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September 2021

An American Horror Story Thomas Caldwell’s is just one of several stories of American patriots living the nightmare of being American political prisoners.  By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/23/an-american-horror-story/

Thomas Caldwell’s wife awakened him in a panic at 5:30 a.m. on January 19.

“The FBI is at the door and I’m not kidding,” Sharon Caldwell told her husband.

Caldwell, 66, clad only in his underwear, went to see what was happening outside his Virginia farm. “There was a full SWAT team, armored vehicles with a battering ram, and people screaming at me,” Caldwell told me during a lengthy phone interview on September 21. “People who looked like stormtroopers were pointing M4 weapons at me, covering me with red [laser] dots.”

Agents demanded that Caldwell, a former lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy who suffers from debilitating service-related spinal injuries, come outside and lay down in the grass.

“Someone grabbed my legs and dragged me through the grass. They threw me face down on the hood of the car, kicked my legs apart, put a chain around my waist and put me in handcuffs.” Caldwell said he looked up to see Sharon, his wife of 22 years, dressed in her nightgown holding her hands up with a sock in either hand. She, too, was covered in red dots from the weapons aimed at her. Sharon, 61, begged to put on her socks before they forced her outside in the cold. “I said a prayer, ‘Father, please don’t let them kill my wife,’” Caldwell said through sobs.

Caldwell was forced into the back of a police car for nearly 40 minutes; he asked several times what he was being charged with but FBI agents refused to answer. Eventually, Caldwell was led back toward his house. “I have a [collector] ’63 Thunderbird in my garage as a reminder of my grandfather, a retired Army colonel. An agent kicked one of the doors open and was leaning with his battle gear up against the car, scratching it up.”

Once inside, Caldwell saw that his wife “was still alive.” He was interrogated for at least two hours and realized the raid was tied to his participation in the January 6 protest in Washington, D.C.

Agents read what he called a “version” of his Miranda rights; he consented to the interview without an attorney present. Caldwell told me something I’ve heard repeatedly from January 6 defendants as to why they easily cooperated with the FBI: “I didn’t have anything to hide.”

Roughly 20 agents raided the Caldwell home, taking every electronic device including old computers and hard drives. This included Caldwell’s downloaded copies of cherished pictures. “They took every family photo we have.”

Agents then transported Caldwell to the Central Virginia Regional Jail in Orange, Virginia, two hours from their home. He thought he would be booked and released.

Instead, it was just the start of what he called “an American horror story.”

The Nightmare Begins

Biden, ‘Conman-in-Chief,’ Foists Absurdities on Americans Meanwhile the threats to America and Americans increase. Michael Cutler

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/biden-conman-chief-foists-absurdities-americans-michael-cutler/

Voltaire was the nom de plume of famed French philosopher François-Marie Arouet. We will begin today by considering the sage advice encapsulated in his quote, “Those who make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

Purveyors of absurdities unmask themselves when their statements are laced with contradictions and demonstrate hypocrisy. Seeking out those examples of hypocrisy and contradictions can serve as an effective “BS detector!”

There is certainly no shortage of absurdities that are spewed by the mainstream media and politicians, but the Biden administration appears hell-bent on foisting record numbers of absurdities on Americans today even as his statements, policies and executive orders undermine national security, public safety, and public health, thereby proving that in reality, Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ is bunk!

While Biden lambastes Americans who refuse to be vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus and imposes draconian measures to punish them, he continues to encourage a human tsunami of illegal aliens to head for the U.S. borders. Among these hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are citizens from countries around the world. Many of these aliens are permitted to enter the United States each month and among them are those who have not been vaccinated to protect them (and us) against COVID-19 and, indeed, are stricken with that virus and other dangerous viruses.

Haitian migrants hijack buses, further embarrassing Biden administration By Eric Utter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/haitian_migrants_hijack_buses_further_embarrassing_biden_administration.html

Multiple reports say that Haitian migrants, ostensibly in federal custody, have “hijacked” several buses while being transported and forced out their drivers. The incidents, they say, have occurred while migrants have been taken from the camp beneath the Del Rio-Ciudad Acuna International Bridge to processing centers across the region, as well as from the processing centers to local airports for deportation flights, and could cause the U.S. government’s immigration enforcement operations to be halted.

