hypothesis certainly explains most of what they do.
Either way, I think the November blowout will be worse for the Democrats than anyone is now predicting.
In his first network interview in 118 days, President Joe Biden pledged on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Wednesday night to jail political opponents connected in any way to the events on Jan. 6, 2021. The next morning, Biden’s FBI arrested lead Michigan GOP gubernatorial candidate Ryan Kelley, who was at the Capitol on the day Democrats have christened as a somber national holiday.
Kelley was arrested Thursday morning on “unspecified” charges, according to The Detroit News, after federal law enforcement raided his home near Grand Rapids.
The conspicuous timing of the arrest, just hours before the Select Committee on Jan. 6 launches its prime-time summer show trials, raises questions about to what extent the FBI is colluding with Congress as lawmakers conduct a political witch hunt in the lower chamber. The FBI already blocked Republican requests for the same material that was presented to Democrats on the committee, and last week, former Trump Trade Adviser Peter Navarro was arrested by agents days before Thursday’s hearing. He was the first to be indicted on charges related to the panel’s work.
Kelley, a prominent real estate agent, led the crowded GOP gubernatorial primary in Michigan, with 19 percent in the latest major poll conducted May 26-27 by the Target Insyght and Michigan Information and Research Service.
The opportune timing of his arrest is reminiscent of the fall of 2020, when one month before the presidential election, FBI agents uncovered a supposed kidnapping plot aimed at incumbent Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, to generate anti-Trump headlines of extremism. In April, a jury refused to convict four men trapped in the conspiracy as evidence mounted that the FBI spearheaded the operation as a means of entrapment.
“More than a dozen FBI undercover agents and informants were involved in the kidnapping caper,” reported Julie Kelly, a senior writer at American Greatness, in documenting FBI misconduct.
In September, The New York Times published a report confirming the presence of an FBI informant at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Newsweek then revealed in January that the Department of Justice deployed “national” forces from the FBI at Quantico to the Capitol building with “shoot-to-kill authority.”
Jill Sanborn, the executive assistant director for the FBI’s National Security Branch, refused to answer senators’ questions about the scope of agency involvement at the Capitol during a January hearing on domestic terrorism.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.
Inflation is the number one issue in America today, and the price of gasoline is the most important and most visible sign of the Biden administration’s failure. That’s bad enough, but many Americans are catching on to the fact that liberals are driving the price of energy sky high on purpose.
The Trafalgar Group finds that most Americans think the Biden administration is doing it intentionally:
In this survey, over 56% of independents say the Biden administration is deliberately driving gas prices up.
They are correct. Liberals have been bobbing and weaving on energy prices for a long time. The truth is that they want them higher, but politically that is hard to admit. Lately, though, Democrats have been acknowledging that stratospheric energy prices are part of their planned “transition” to an allegedly green economy. That is much like the transition from driving on pavement to being smashed to smithereens when you drive off a cliff.
It would be bad enough for Democrats if Americans were being devastated by high prices attributable to global economic forces. The fact that the administration is doing it on purpose will lead to white-hot anger when voters go to the polls in November.
Of all the crazy policies we see implemented around us, from decriminalizing theft to teaching children to change their “gender,” perhaps the craziest is government’s determination to force us to drive electric vehicles. EVs like the Tesla are perfectly fine cars, or would be if they weren’t subsidized or mandated. But they are terrible for the environment, and the conditions under which their materials are mined raise serious ethical questions.
Ronald Stein makes excellent points in his column titled “Is it ethical to purchase a lithium battery powered EV?”
The lower image is just one lithium supply mine where entire mountains are eliminated. Each mine usually consists of thirty-five to forty humongous 797 Caterpillar haul trucks along with hundreds of other large equipment. Each 797 uses around half a million gallons of diesel a year. So, with an inventory of just thirty-five the haul trucks alone are using 17.5 million gallons of fuel a year for just one lithium site. *** Today, a typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds. It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminium, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.
It should concern you that all those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just one battery.
