Hasn’t Boston Been Crooked and Gangster Ridden Since The 1930s?

Like Paul Revere, a Massachusetts Republican Sends Warning

By Ian MacConnell at American Thinker:

I’ve been a Republican voter in Massachusetts for over forty years.  

I also suffered from another malady – being a lifelong Boston Red Sox fan.  As you can imagine, I was pretty used to ‘my team’ always losing, whether championships or elections. Then, along came the 2000s. The Curse of the Bambino had been broken at last, and I finally began to see the truth behind blue-state politics: That miracles can happen. 

For many years, I believed the conventional wisdom – that there were just a lot of foolish, uninformed Democrat voters up here. 

I watched my state legislature do things that everyone seemed to hate.  I always wished I could put a paper bag over my head when I drove out-of-state, embarrassed by the representatives Massachusetts always sent to Washington.  Examples, you ask?  This clown, this fraud, and this troublemaker, to name but a few.  Space won’t allow for the complete Rogue’s Gallery. Massachusetts is notorious for doing that.

To my amazement, these people never failed to get elected, again and again. I started to notice that this phenomenon was also going on in other blue states. Was it possible that so many voters in those other places were idiots, too? According to Healthline.com, only a very small fraction of people have an IQ below 70, so it couldn’t be that. I realized that something more nefarious has been afoot all along. 

The fact is that progressives have been actively working to take over the Democrat party – city by city, and state by state – for years.  Even though progressives are never the majority anywhere, they’ve gotten their grubby little mitts on all the levers of power, corrupting voting laws and elections, instituting destructive policies, and securing permanent rule for themselves.  Places like California, New York, Illinois – and sadly, Massachusetts – might be past saving at this point.  No wonder so many are leaving.

Progressives have finally succeeded in taking over the Democrat party at the national level, too.  They’ve shoved aside all the normal, moderate Democrats, like the kind you used to see.  Can you think of a current Democrat politician who doesn’t stick to the progressive narrative, even when it’s obviously ridiculous?  You always see them voting in complete lockstep, with no defections.  Look at the recent Democrat House Speaker votes.  Hakeem Jeffries; 212 – round after round.  It doesn’t matter that Jeffries only has a 35% approval rating with Democrat voters.  Unfortunately, most Democrat voters don’t yet realize what the progressives really are, and what they’ve done to the Democrat party.

How do progressives govern?  During the COVID debacle, we got a good look at progressive blue state governors and then a progressive president in action.  They govern like absolute monarchs, decreeing mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and destructive lockdowns.  They abusively utilize ‘emergency powers’ that have no end date.  They impose unconstitutional executive orders that bypass legislative approval. 

Elon Musk has done the country a great service by releasing the ‘Twitter Files’.  We now know that the FBI, the CIA, and the DOJ (among other agencies) have been corrupted by installing progressive leadership.  These agencies are now weaponized against conservatives.  They are now used to defend progressives and their policies.  They have co-opted all mainstream news media and big tech, preventing accurate information from getting to the people.  They’ve worked to silence conservative voices, suppressing all opposition.  Even the White House is in on it. 

What’s on the agenda?  Progressive Democrats plan to federalize elections, violating the Constitutional requirement that state legislatures control elections. They want to pack the Supreme Court to bend it to their will.  They plan to add D.C. and Puerto Rico as new states, thus giving themselves more Democrat senators and representatives, as well as additional electoral votes.  Ultimately, they plan to abolish the Electoral College altogether in favor of a national popular vote.  They want immediate amnesty for all illegal aliens.  Progressive presidents have also installed corrupt federal judges to block any attempt by conservatives to ‘right the ship.’  What destructive, evil, self-serving people these are!  They are heedless of the damage they are causing to the country.

What are progressives trying to accomplish?  They are trying to steal the country from We the People.  As you see, they plan to nullify your state’s electoral power. They plan to effectively disenfranchise your voters.  They plan to seize all your voting procedures and corrupt them, while cutting off every legal avenue you might have to thwart their plans.  Georgia and Pennsylvania were once reliably red states.  Now you can smell the stench of the 2022 Arizona election all the way up here in Massachusetts. 

