Pavel Baev
RUSSIA’S POST-PUTIN FUTURE BECOMES DARKER
Alexei Navalny’s death may spur the West to take more decisive actions against Russia.
The wave of international outrage has been much louder than denials in Moscow, where the propaganda machine has been instructed to say as little as possible on the matter.
The US House of Representatives may now be pressured to pass the $95 billion package for aid to Ukraine, and Western governments may consider seizing foreign-held Russian assets.
Navalny’s murder signifies that the little potential that existed for peace talks with Moscow has evaporated, the fall of Vladimir Putin’s regime is not imminent, and Ukrainian victory may be the best hope for change in Russia.
THE DEMOCRAT RUINATION OF OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM
Oscar Wilde wrote that “moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.” Justice Arthur Engoron took that line to heart with his absurd imposition of $455 million in fines and interest against Donald Trump and his corporation.
It succeeded wonderfully with New Yorkers, who celebrated the verdict like a popular public execution. It also worked wonderfully to make it difficult to appeal.
Watching the celebrations probably caused many executives to check time shares in Florida. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has rushed to assure businesses that there is “nothing to worry about” after the corporate public execution of Trump and his company.
But the best that politicians like Hochul and Adams can offer is that you have nothing to fear from confiscatory actions unless you are Trump in New York. Which is precisely why this decision should be overturned.
DELUSIONS, ALTERNATE REALITIES, AND THE BIDEN CONSORTIUM
Hunter Biden has a train of a dozen lawyers defending him on felony indictments ranging from several counts of tax fraud to gun violations. From time to time, the contents of his laptop come up, both in these criminal trials and in civil suits.
But the weirdest element of the Biden labyrinth of illegality is that both Hunter and his attorneys footnote their writs and statements with the inexplicable notion that the laptop is not necessarily Hunter’s own—but then again, it could be.
Translated: The surreal truth is that Hunter is very mad that what he did illegally in part is evidenced on his own laptop, and he wants that information either suppressed or disowned, but without perjuring himself by stating the material on his laptop is not his own—because of course it is his.
The same alternate universe surrounds Joe Biden’s cognitive decline.
SKYE’S LINKS 02/15/24
I didn't make this stuff up. Really! The Special Consul investigating Xiden for illegal retention of classified documents has found clear evidence that he is guilty - but has decided not to prosecute because of Xiden's deteriorated mental state. Note that most of these willful acts occurred many years ago when Xiden did not have the excuse of senility:
Censorship – Zuck's Facebook and its minions are at it for 2024:
Zuck Wants You Distracted: Instagram, Threads to Stop Recommending Political Content
More fun to follow!
UNTIL THE BORDER’S IN ORDER
Jack asked me to weigh in on the immigration situation that we are currently facing, to include what advice I would give President Trump in his second term for addressing it all. First and foremost, I would tell him that it took us a long time to get into this mess and it will take at least as long to get out of it.
We need a multi-pronged approach on both the Federal level and with the states. Some will happily cooperate and others will have to be dragged kicking and screaming. But more on that in a minute.
RUSSIAN ECONOMY FEELS THE BITE OF ATTRITION
Russia’s economy benefited from increased military expenditures, but industrial production is stagnating as growth limits. Heavy prioritization of the defense industry is causing contractions in other sectors like consumer goods production.
The Russian energy sector suffers from declining revenues, delayed projects, and challenges in the global market due to sanctions. Sanctions loopholes are being closed, complicating Russian efforts to circumvent restrictions and maintain its economic model.
Ukraine’s victory against Russia hinges on economic ties and integration with Europe, which possesses superior industrial, technological, and scientific capabilities.
OBAMA POISED TO PULL THE PLUG ON BIDEN?
Special counsel Robert Hur did a great service to America last week in two ways that fundamentally and irreversibly transform the Presidential race. As a result, just like in Hillary Clinton’s ‘3 a.m. phone call’ television ad in the 2008 contest, the iPhone is buzzing in Barack Obama’s Martha’s Vineyard compound, and he had better answer it.