A senior federal law enforcement official recently told the Washington Examiner: “They’ve been basically overpowering the drivers and they’ve actually hijacked a couple of the buses and driven them down the road a little ways and escaped. This happened multiple times.”

The same official added: “They’re moving the detainees, but they’re not shackled — they’re not restrained in any way. Yesterday some detainees kicked a window out and 22 escaped.”

How the hell can migrants who are supposedly in custody hijack buses and essentially take the bus drivers into custody? How feckless, naïve and weak have we become? Is there anything the Biden administration can do competently and with determination? Other than thumbing its collective nose at the Constitution, browbeating American citizens into accepting an unvetted experimental substance into their bodies, and generally taking away the freedoms the Founders bequeathed them?

For the love of God, the Biden administration has accepted — proactively manufactured to be more precise — defeat in Afghanistan. To the Taliban, semi-nomadic goat-herders from the ninth century! It has allowed China to get away with murder. Mass murder, actually. And it is letting China figuratively walk all over us, while appearing to wish to emulate the Chinese Communist Party’s push to completely usurp and obliterate any and all of its citizens’ remaining freedoms.

How bad is it? The United States Army Garrison Japan recently announced that it probably couldn’t even repel a potential incursion by monkeys.

Iron Dome Funding Bill Passes House Despite Vehement Progressive Opposition By Caroline Downey

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/iron-dome-funding-bill-passes-house-despite-vehement-progressive-opposition/

“Eight Democrats and one Republican rejected the Iron Dome supplemental measure, including Representatives Rashida Tlaib, André Carson, Ilhan Omar, Marie Newman, Ayanna Pressley, Jesús García, Raúl Grijalva, Cori Bush, and Thomas Massie, respectively. Massie, the lone Republican to vote against the measure, opposes all foreign aid. The bill now advances to the evenly-divided Senate for a vote.”

Independent legislation that would allocate $1 billion to Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, introduced after House progressives stripped the support from a previous government spending bill, overwhelmingly passed the House on Thursday.

Democratic House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro proposed the stand-alone legislation on Wednesday, eliciting outrage from squad member Representative Rashida Tlaib, who was one of just nine House members to vote “no.”

The progressive congresswoman announced her opposition Thursday, saying she refuses to financially support a “violent apartheid system.”

Democrats Can’t Hide Their Israel Problem By Philip Klein

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/democrats-cant-hide-their-israel-problem/#slide-1

Stripping funding for Iron Dome only makes sense if the goal is to help Hamas become more efficient at killing civilians.

F or the past decade or so, top Democrats have been desperately trying to downplay the increasing size and influence of the anti-Israel wing of the party. But it keeps getting harder to hide what’s happening. This week provided yet another stark reminder when a group of progressives banded together to force House speaker Nancy Pelosi to rip $1 billion for Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system out of a spending bill meant to avert a government shutdown. It’s hard to overstate what a radical turn this is for the party.

Iron Dome has been an enormously successful shield that has allowed Israel to protect its people by shooting down rockets that Palestinian terrorist groups indiscriminately fire at civilians. By limiting Israeli casualties, the system also protects Palestinian civilians. That is, were the rocket attacks more deadly, Israel would have no choice but to launch a more aggressive military campaign — and likely a ground invasion in Gaza — which would mean the loss of more lives on both sides.

But the life-saving system comes at a cost. Each time Israel intercepts a rocket, it is estimated to cost between $50,000 and $80,000. When Palestinians pursue a saturation-bombing strategy and fire thousands of rockets all over Israel, as they did in May, the price tag of defending civilians can quickly add up, so the system requires constant funding.

There is of course a principled stand one could take against foreign aid in general, or against sending more money overseas at a time when the U.S. is facing historic debt. But progressives are not making any sort of consistent argument against foreign aid and have zero concern for the national debt. If current plans being pushed by progressives pass, then Democrats will have authorized $6 trillion in new spending within the first year of Joe Biden’s presidency. That’s 6,000 times $1 billion.