Fossil fuels are vastly cleaner, in part because they are so efficient. And electric vehicles, once the mining and attendant environmental degradation are complete, run overwhelmingly on fossil fuels and nuclear power:
We should all know that an electric vehicle battery does not “make” electricity – it only stores electricity produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, and occasionally by intermittent breezes and sunshine. So, to say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid as 80 percent of the electricity generated to charge the batteries is from coal, natural gas, and nuclear.
Since twenty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S is from coal-fired plants, it follows that twenty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered.
Since forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S is from natural gas, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are natural gas-powered.
Since twenty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S is from nuclear, it follows that twenty percent of the EVs on the road are nuclear-powered.
The extraordinary amounts of mining needed to produce electric vehicles are not only environmentally disastrous, they also carry large human costs. The cobalt that is needed for every electric vehicle comes mostly from the Congo and is produced largely by child labor.
And, of course, to the extent that a tiny percentage of the electricity stored in EV batteries comes from solar panels, they are mostly produce by slave labor in China. And, for what it’s worth, Chinese solar panels are produced with coal-fired power plants.
“Green” energy is a catastrophically bad idea. I think many people understand that wind and solar power and electric vehicles are economically ruinous, but when we also take into account environmental degradation and child and slave labor, one can seriously question whether it is immoral to buy an electric car.
He’s looking at you, Jake Sullivan. A former official for the Obama administration is coming forward with a suggestion for Joe Biden. It’s time for Biden to fire his national security team and start from scratch. At the top of his list is Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser.
Brett Bruen, former Director of Global Engagement for the Obama White House, wrote an op-ed published by USA Today. The title says it all – “Biden’s careless comments are hurting his presidency and diplomacy. He needs a reset.” Bruen makes the case that Biden’s “reckless rifts” and foreign policy gaffes undermine America’s standing in the world and hand “propaganda points” to adversaries. He’s not wrong. We’ve seen it over and over again, from the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan all the way to recent statements on defending Taiwan and giving approval to a small incursion into Ukraine by the Mad Man of Moscow.
“I used to cringe when Vice President Joe Biden took to the podium. Despite all the preparation that went into an event and his remarks, as a staffer on the National Security Council, you never quite knew what he might say,” he wrote.
“At times, his offhanded comments could spice up what otherwise would be a pretty boring policy address. Yet, there were other times, too many times, when it could veer into dangerous terrain,” he continued.
“The reckless riffs have continued during his presidency, especially when discussing diplomacy,” he wrote.
We all cringe when we see Biden walk up to a podium. We know what’s coming. The truth is that Joe Biden is not able to make a speech by reading off a teleprompter. He loses his place and then he wings it, which is where the gaffes and reckless rifts come in. Biden thinks if he goes off teleprompter and ad libs during a speech, he’ll be able to make the audience relate to what he is saying. Instead, he sticks with the same stories ad nauseam and eyeballs roll. Grandpa Joe talks about his own mother and father, or he speaks of his now deceased son, Beau, as though Beau’s service in Iraq makes his a Gold Star father. For obvious reasons, he never brings Hunter’s name into a story, nor does he bring up his daughter with Jill, Ashley. Americans don’t want some personal story (likely fabricated) from Joe Biden, they want to know what he is going to do to turn things around. Times are very difficult for most Americans right now and good old Joe is pointing fingers at Republicans and Trump instead of offering his own plans or solutions. Democrats are in charge of both the House and the Senate, as well as the White House. Blaming Republicans for his failures, or the former president who hasn’t been in office for sixteen months is ridiculous. His historically low poll numbers show that no one believes his excuses.
Bruen pointed to the obvious, that Biden is responsible for his own ineptness but some blame should fall on his national security team. How do they keep giving him the opportunity to ad lib and go off on his random tangents without properly briefing him on questions that he may get. That’s assuming that he even takes questions, though, because usually he does not.
Bruen also placed blame on Biden’s national security team, saying, “They are all too aware that he has this troublesome tendency to go off script.” They should better prepare the president for “obvious questions” and also be prepared themselves in advance with responses and “strategies for when the president sails the ship of state into unchartered waters.”