The last Democrat president has been warning Biden and party leaders for months -- privately and publicly through former aides like David Axelrod -- that he faces an uphill fight to win a second term.
Now that Hur’s report has detonated like a shaped charge in Biden’s political bunker, Obama is the only man on the planet who can talk Jill and Joe Biden out of standing for re-election.
DO LEFTISTS NOW BELIEVE LEFTISM DOESN’T WORK?
[VDH at his insightful best]
It is hard to destroy a naturally beautiful city like San Francisco, with ideal weather and stunning infrastructure inherited from far better earlier generations. Yet, San Francisco continues its much-publicized and self-inflicted doom loop.
Cities like Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and New York follow the same trajectory. In all these doom-loop cities, progressive reformers in the eleventh hour are now trying to undo the very policies of those they elected, as if they are slowly waking up from a collective madness—in an election year.
Abruptly, the Democrats insist that after three years and over 10 million illegal aliens into the Biden administration, something must be done—perhaps even a rebranding of what worked in 2020 as their own.
The same rethinking of energy is occurring, as well, among the left—in an election year.
SKYE’S LINKS 02/08/24
Let’s get a better understanding of the minority that is actively working to destroy America as we know it, their opinions, and some of their tactics. It’s not pretty.
Then we’ll look at a marvelous work of fiction called the Jobs Report, some Gen-Z voter insight, and a quick explanation of Econ101.
This is the elite 1% that is destroying America. Here is the most amazing and important poll that I have ever read:
THE SECOND TRUMP CABINET
DeSantis is gone. Christie, Bergum, Scott, and Hutchinson are all gone. And if current polling is indicative of the primary voter preferences, Haley will be out before a catastrophically embarrassing loss in her own state of South Carolina.
Therefore, President Trump is the de facto GOP candidate, and given the latest head-to-head polls, he would beat Joe Biden if the election were today.
So if Jack Smith, Judges Engoron and Chutkan, Alvin Bragg and Fani Willis, and the rest of the Deep State Bureaucracy fail to neutralize President Trump and he wins, what then?
What will a new administration, with President Trump as the 47th Chief Executive, look like, and who will man it? Here is one version of what we can expect. Here are the names of those who have demonstrated their unswerving commitment to AMERICA First and who are the top-tier choices for MAGA 2.0 to Make America Great Again. Again.
(And yes, I know I have left out the VP slot. That’s because I am privy to the president’s choice for that position but not at liberty to reveal it just yet. But don’t worry, it’s an excellent choice!)
MAIL-IN VOTER FRAUD AND THE 2024 ELECTION
A country cannot survive, let alone thrive, when the voting process itself has been tainted, thereby driving a significant portion of the citizenry to no longer trust in the electoral system. In the United States, we have generally been immune from this nightmare scenario, at least for the most part.
Yes, we have had our share of highly contested elections, most recently in 2000. But these situations have been much more the exception than the norm in the United States over the past two centuries.
Unfortunately, it has become clear that the 2020 presidential election did not reach this historically high bar due to the sheer level of fraud mail-in voters admitted to committing in the 2020 election.
Our story begins in the months leading up to the 2020 election, when several states, including all the critical swing states, changed their voting rules under the pretext that traditional in-person voting was dangerous due to the pandemic. We cannot let this happen again.
EUROPE IN REVOLT AGAINST GREEN AGENDA AND MASS MIGRATION
Something rather amazing is happening across Western Europe, although American media outlets really would like to pretend that nothing is happening at all.
The sea change is that ordinary people are pushing back against green policies that will destroy farming (and also destroy the food supply) and against the endless immigration that’s intended to wipe out Europe’s ancient populations in favor of entirely new populations from the Muslim world and Africa (both Muslim and non-Muslim regions).
The farmer protests began last year in the Netherlands when the government announced that it intended to cut livestock farming by 30% to prevent “greenhouse gases.” It was a pure “you vill eat ze bugs” moment, and the farmers protested vehemently.