Having a largely Republican electorate will not protect red states, any more than it protected those other states.  Maybe you’re used to things in your state working out right most of the time, so it’s hard to imagine that this can happen to you.  You can’t afford to be complacent.  Remember this heart-warming little speech?  Make no mistake, red states, these people are coming for you.

It’s time for red state legislators to go on offense.  They must tighten up their voting laws while they still can.  They must expose the slimy progressives who have wormed their way into their state legislatures and institutions.  Work to kick them to the curb.  Voters are watching, and trust me, they want that, and they will reward these legislators. 

I love Ron DeSantis, but he didn’t single-handedly cause progressives to lose in Florida in 2022.  The media pushes that idea, hoping we’ll dump President Trump for DeSantis.  Florida’s election proved it – ‘If they can’t cheat, they can’t win.’ 

Florida made a national laughingstock of itself during the 2000 presidential election.  It was a three-ring circus, complete with ‘hanging chads’.  Since 2000, successive conservative governors and representatives in Florida, including Ron DeSantis, have worked to repair all the loopholes that enabled that embarrassing debacle.

Cheating in Florida was prevented through ironclad voter I.D. laws, tight absentee ballot rules, and keeping accurately maintained voter rolls.  Florida enacted prohibitions against mail-in ballots and ballot-harvesting.  These steps are essential to protect every state, too.  In addition, legislators must insist on paper ballots only and set a firm deadline for accepting ballots – no later than 7:00 p.m. on Election Day, no exceptions.  They must commit to finishing the count on election night, and plan to announce the results by 11:00 p.m.  If red-state legislators talk to Florida about their strategies, they’ll be happy to help.  They’re on our side.

It really is ‘all on the line’ for red states now.  In Massachusetts, our pieces got taken off the board before we even knew the game had started.  At least the remaining states have some advance warning.  Please, from the state of Paul Revere, don’t let the progressives slither in and take over red states, too.  If they succeed, America, as we all knew it, may be lost forever.  The choices we’ll have left at that point, those of us who yearn to breathe free, will be drastic and are disturbing to contemplate.

“One of the problems with the world’s “elites” is that they are generally pretty stupid……”

 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN CORONAVIRUS, LEFTISM, SCIENCE

“THE SCIENCE” ISN’T SCIENTIFIC

One of the saddest aspects of the Left’s takeover of our institutions is what it has done to the scientific establishment. This is a big topic, but for now let’s stick to the Lancet, which once was one of the world’s most respected medical journals. Now, it is largely a joke, pushing hack politics–race, gender, climate change–instead of seriously advancing medical science.

This degeneration long predates covid. In 2016, I wrote about the Lancet’s editorial denunciation of Donald Trump, which read like a parody. In 2017, I noted an article by Lancet’s editor in chief, who argued that Marxism is the key to public health. And in 2018, I mocked the Lancet’s editorial calling for an end to eating meat. For the climate!

The covid epidemic accelerated a lot of bad trends, including the left-wing takeover of “science.” The epidemic led leftists not only to produce a lot of propaganda in the guise of science, but to prohibit anyone from disagreeing with it. At Substack, professors Norman Fenton and Martin Neil offer an entertaining instance: “The Lancet has become a laughing stock.”

This is their summary. The original contains links and screen shots of the emails, etc.:

In summary:

* On 6 May 2021 The Lancet published a blatantly flawed study of the effectiveness of the Pfizer covid vaccine on the population of Israel, claiming it was 95% effective.

* On 17 May 2021 we submitted a rapid response 250 word letter explaining why the study was flawed.

* After an initial response saying they would ask the authors for a response to our letter we heard nothing until 20 months later.

* On 8 January 2023 we got an email out of the blue from The Lancet Senior Editor Josefine Gibson apologising for never having got back to us about the letter, saying that they had asked the lead author Dr Sharon Alroy-Preis (SA-P) to respond to our letter but, because she did not provide any formal response, they have decided not to publish our letter.

* We tweeted The Lancet’s response and within 24 hours it got over one million impressions. We also published a substack article highlighting the fact we were now aware of additional problems with the paper relating to SA-P’s relationship with Pfizer.

* On 10 January 2023 we got an unsolicited email from Josefine Gibson (which we can only assume was a result of the reputation hit they got from our tweet) saying “Thank you for bringing your letter from May 2021 back to our attention. We are looking into next steps and will get back to you as soon as we can.”