“Sometimes, the president’s experience and overconfidence do not serve him well,” Bruen said. “Decades doing diplomacy have led to Biden developing pretty rigid perceptions and policy positions. He is often stuck in outdated notions of how the world works. Repeatedly, we have watched him stick to his guns, even as events in places like Kabul radically changed.”
Hard to believe I agree with an Obama alum, especially one involved in national security, but here we are. Bruen is right. Biden should start with firing Jake Sullivan. Frankly, I’ve been asking why Sullivan even has a job in the White House, especially after his involvement in the bogus Alfa Bank story was revealed by the Durham investigation. How is it possible that Biden named Sullivan as his national security adviser when Sullivan was deliberately spreading the Alfa Bank story on social media to benefit the Hillary Clinton campaign? Sullivan is now the guy who weighs national security intelligence reports for Biden. This is so corrupt and swampy, it is almost unbelievable. Almost. We’re talking about the Big Guy’s administration here.
After the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, many heads should have rolled, including Sullivan, Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. They had intelligence reports that the Taliban were poised to take the country back once American troops left yet Biden denied any such possibility right up until it predictably happened. Why did Sullivan allow that to happen? Why hasn’t Sullivan done the honorable thing and resigned? No one has been held accountable for the thirteen souls lost during the final day of the Afghanistan evacuation.
He reiterated his call “after the botched pullout of American forces from Afghanistan” to fire Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. “He remains, and so do the process problems,” Bruen added.
“This is an extraordinarily dangerous time for the United States and our allies. It requires a strong and consistent level of diplomatic discipline. I fear that anything less could lead us unnecessarily into a conflict, whether with China, Iran, Russia or North Korea,” he wrote.
“At the very least, from our own hemisphere to the Asia Pacific region, we have unnecessarily undermined our standing and irresponsibly handed propaganda points to our adversaries. Something needs to fundamentally change in how this White House deals with diplomacy,” he continued.
Whatever happened to all those experienced professionals we were told by Biden that he’d be hiring for his White House? What happened to all that foreign policy experience Joe Biden has boasted about for 40 years? It was all a lie. Biden is the ultimate Swamp creature and a legend in his own mind. He spent almost fifty years in office yet has no successes to speak of. He failed at surrounding himself with competent people, choosing to bring back Obama’s people and his own staffers from his time in the Senate and as vice-president.
“They have repeatedly shown an inability to execute and to staff him effectively. We need more experienced leaders who can speak truth to power and implement our foreign policy without so many fumbles,” he concluded.
This isn’t a case of Bruen waiting until things are as bad as they are now to speak up. He also called for a ‘shake-up’ in Biden’s national security team after the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. He called for the firing of Jake Sullivan then, too. Bruen was right then and he’s still right now. Too bad no one is listening at the White House. Joe Biden is dangerously incompetent and too arrogant to see it.
Why I Refuse to Testify Before the Illegitimate January 6 Committee
You know things aren’t right when even people who attempt to cooperate are attacked, and when documents given to the committee are leaked, and in some instances doctored, by the committee.
Some people have asked me why I refuse to testify before the illegitimate January 6 committee. They say, “Ooooh, you must have something to hide or else you would testify.” I say that type of thinking is not only naïve in this age of political warfare, but it is also dangerously un-American.
Every institution of this nation has been weaponized by the Left for the purpose of arrogating power to themselves and destroying their political enemies. They want to ruin everyone they believe is standing in their way of turning America into the leftist paradise of which they dream.
Have we forgotten how the Federal Bureau of Investigation was used to spy on President Trump during his campaign for president in 2016? Testimony at the Michael Sussman trial confirmed that Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent, instigated the Russia collusion hoax.
The media went along with it. The media supported it. And, the media used the fake Russia story to try and derail Trump’s candidacy and then his presidency.
After Trump was elected, Clinton constantly referred to him as illegitimate and the pawn of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Even after the Mueller Report debunked that mad theory, some members of the January 6 committee still believe and propagate the hoax.
Yes, the media and the federal government have been weaponized.
We see it in the disparate treatment of the January 6 rioters and trespassers, and the treatment of the Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters of 2020.