Because those policies are not limited to the Netherlands but have spread across Europe (where post-WWII socialism provided a ready landing pad for environmental madness), the same farmer protests are now in other European nations. Here’s a snapshot of what’s happening, in France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, and Ireland.
SKYE’S LINKS 02/01/24
Wow – Big News. In Jack’s 12/14 HFR, we learned about 327 Jan6 protestors charged with “obstruction” and another 57 on a related charge, with the Supreme Court agreeing to take their case against the charge – and it’s the same charge Jack Smith is prosecuting President Trump on. Now two jailed Jan6ers have successfully petitioned to be set free – quite possibly opening the doors of the American Gulag to freedom for hundreds more.
Jan. 6 Convicts Released After Supreme Court Takes Up Challenge To Feds’ Use Of Obstruction Charge
Just what Skye’s Links has been predicting to crush the hopes of rising stock market Pollyannas. Powell knows his most critical job is to preserve the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, not to preserve the Biden presidency with rate cuts in an election year. He has chosen wisely.
The Fed Fights Back – Says No to Imminent Rate Cuts
Here we go – jump on board!
IT’S THE HANGMAN, CHARLIE BROWN
The state of Alabama just performed America’s first execution by nitrogen gas, and this latest attempt to find a “nice way” to end a human life already has detractors, with condemned convict Kenneth Smith’s spiritual adviser claiming it was the “most horrible thing I’ve ever seen”, as reported by CNN.
Unsurprisingly, the condemned struggled a bit and didn’t appear to want to breathe normally. The White House opinion? “Troubling.”
His Royal Senescence will have to go to the great state of Mississippi and lecture them. Or perhaps the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights will take time out from criticizing Iran, the Taliban, and China to weigh in. Sarcasm off, but we aren’t holding our breath.
We should have predicted this. I will show my age and examine the strange case of Peanuts characters Charlie Brown and Lucy, and her infamous football, regarding the controversy.
Charlie Brown never learns. Neither do we. It’s time we did, for unless we do, it’s the hangman for Charlie and all the rest of us.
BREAKING THE WOKE STRANGLEHOLD ON CANADA
And just like that, Canada’s storied Liberal Party, in power for one hundred years, the country's self-described "natural governing party," is done.
Before the ruling this week, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives were projected to win 222 seats, according to Angus Reid's January 21st poll, with the Liberals at 53 seats. Trudeau’s partner-in-crime, the fetching champagne socialist Jagmeet Singh, he of the mauve headwraps and Rolex watch? Twenty-five seats.
With the decision, handed down by a federal judge, that Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act illegally, to end the truckers’ protest in Ottawa and at border crossings in Ontario and Alberta, Canada’s ruling elite has given up. They cannot continue the fiction any longer.
To illustrate how ridiculous Canada’s public life is, the findings by the RCMP and government were entirely driven by a government-funded Non-Governmental Organization, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, or CAHN.
The group was used in a perfect illustration of the Iron Triangle of government and bureaucratic action. The government funds an anti-hate group, which immediately identifies opposition to the government, labels it as hate, feeds it to the federal police which proceeds to investigate.
Sound familiar, Americans?
83 MILLION?
Donald Trump, in furor, stormed out of a New York courtroom for a while in the defamation suit brought by author and dating/boyfriend/sex-advice columnist E. Jean Carroll.
It was just settled against Trump for $83.3 million! The Carroll suit was largely subsidized by Reid Hoffman the billionaire capitalist, and mega-donor to the Democratic Party and leftwing causes.
The subtext of Trump’s rage, aside from the outrageous monetary size of the defamation ruling, is that he was facing—and angered—a leftwing claimant, a quite hostile leftwing judge, and a leftwing New York jury.
The civil suit serves as a mere preview of four additional leftwing criminal prosecutions, leftwing judges, and leftwing juries to come—all on charges that would never had been filed if Trump either had not run for president or been a liberal progressive.
Yet here we are.