* On 11 January 2023 (at 10:58) we sent an email to The Lancet’s Editor-in-Chief Richard Horton [Ed.: The guy who says Marxism is the formula for good public health policy] directing him to our substack article (which highlighted these new problems relating to SA-P’s relationship with Pfizer) stating that The Lancet was clearly taking a credibility hit surrounding the publication of the Israel-Pfizer study and its response to criticisms of it.

* On 11 January 2023 (at 11:21) we got an email from Josefine Gibson apologising for the ‘sub standard experience’ we had with The Lancet. She said that, after discussing it with Horton, they were now inviting us to publish the original letter or an update to it, suggesting the update ‘reflect more current experience with the vaccine’.

* On 12 January 2023 we submitted our updated letter (of an agreed 350 words).

* On 13 January 2023 we got a response from Josefine Gibson saying they had decided against publishing the letter.

One of the problems with the world’s “elites” is that they are generally pretty stupid.

Minnesota IS A LOVE GEORGE FLOYD STATE. POLICE GO TO JAIL TO RELIEVE THIEVES!

January 14, 2023

What Would MLK Think of the Imprisonment of Thomas Lane?

By Jack Cashill at American Thinker:

The reader cannot be faulted for asking, “Who is Thomas Lane?” For the record, Lane, who is white, is the most anonymous of the four lambs sacrificed to appease the bloodlust of the mobs incited by a video snippet of George Floyd’s last minutes on earth.

On a day like today, it would seem a fitting time to heed the words of another man who was unfairly imprisoned. In his justly famed letter from the Birmingham jail, it was Martin Luther King, Jr. who reminded us, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” In recent memory, I would argue, no man has suffered more flagrant injustice than Lane.

The former Minneapolis police officer was already serving a 2-1/2-year sentence on federal charges for allegedly violating Floyd’s civil rights, when he was sentenced in September to three years on state charges for aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. In their great mercy, Judge Peter Cahill and the prosecutors will allow him to serve that penalty at the same time as his federal sentence.

In watching Sean Hibbeler and Maryam Henein’s powerful new documentary about the death of George Floyd, The Real Timeline, I found myself drawn to Lane’s case even above that of his three colleagues, none of whom belongs in prison.

On just his fourth day on the Minneapolis PD, Lane and his partner Alexander Kueng responded to a call about a counterfeit bill being passed at a shady Minneapolis convenience store called Cup Foods. For Keung, whose father is African, this was only his third day on the job.

It seems a little perverse that two novices would be assigned to the same vehicle, but that variable is irrelevant. Both men did their jobs by the book. We know this because Henein, who wrote, directed, and narrated the film, did excellent work piecing the timeline together from a wide variety of footage most people have never seen.

At 8:08 p.m. on the evening of May 25, 2020, Lane and Kueng arrived at the scene. As the film shows, Floyd left the store about 20 minutes earlier and settled into the driver’s seat of a borrowed Mercedes SUV. Sitting in the vehicle with Floyd were friends Morries Hall and Shawanda Hill. All three were convicted felons. Despite the fact that the store clerks had twice come out to the car and demanded Floyd return to the store, he did not drive away. Hall would tell police that Floyd took a couple of Percocets and fell asleep.

The two officers approached the vehicle from the driver’s side. Now awake, Floyd appeared to swallow something as they approached and started flailing about. Lane pulled his weapon and demanded that Floyd show his hands. Acting crazy, Floyd started crying, “Please don’t shoot.”

At this point in the film, Henein cut to the bodycam footage from a previous incident a year earlier in which in which Floyd’s vehicle was stopped by the police. This time too, he swallowed drugs in their presence, acted crazy, and begged the police not to shoot him. A frustrated officer shouted at Floyd, “Keep your hands where I can f***ing see them.” When he continued flailing about, the second officer threatened to tase him. Henein suggested that the crazy “shtick” was Floyd’s M.O.

Floyd acted just as crazy back at Cup Food. Shawanda yelled at Floyd, “Stop resisting.” The officers said the same. Finally, he calmed down enough that the officers were able to holster their guns and get the huge, muscular Floyd in handcuffs.