Media Test Positive For Corrupt COVID Coverage

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/09/24/media-test-positive-for-corrupt-covid-coverage/

Policymakers and public health officials need to be held accountable for their miserable pandemic failures. So should the media, which have no interest in objective news, and are following an agenda that is both repulsive and poisonous

Among of the media’s favorite stories of the last 18 months are the deaths of the unvaccinated and those who expressed skepticism about the lethality of the Wuhan coronavirus. A recent example is the death of a 40-year-old California woman, who, according to the British Daily Mail, “regularly posted anti-vax, anti-mask content, proclaiming herself a ‘free thinker’ who ‘questions everything.’ ” The mother of four – who also considered herself “unmuzzled” – “had been battling COVID-19 and resulting pneumonia ahead of her passing.”

Tragic as her death was, it would not have been covered by the media had she been vaccinated and cheerfully compliant with lockdown and mask rules. But in the twisted minds of most of today’s journalists, it’s a story that has to be told to boost their vanity. They are our moral superiors.

The glee with which the story is reported is not overt. But like so many others, it was told in a way to lead readers to classify the victim as a backward, anti-science conservative who might even be a Republican and a Trump supporter. It’s part of the left’s agenda to marginalize such people.

Thankfully, there are exceptions to the cruelty. Journalist Zaid Jilani recently told the media to stop shaming those who aren’t perfectly lined up with the left’s pandemic demands and succumb to their coronavirus infections.

“Maybe they were skeptical of vaccines, or masks or something like that, and maybe they got COVID, and they died,” Jilani told Hill.TV. “That’s usually a very sad circumstance, but it’s turned into sort of a celebration, like ‘ha we got the other side!’ ”

“It’s an odd way to think of a virus,” he added.

Scapegoats at the Texas Border The Biden White House blames border agents who are overwhelmed.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/scapegoats-at-the-texas-border-joe-biden-administration-alejandro-mayorkas-11632433558?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

At last the Biden Administration is furious about tumult on the southern border. Not about the surge of migrants, mind you. The White House is using a single episode to scapegoat law enforcement and deflect criticism from its immigration failure.

The flare-up came Monday, when Reuters published footage of mounted Border Patrol agents facing down about 200 Haitian migrants near Del Rio, Texas. The article, and several that followed, mistook the officers’ reins for whips and claimed they’d been wielded against migrants. Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib denounced what she called “human rights abuses.”

It was a classic rush to judgment in the age of viral images. Yet the Biden Administration joined the pile-on against its own officers. By Tuesday Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas launched an investigation and took the officers off duty. White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the actions “brutal and inappropriate” and said President Biden was “horrified.”

Perhaps investigators will conclude that the border agents used excessive force. But the Administration looks fixed on a foregone conclusion. “We are addressing this with tremendous speed and tremendous force,” Mr. Mayorkas said Wednesday. His promise that “it will be completed in days not weeks” should prompt skepticism about fairness.

$3.5 Trillion Is a Phony Number Budget tricks disguise the true cost of Biden’s vast entitlement plans.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/3-5-trillion-is-a-phony-number-democrats-spending-bill-entitlements-joe-biden-11632425260?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Democrats are grasping for ways to finance their cradle-to-grave welfare state, with the left demanding what they claim is $3.5 trillion over 10 years. The truth is that even that gargantuan number hides the real cost of their plans.

The bills moving through committees are full of delayed starts, phony phase-outs, and cost shifting to states designed to fit $3.5 trillion into a 10-year budget window that can pass with a mere 51 Senate votes. Even if the bill shrinks to $2 trillion or less, the real costs will be far greater. Behold one of the greatest fiscal cons in history.

• Start with the child allowance, which is among the bill’s most expensive provisions. Extending the $3,000 to $3,600 per-child payments for a decade would cost roughly $1.1 trillion. That’s as much as all of the income tax increases on individuals passed by the House Ways and Means Committee.