THE GREATEST MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE IN MODERN AMERICAN HISTORY
The awarding of nearly $90 million to the second-rate advice columnist E. Jean Carroll will doubtless be remembered for generations as the greatest miscarriage of justice in contemporary American history.
Jean Carroll’s case was not just ludicrous on the face of it, but between the judge, the “experts” who testified, and the mechanisms by which the case even came to be, it’s impossible for any ordinary person in the West to see this as anything more than the continuation of a series of hoaxes perpetrated on former President Donald J. Trump with the desire to keep him from re-entering the Oval Office in January 2025.
The story itself beggars belief.
SKYE’S LINKS 01/25/24
Good news! The GOP is actually trying to do something to prevent vote fraud. “So far in the 2024 election cycle, the RNC has engaged in 75 lawsuits in 21 states to defend election integrity.”
Exclusive: RNC Fights to Protect NH Voter ID Laws Against DNC Lawsuit
Really good news!
Trump Vows To "Never Allow" A Central Bank Digital Currency
Still more good news: WE MAY BE PASSING PEAK CLIMATE PANIC:
Young Audiences Question Climate Alarmism, Prompting Calls To Censor Content
Welcome to another great Skye’s Links! Just jump right on in…
THE HERO STATE OF TEXAS
TEXAS: Understood. We will now be installing more border razor wire than ever.
Less than a day after the Supreme Court ruled that federal Border Patrol agents had the legal authority to cut through state-installed razor wire along the border, Texas National Guard soldiers were in Eagle Pass installing more razor wire as the fallout between state and federal governments escalated.
“National Guard soldiers laid out more fencing and concertina wire despite the rain that swept through the region Tuesday, according to video. Texas National Guard soldiers are setting up more razor wire here in Eagle Pass to repel illegal crossings.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court allowed the Biden administration to remove this wire but Texas is still blocking Border Patrol from processing migrants in this area. pic.twitter.com/edptUKNobz
— Camilo Montoya-Galvez (@camiloreports) January 23, 2024”
THE GLOBAL WOKERATI ARE TREMBLING BECAUSE TRUMP IS JUST WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS
With the shriek of elderly beldames leaping on the piano stool after spying a mouse in their petticoats, the Western liberal intelligentsia has finally spotted the likely result of this November’s U.S. presidential elections.
In the editorial conferences of fine old U.S. and UK publications, the leader writers are having hysterics. In the cocktail parties of Davos, I am told, the global wokerati have been trembling so violently that you could hear the ice tinkling in their negronis.
Instead of hyperventilating and clutching our pearls, we need to look dispassionately at what happened in his last presidency as a guide to the future. My thoughts, of course, go first to Ukraine.
It is the paramount struggle of our time, and we are still not doing enough to help that heroic nation. In the past two years Ukrainians have been laying down their lives, and bearing unimaginable hardship, in the cause of freedom — not just their own freedom, but the principles of freedom and democracy around the world.
Here’s why I believe Trump will help the Ukrainians win.
DO BASHKIR PROTESTS PORTEND THE BREAKUP OF RUSSIA?
[TTP has been predicting developments like this since the onset of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago. I have known Paul Goble since the 80s when we worked together on implementing the Reagan Doctrine. He is one of the world’s preeminent experts on the inner workings of Russia. See his Tatarstan Capitalizes On China’s Expanding Role In Middle Volga, TTP, Sept 27, 2023. --JW]
What’s happening now:
Mass protests in Bashkortostan featured calls for the independence of the Middle Volga republic and have shattered the image that Russia is united behind Putin.
These events have convinced Bashkirs and other non-Russians that their time is coming, and Kyiv believes that the non-Russian peoples will act soon enough to affect the course of Moscow’s war against Ukraine.
The demonstrations have sparked fears in the Kremlin and prompted some Russian nationalists to arm themselves to put down any non-Russian actions.
Here are the details.