When Lane and Keung began to escort him across the street to their vehicle, Floyd did not go easily. Getting him to sit in the vehicle was well nigh impossible. Floyd not only resisted physically, but he also grew hysterical, claiming over and over that he was claustrophobic. “When I stop breathing,” he said at one point. “It’s gonna go off on me.” This odd premonition started a litany of him saying, “I can’t breathe,” although he obviously could.

At 8:16 officers Derek Chauvin and Tuo Thao arrived at the scene, but even with two more officers helping, Lane and Keung were unable to secure Floyd in the back seat. At 6’ 6” he did not fit easily. Throughout this struggle, Lane was the most considerate. He offered to stay with the panicking Floyd, to roll down the windows, to turn on the air conditioning.

“I want to lay on the ground,” said Floyd. The exasperated officers obliged him, but Floyd continue to struggle. He was a danger to himself and to the officers. As senior cop on the scene, Chauvin took over. He used a restraint that was featured in the Minneapolis PD training manual, but that Judge Cahill disallowed at trial, saying that Chauvin had not been officially trained on it. For the record, the Chauvin trial was a sham.

A week or two before this incident, I had seen a Kansas City police officer use an identical maneuver to restrain a large white woman who screamed like a banshee for ten minutes before backup arrived to relieve the arresting officer. I chose not to record the incident, I wish I had.

For about six minutes of the notorious “8 minutes and 46 seconds” that Floyd was restrained, he continued to bitch: “I ate too many drugs,” “My stomach hurts,” “I can’t breathe.” Toward the end of this stretch it was Lane who suggested to Chauvin that they roll Floyd over on his side. “I think he’s passing out,” said Lane.

It was the judgment of Chauvin that Floyd was better off as he was. By this time, the bystanders, who had no idea of what had been going on, grew increasing shrill. One even pushed Officer Thao. By no “reasonable officer” standard would a four-day veteran try to overrule a 20-year vet in such a harrowing circumstance.

When the EMTs arrived, they seemed oddly nonplussed about Floyd. They pick up people passed out on the street every day. I am sure they suspected drugs, but no one knew that Floyd had major blockages in both arteries. As it happens, it was Lane who got in the vehicle and initiated CPR.

So why exactly is Lane in prison now? And why is no one coming to his defense?

To learn more, see http://www.cashill.com

TROUBLE, TROUBLE, TROUBLE FROM CROOKED HEAD TO TOE JOE FOR BLEEDING OUR USA!

January 13, 2023

The Scariest Developments to Watch Out For in 2023

By John Kudla at American Thinker:

I believe most people hope 2023 is a better year than 2022.  But I am not counting on it.

In just the past two years, our national government has spent roughly $13 trillion and authorized spending trillions more.  Politicians use words and phrases like “investments,” “long-term savings,” “reducing inflation,” “protecting Ukraine’s sovereignty,” etc. to justify this.  Clearly, they are either lying or living in a fantasy world.  Most of the money is being used to pay off campaign contributors and special interest groups, such as the climate change lobby, or to make politicians look good.

Inflation spiked to nine percent in June 2022, so the Federal Open Market Committee began raising interest rates to fight it.  As interest rates rose, the stock market tanked.  In 2023, interest rates will likely increase further, possibly sparking a worldwide recession.  Neither is good news for investors.

China appears to have ended its zero-COVID policy for economic reasons.  Now COVID is out of control in the Middle Kingdom, which will lead to other complications, such as pneumonia.  Since the Chinese communists do not like to be embarrassed, if China is suffering, they may want everyone else to suffer, too.  That seems to coincide with reports that roughly half of the airline passengers from China have tested positive for COVID.  They caused a pandemic once.  Why not twice?

Supply chains are a second issue.  Who will make the products we normally buy if Chinese workers are sick?  Yes, I know this sounds like a “who cares” thing.  But if they are not shipping parts, our factories will grind to a halt.

Naturally, these two problems overlap.  Due to a rash of lawsuits in the 1990s, pharmaceutical companies moved their manufacturing facilities to China.  Now China makes most of our antibiotics.  If Chinese workers are sick and using the antibiotics they usually produce, there may be little left to export.  With antibiotics already in short supply in the U.S., what do we do?