Democrats have hidden the real cost by extending the allowance only through 2025. Even if Republicans gain control of Congress and the White House in 2024, Democrats and their media allies will bludgeon them to extend the payments, which will cost another $110 billion each year. The GOP will be accused of raising taxes on middle-class families.

• Democrats are using a different time shift to disguise the cost of their Medicare expansion. New vision and hearing benefits would kick in over the next two years and cost about $20 billion a year. But Democrats are delaying the phase-in of the much more expensive dental benefit to 2028. This “saves” $420 billion over 10 years, but the costs explode after that.

Hunter Biden emails boast ties to White House and China By Emily Crane

https://nypost.com/2021/09/23/hunter-biden-emails-boast-ties-to-white-house-and-china/

Hunter Biden’s business contacts touted his access to his father, “State, Treasury,” his relationship with then-Secretary of State John Kerry’s stepson, as well as his ties to the “highest level” in China, as they weighed whether to work with him on a potential Libya deal in 2015, newly uncovered emails show. 

The two emails — published by Insider on Thursday — date back to 2015, when Joe Biden was vice president, and reference getting Hunter’s help on a deal regarding billions in Libyan assets frozen by the Obama administration.

The emails are unrelated to Hunter’s infamous laptop.

In the first email, dated Jan. 28, 2015, Democratic donor Sam Jauhari repeatedly referred to Hunter as “#2 son” — an apparent reference to Joe Biden’s VP role at the time — and noted that Hunter had requested a $2 million retainer.  The business contact listed a string of positives to working with Hunter, including his business relationship with Kerry’s stepson Chris Heinz and Hunter’s apparent self-proclaimed high-level access in China.

According to new emails, Hunter Biden’s business contacts touted the political access Biden had to the president and several other offices within the White House.Teresa Kroeger/Getty Images for World Food Program USA

“Per phone conversation I met with #2 son. He wants $2 per year retainer +++ success fees. He wants to hire his own people – it can be close circle of people for confidentiality. His dad is deciding to run or not,” the email said.

Biden’s access to Chris Heinz, stepson of ex-secretary of state John Kerry, was a major plus to his business partners.

True Privilege CVS launches a program that forces hourly employees to discuss their “privilege.” Christopher F. Rufo

https://www.city-journal.org/inside-cvs-health-corporations-racial-reeducation-program

Last year, CVS Health Corporation—the largest pharmacy chain in the United States—paid then-CEO Larry Merlo almost 618 times the median company wage, while simultaneously launching a mandatory “antiracist” training program for hourly employees to deconstruct their “privilege.”

I have received whistleblower documents from inside CVS that reveal the company’s extensive race-reeducation program, which is built on the core tenets of critical race theory, including “intersectionality,” “white privilege,” and “unconscious bias.”

As a keynote for the initiative, Merlo—who has since retired—hosted a conversation with Boston University professor Ibram Kendi, who told 25,000 CVS employees that “to be born in [the United States] is to literally have racist ideas rain on our head consistently and constantly.” Kendi argued that Americans are “walking through society completely soaked in racist ideas,” including children as young as two to three years old. “Our kids are basically functioning on racist ideas, choosing who to play with based on the kid’s skin color,” Kendi said. The solution, in part, is to “diagnose” employees as “racist” in order to help them become “antiracist” and “stop hurting somebody else.”

A series of related training modules instructed employees to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities, then rank themselves according to their “privilege.” The exercise is grounded in the theory of intersectionality, which holds that individuals can be reduced to a network of overlapping identities that determine their position on the social hierarchy, with privileged groups occupying the “oppressor” role and unprivileged groups in the “oppressed” role. The training asked CVS employees to circle their identities—including race, gender, sexuality, and religion—and then reflect on their “privilege” during the discussion. Examples of privilege, according to a checklist, included “celebrat[ing] Christmas,” “hav[ing] a name that is easy to pronounce,” “feel[ing] safe in your neighborhood at night,” and “feel[ing] confident in my leadership style.”