SKYE’S LINKS 01/18/24
The Woke Agenda
Running on Fumes
They thought the easy way to make money was to secure special political privileges through the woke agenda. But the political class behind ESG, DEI, and the rest of the rot never understood the nature of work. Maybe any warm body can fill a government job billet. Maybe.
But the private sector is different. Performance matters there.
They assumed all work was government work. A widespread shock like a blast of this week’s arctic winds over most of the nation has met the heads of woke corporations as they face massive liability for defective products and incompetent service.
Our sock-puppet Secretary of Defense was AWOL for days before anybody noticed. No wonder we ran from the field in Afghanistan. First as a trickle and now as a torrent, Americans are fighting back against woke foolishness.
Come on over to Skye’s Links. Lots of good things are happening out there…
CHILDLESS CHINA
[The most arguably pertinent question to ask of any developing country is: Does this country have time to get rich before it gets old? In China’s case that question has now been answered. The answer is No.]
China’s total population declined for a second consecutive year in 2023 due to a record-low birth rate and an uptick in Covid-19 deaths. The decline will inevitably deter the economy’s growth potential and continue to strain a nation where the elderly overwhelmingly outnumber the young.
The National Bureau of Statistics, a Chinese government agency, reported that the total number of people in China decreased by 2.08 million in 2023. Overall, the population declined by 0.15 percent, from 1.411 billion to 1.409 billion in 2023. China’s population aged 60 and over reached 296.97 million in 2023, accounting for about 21.1 percent of its total population.
As new births fell 5.7 percent to 9.02 million, the 2023 Chinese birth rate also hit a new record. With only 6.39 births per 1,000 people, the 2023 birth rate was even lower than 2022’s record of 6.77 births per 1,000 people.
HOW BADLY WILL SCOTUS WOUND THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE?
[Skye’s Links 12/21/23 gave you a heads up here: This could lead to the most important Supreme Court win in the past century – no kidding. The case is Loper Bright v Raimondo. SCOTUS arguments start Jan 17 for why at least 5 Justices should overthrow a 1984 Court monstrosity called “Chevron Deference” allowing administrative agencies like ATF to act as lawmakers. They create “rules” and “regulations” based on existing law, then use Chevron to affirm their rule change as “reasonable.” This is a Very Big Deal!]
On Wednesday (1/17), The Supreme Court’s conservatives appeared inclined to cut back the regulatory power of federal agencies, with several justices during a pair of arguments seeming ready to overrule a legal doctrine that has bolstered agencies’ authority for decades.
Over more than three hours of argument, the justices put the Biden administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer on defense as she sought to preserve Chevron deference, which instructs courts to defer to agencies’ interpretation of federal law if it could have multiple meanings.
THE VOTERS’ REPUDIATION OF OUR FILTHY DIRTY JUSTICE SYSTEM IN IOWA
One wonders what it's like to be Jack Smith, Alvin Bragg, Leticia James, or Fani Willis waking up to watch CNN this morning.
Here's CNN: “Former President Donald Trump’s huge win in the Iowa caucuses on Monday enshrines one of the most astonishing comebacks in American political history.”
Astonishing to them, of course. It sounds like the voters have some unfinished business they'd like to take care of. More to the point, it's a vote of no confidence in our justice system. Everyone can see that the charges against Trump are about politics, not justice.
What we saw in Iowa yesterday (1/15) was the repudiation of what the justice system has become -- politicized, unfair, unjust, and filthy-dirty. That has propelled Trump to his powerful win, because voters can see some unfinished business they need to take care of -- immediately -- in their votes for Trump.
LAWFARE AGAINST TRUMP IS IN A DOOM LOOP
Four state and federal prosecutors claim they all came to the same disinterested conclusions that Donald Trump should be indicted for various crimes and put on trial during the campaign season of 2024.
Yet now they are in a doom loop of discovering that the more they seek to rush to judgment before the election and gag Trump from speaking publicly about these star-chamber proceedings, the more he rises in the polls.