If you want to see life before sulfa drugs and penicillin, visit a graveyard that is at least a few decades older than World War 2.  The number of grave markers for young children and infants is sobering.

educational resources, costs billions to support people who cannot legally work here, and may increase the crime rate.  Roughly five million people have crossed into our country in the last two years.  How many are sick?  How many are vaccinated, and what are they immunized for?  How many are criminals or terrorists?  The government does not know and seems not to care.

Republicans are not helping clarify this issue.  Regarding the border, Congresswoman Monica De La Cruz says, “President Biden does not have a plan.”  Actually, he does.  It is called let millions of illegals in, make them citizens, and get re-elected in 2024.

Now that Biden  has visited the border, will the flood of immigrants decline in 2023?  Apparently, the optics of illegal border crossings was making Democrats nervous.  So now potential migrants will be allowed to apply for asylum in their home countries and simply fly to the U.S.

There are other questions related to the border that should be asked.  For example, Mexican cartels are rumored to be making billions from human-trafficking and drug-smuggling.  Where does all the money go?  Is it possible someone in our government is getting a percentage to ignore these problems?  Has anyone bothered to investigate?

Okay, what about fentanyl?  This stuff is toxic and deadly.  In fact, over 110,000 deaths were attributed to fentanyl-type opioids during a 12-month period in 2021–2022.  Since you can die from breathing fentanyl and it is easy to manufacture, could terrorists use it to make an unsophisticated weapon of mass destruction?  Has Homeland or the DOD considered this?

It may surprise you that none of the previous issues scares me as much as the similarities I see between 1914 and 2023.

In 1914, there were two large, well armed military alliances in Europe.  Both had armed forces numbering in the millions, with detailed plans for confronting their potential enemies.  All that was needed for a  war to start was some unfortunate event to justify mobilization.  That event occurred in June 1914 with the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand.  Only a month later, the armies mobilized, war-fighting plans were activated, and the war began.  No one seemed able to stop it.

In 2023, we already have a land war in progress in Europe between Russia and Ukraine over Ukrainian territory claimed by Russia.  Ukraine is backed materially by the largest military alliance on Earth, NATO.  Since Russia and NATO have been adversaries in the past, both have war-fighting plans and doctrines from the Cold War era.  Even though Russia has already threatened to use nuclear weapons multiple times, it cannot without risking retaliation by NATO.

Similarly, for several decades, China has claimed the Island of Taiwan as its territory and has indicated that it is ready to use military force to resolve the situation.  The main ally of Taiwan is the United States.  Both the U.S. and China have nuclear weapons.  So far, both sides have limited themselves to political posturing and war games.

What could change this?  Let’s assume Joe Biden stumbles, falls, hits his head, has a stroke, none of which is unusual for someone in his eighties.

If he cannot continue serving as president, Kamala Harris will become the leader of the free world.  While this may ignite ecstasy within the Democrat cult of diversity, it will likely ignite a sense of opportunity elsewhere.  

Let’s review why Biden chose her as his running mate.  First, she is a female Democrat politician.  Second, she is a “person of color.”  Yes, that is all you need in the world of identity politics.  Hopefully, the fact that she was a district attorney, California attorney general, and senator from California factored into the decision, but who knows?

Even so, her ability at the presidential level seems lacking.  Behind-the-scenes reports and actual observations of her performance indicate she has trouble processing information, dealing with subordinates, talking without laughing inappropriately, and speaking in clear sentences.  Moreover, as a campaigner, she is a complete dud because she comes across as spoiled and entitled.

So what happens if Putin decides to use a tactical nuke to encourage Ukraine to surrender?  What if Xi decides this is the time to mount a full-scale invasion of Taiwan?

Suppose a single nuclear weapon is used in any capacity for any reason.  That will focus the world’s attention like nothing else.  At that point, the DEFCON numbers will begin to fall as everyone’s war-fighting plans start to spool up.  In 1914, they had thirty days to avert war.  Now we may have less than thirty hours.

In the game of world domination and power politics, we could have one or both of the world’s most ruthless dictators in one corner.  While in the other, we have the world’s foremost beneficiary of identity politics plus a gang of frightened European socialists.  What could go wrong?