Many January 6 defendants have been denied bail and have been in prison for over a year awaiting trials that seem never to come. Most Antifa and BLM rioters weren’t even arrested. Those who were, got released quickly, and Kamala Harris and other leftist politicians helped raise their bail money.
It’s past time to give the January 6 defendants due process.
Then you must consider the context of the onslaught against American values where kids are arrested or suspended from school simply for messing up someone’s pronouns.
Now we must also consider the attempt to destroy the House of Representatives as an institution.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has repeatedly rammed through changes in the way the House operates to give herself more power, to empower her congressional allies, and to minimize the traditional rights of the minority party.
First, she led the fight to have Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) removed from all of her committee assignments because of social media posts from years before she ever ran for Congress. This was unprecedented but now will likely become the norm for a generation.
She also attacked Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) for an anime meme that allegedly portrayed him as a cartoon hero attacking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.). Democrats voted to censure Gosar, and Pelosi removed him from his committees. No word if Pelosi is going to review all of AOC’s intemperate comments or remove Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from her committees for her anti-Semitic statements.
Then Pelosi rigged the January 6 committee itself. In an unprecedented step, she denied House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) selections for the committee. She appointed the anti-Trump, anti-Republican duo of Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), ensuring only members who supported her desired political outcome would serve on the committee.
The committee has been issuing subpoenas to the public and now, members of Congress, without authority. The committee is required to submit subpoena requests to the ranking member of the committee before subpoenas can be issued. But there is no true ranking member. Pelosi removed the ranking member McCarthy selected to represent the Republican conference.
Liz Cheney, while still officially and unbelievably a member of the Republican conference, was not appointed to the committee with the support of the conference. She was instead chosen by Pelosi to be a lackey for the Left’s desired political outcome. Without a true ranking member, the committee cannot properly issue a subpoena.
The committee also has proven that it is indeed conducting a witch-hunt against political enemies. Pelosi has attacked her putative replacement, McCarthy. She and her lackeys also seem fixated on the House Freedom Caucus, as four of the five members to be subpoenaed in this unprecedented manner, are members. Two are former chairmen of the Freedom Caucus and a third is the current chairman.
You know things aren’t right when even people who attempt to cooperate are attacked, and when documents given to the committee are leaked, and in some instances doctored, by the committee.
For instance, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) took to the floor to misquote and take out of context, a communication between Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows so he could suggest a sinister intent.
Recently, the committee leaked a text message that I sent to Meadows shortly after the 2020 presidential election. That the committee is leaking anything is absolutely indicative of the bias of its members.
Pundits and the press went berserk about my text to Meadows. The headlines and stories were misleading and hyperbolic.
The substance of the text show that state legislatures and governors in states where there was alleged fraud may have had a legal path to the prevent certification of electors.
That was true then. It remains true today.
But, the bedwetting, anti-Trump media types were apoplectic that I would send such a message to Trump’s chief.
Similarly, the committee, which is populated by members of Congress who objected to certification of electors when Trump won in 2016, believe that anyone who objected to 2020 electors somehow attempted to overthrow the government.
The committee believes that if anyone, including myself, met with anyone else to explain why there was an objection, then those who discussed the statutory process were somehow plotting an insurrection. In truth, like Democrats in 2016, Republicans were merely discussing the legal process.
In the meantime, Democrats who wrongfully claimed there were “reconnaissance tours” of the Capitol led by Republicans, go undisciplined for their defamatory and totally debunked statements.
Pelosi won’t release more than 14,000 hours of surveillance video from the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Pelosi won’t be compelled to testify before the committee about her role in the riots of that day.
Americans no longer trust the media, don’t trust the federal government, and certainly don’t trust Congress.
Neither do I.
I have watched the Star Chamber proceedings of the January 6 committee and have reached the conclusion that not only is it illegitimately formed, in violation of the rules of the House, it is manifestly organized for one purpose: a search and destroy mission against any and all perceived political enemies.
Frankly, it would be irrational to submit oneself to maltreatment by enemies of America. They want to bring down this country and are content to destroy every institution, including the House of Representatives, and individuals like me.
MN Prager Discussion Group 
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