In truth, each succeeding cycle of corrupt leftwing lawfare that ends in failure—the Russian collusion hoax, the weaponized impeachments, the pathetic attempt to erase Trump from state ballots, and the unfolding Fani Willis moral debacle—does not return things to zero.
Rather, they serve as force multipliers for each other. Each overreach geometrically increases the dangers to democracy, ever more turns the public off, and ironically cascades sympathy and poll numbers for the very target of their paranoias.
HALF-FULL REPORT 01/12/24
The Arc of History
Postmodern Failure
Jack is leading another of his incredible tours this week and will return next week.
Watching the news, studying the journals and events of the week, from a Boeing 737 Max airliner losing a door in flight to the strange absence of the president, secretary of defense, and assistant secretary from the chain of command, at the same time, with no designated responsible persons identified, made me ponder just what is going on?
Whether intentional or accidental, the week's news did everything possible to hold up shiny objects and divert attention from the collapse of the Trump persecution in Georgia and the woes of Hunter Biden before Congress and the IRS.
So what is going on? We are watching the failure of Postmodernist philosophy and a scramble by the left to find a new totalitarianism.
SKYE’S LINKS 01/11/24
It is still morning in America - if you vote with your feet:
Entry-Level Jobs Pay Six Figures In This Gritty Part Of America
On the other hand, if you haven't voted with your feet, you are all too likely to be stuck in a far left swamp of cult beliefs:
The 5 Strangest Features Of The Modern Left
But there is hope! The omni-BS is failing in more and more situations as more and more people push back against the official unreality For example:
St. Louis Mask Mandate Rescinded Less Than 24 Hours After Woke Health Officials Get Trigger Happy
There’s lots more cool stuff – jump onboard!
FANI, YOU IN A WHOLE HEAP A’ TROUBLE, GIRL!
The news out of Georgia is getting interesting. According to one of the co-defendants in the case that Fulton County DA Fani Willis brought against Trump and others who challenged election results, Willis’s special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, not only raked in $654,000 but is also Willis’s lover-boyfriend.
That’s shocking corruption on its face. However, things got even more interesting when Wade’s bills showed him having long conferences with the White House in 2022.
Michael Roman is one of the co-defendants in Willis’s case alleging that challenging an election in Georgia (something Stacey Abrams has been doing professionally for years now) is a criminal act when Donald Trump does it. On Monday (1/08), Roman filed an absolutely stunning motion with the trial court alleging that Willis was having an affair with Wade.
Let’s not stop there, though. As the old Ginsu knife commercials used to say… But wait! There’s more! We can add a whole new level of stench to the smell coming out of Fulton County.
ASHES, ASHES, AND WE ALL FALL DOWN
American law enforcement is working through a historic question of purpose and direction. The public and the national thinkers have a broad spectrum of things they believe about what we should be doing, and how we should be doing it.
There is an equally large debate mirroring this within law enforcement. Are we nurturers? Warriors? Secretaries? Mental health specialists? Role models? Ideas abound. Meanwhile, the calls for service keep coming and all politicians want us to help them get elected.
Jack asked me to comment on this article from the American Thinker titled, “If it all goes wrong, with whom will the police side?” The police aren’t supposed to have a “side”; our mandate is to enforce the law. But, the American understanding of law and order in some circles is devolving into a strongman concept of the legitimacy and exercise of power-- if you have it, use it; and the implications be damned.
Democratic considerations are an obstacle to getting what we want; not a responsibility to uphold. This is not American thinking. It is Soviet, Mongol, Mexican, or fascist thinking, and it is getting the nod from way too many people who ought to know better in governments across the nation at all levels.
The question in this article is: “Should our government decide “our democracy” is in imminent danger and it’s necessary to suppress dangerous insurrectionists like Catholics and soccer moms, would America’s federal, state and local police play along?”
MEXICO’S OBRADOR BLACKMAILS BIDEN
In Mexico, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO for short) knows a fool when he sees one.
So now that Joe Biden has let illegal border crossings balloon into a full-blown crisis, with millions of illegal aliens now flowing into the U.S., he's got Biden over a barrel.
Like any sharp mafioso or three-card monte player, he's now raising his price to solving the problem ... and it won't come cheap. The $20 billion payout he wants upfront is just the start.
RUSSIA ENTERS THIRD YEAR OF WAR DIMINISHED, DEGRADED, AND JOYLESS
It produced another failure, however, as most missiles were intercepted by Ukraine’s air defenses (Meduza.io, December 29). As many as 35 innocent civilians were killed, though the missiles hit nothing of military significance. In contrast, the earlier Ukrainian missile strike on Feodosia on December 26 resulted in a spectacular explosion of the large Russian landing ship Novocherkassk (Svoboda.org, December 29, see video above).
Despite putting on a strong front, Putin increasingly struggles to shield the failure to achieve any progress in Russia’s most recent offensive from the domestic population and will likely be unable to avoid the prospect of even more failures in 2024.
SKYE’S LINKS 01/04/24
This famous cartoon from the Irish magazine Weekly Freeman in 1881 depicts law-abiding Pat Murphy being goaded by a policeman and soldier into fighting so it can be blamed on him – with the Emergency Man behind them saying, “That's right! Prod him and club him, ‘till he turns on you! That’s our little game.”
That will be the Democrat/Woke Left game for 2024. Expect them to create a whole flock of Black Swans between now and the election, their purpose being to goad patriots into over-reaction which can be demonized – even to the extent of declaring martial law by November.
J6 was just a prelude to:
Welcome to 2024. “May you live in interesting times,” the Chinese saying warns, and so we are, ready or not. Here we go…
FORGET WHAT THEY ARE SAYING AND LOOK AT WHAT THEY ARE DOING
[This is to introduce a new feature on TTP -- a column by TTPer of many years who often posts insightfully on the Forum: Mark Deuce. After serving America as an Army paratrooper, Mark’s career has been in community law enforcement. He brings life-long street experience to the reality of today. His column is entitled – what else? – Deuces Wild. Welcome, Mark!]
One lesson I have learned in law enforcement is to be attentive to the behavior of humans you encounter. A cop’s job is dealing with people—often at their worst. Most other cop skills can be taught; but an inability to assess and react appropriately to human behavior will guarantee your ineffectiveness.
For cops, a common sign of trouble with a person you contact is them not obeying your lawful verbal instructions that you give them in order for you to do your job. For officer safety, you need to mentally switch gears when you see this in an encounter and regardless of what they are saying, notice: (1) you gave them a command and (2) they haven’t obeyed it.
Let’s apply this thinking to how we deal with most Democrats, RINOs and liberals. We have given them numerous commands—to keep our streets safe, to secure our border, not to steal from us, leave our freedom alone – and they keep refusing to obey. What’s to be done?
TRAGIC! HAMAS LOSES TWO LEADERS IN ONE DAY
January 2, 2024 — Hamas is reeling after losing two of their most cherished leaders on the same day, military commander Saleh al-Arouri, and Harvard President Claudine Gay.
"This is a devastating loss for our organization and the world," said Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh while throwing a dart at a dartboard with a picture of a Jew on it. "Al-Arouri helped mastermind our glorious murder/rape party of October 7th, 2023. Claudine Gay presided over the preaching of our message of Jew-hatred in America's Ivy League. This is an incalculable loss."
Ismail Haniyeh then went back to his game of darts while sitting in a jacuzzi and having his shoulders massaged by a high-priced escort from Dubai.
Eyewitnesses confirmed that al-Arouri was blown up by a rocket while innocently meeting with other innocent Hamas officials planning totally innocent and harmless military operations in the West Bank. Sources also verified that Claudine Gay was forced to step down. Both attacks are being blamed on the Jews.
At publishing time, Hamas had put two “help wanted" ads in the New York Times to help them fill both positions.
- Babylon Bee reporting
XI JINPING AND CHINA FACE ANOTHER TOUGH YEAR
Every year on December 31st, a glimpse is revealed of an impenetrable world. On Chinese state television, Xi Jinping delivers his new-year address to the nation.
China’s netizens pore over the footage: on no other occasion do they get to see their leader sitting at what purports to be his desk. They swap analysis of Mr.. Xi’s collection of photographs displayed on bookshelves behind him. And they parse his ponderously delivered words.
“Along the way, we are bound to encounter headwinds,” he said this year. Many will see that as an understatement of China’s current woes.
The economy failed to gather momentum. Youth unemployment soared and the property market continued to slump. Foreign investors in China grew more nervous. The headwinds were fierce.
That was 2023. 2024 looks hardly less troubled.
THE UTTER INSANITY OF JOE BIDEN’S BORDER
There have been more than 8 million illegal entries into the United States since Joe Biden was elected president. He appointed Alejandro Mayorkas as Secretary of Homeland Security, whose apparent prime directive was to destroy the southern border.
That task is precisely what Mayorkas has now accomplished. The result is that the border is neither “porous” nor “problematic,” but nonexistent, kaput, vanished—and by design.
In one of the most surreal experiences in the history of the United States, each night Americans see video clips of thousands of foreign nationals crossing the border en masse with complete impunity—as if the entire corpus of federal immigration law has been dynamited.
But by whom? And why?
DISPROVING DEMOCRATS
AUGUSTA, ME — In a move designed to push back against criticism that they have a track record of rigging elections in secret, Democrats have now adopted a policy of rigging elections in broad daylight so everyone in the country can see it.
"We are being entirely transparent about our election interference," said Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows after announcing former President Donald Trump will not be allowed on the 2024 primary ballot. "Any wild allegations of covert efforts to rig elections are simply preposterous. As anyone can clearly see, the steps we are taking to interfere with and rig the outcome of our elections are being done in plain sight. This is a win for democracy."
Bellows's decision to rule Trump ineligible to be included on the state's ballot came on the heels of a hotly debated ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court that also attempted to keep Trump's name off the ballot in that state. Though serious questions have been raised regarding the legitimacy of elections, Democrats deny any secret plots. "We aren't hiding anything," Bellows said. "Everyone can see what the FBI and DOJ are doing. All these baseless indictments aren't being made in secret. Heck, I made a public announcement about taking him off the ballot. I don't know where these accusations of us covertly rigging the election are coming from."
At publishing time, top Democrat powerbrokers were reportedly also preparing to begin operations in every state to rule all Republican voters ineligible to vote in any elections in order to save democracy. Babylon Bee reporting
SKYE’S LINKS 12/28/23
"Protecting our democracy" doesn't mean what you may think it does. The Woke catch-phrase means “they are protecting their democracy; not a democracy of the people, but now merely a word used to fig leaf the ever-expanding slither of socialist socialite statism, the velvet fascism that is deftly hammering its way through the society and the culture.” A very worthwhile read:
The Velvet Fascism Of "Protect Our Democracy"
How do all those illegal migrants get here? Ever notice that these hordes are always wearing clean serviceable clothes not filthy rags in tatters? That they’re not dying of thirst or hunger? Where do they get food, water, clothes, shelter, transportation? How is all this and more provided and by whom? It is a grand racket:
"Mass Migration Blueprints" Reveal NGOs "Carefully Planned" US Migrant Invasion, Report Says
Here we go!
CHEERING FOR MASS MURDER
In 1862, Dakota Sioux Indians went on a mass murder spree, butchering more than 600 innocent whites, mostly women and children at New Ulm, Minnesota.
The Indians murdered babies, beating their brains out and nailing them to trees. They tortured children. They engaged in gang rape of women on a mass scale. Their rampage was enabled by the fact that many Minnesota men were away, fighting in the Civil War.
That slaughter was the worst massacre by either whites or Indians from 1492 to the present. On a per capita basis, it was five times the carnage of September 11.
If the narrative sounds familiar, it should. What the Dakota did in 1862 was remarkably similar to what Gazans did on October 7. And the reaction, too, was similar.