Now what do we do?

Interesting documentary....

The connection between Sidley Austin and JD Vance (Trump's new VIP pick). He's deepstate. Trump always has reasons to pick the people he picks. UTL COMMENT:- Why did he pick Vance?

A 1600 engine with a psychedelic paint job... The post The wildest Porsche in the West: Janis Joplin and her psychedelic 356 SC first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

An influential group. The post The influential group Billy Gibbons called “the great southern rock band” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

The internet and the legacy media are replete with tributes to Joe Biden by partisan Democrat politicos and influencers, for doing the “right thing” or the “patriotic thing” and giving up his bid to represent their party as their nominee. But at this point, after well more than a decade of these people shilling for patently false and repugnantly corrupt narratives, from keeping your doctor under Obamacare to Coptic Christian anti-Muhammad videos causing the Benghazi fiasco to Charlottesville to Russia collusion to COVID lockdowns to George Floyd to “Russian disinformation” over Hunter’s laptop to “insurrection” to Biden being “sharp” and “on his game,” if you believe anything these people say without immediately available concrete proof, you’re a fool. There is merely a letter, with no proof accompanying it, and otherwise … silence from the Biden camp. These people, the members of and shills for the ruling elite within their party and the Washington political cabal which has colluded in making life demonstrably worse for average Americans in countless ways over the past two decades, no longer enjoy the benefit of the doubt. The wise American looks at all of their words and deeds the way we would look at a thief fresh out of prison: it will be some time before we trust anything the thief says or does. If they say the sky is blue we’d better see some verification. And there is no verification, as of this writing well more than 24 hours after the fact, that Joe Biden has quit the 2024 race of his own volition. All we’ve been given is a letter supposedly written by Biden but only equipped with a digital signature and not on presidential letterhead, which was released on Biden’s X account that everyone knows he isn’t in charge of. Tradition indicates that something as dramatic, historic, and consequential as a sitting president refusing to run for reelection would be announced at a live press conference. Or at least via a televised address to the nation. Or perhaps a video statement. Or in a phone interview with a member of the media. Or even in a press release accompanied by a still photo. We’ve not been given so much as proof of life as of 4:00 p.m. eastern time on Monday. We’re given this letter supposedly written by Biden, and another statement of an endorsement of Kamala Harris which is similarly not directly sourced to him, and we’re asked to believe those represent his wishes. Or that he has any wishes at all. They haven’t made Jill Biden available to the public. Or Hunter Biden. What we’ve been told was that Biden has COVID, and that he’s now been dosed at least eight times with PAXLOVID in an effort to ward it off. You’re welcome to believe that if you want. Here’s another possible interpretation … UPDATE: I’ve received multiple emails like this one confirming many elements of the story. Many have confirmed that a call went out to block streets to get Biden to University Medical trauma center ASAP, and then the plan abruptly changed and they got him out on AF1 very quickly.… https://t.co/0LY7F4DrYv pic.twitter.com/jp9Xud0mSP — Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) July 22, 2024 Yes, Laura Loomer initially put out that information. Has Charlie Kirk corroborated it? Are either of them less credible than the people in charge of Joe Biden’s X account? Loomer and Kirk weren’t the ones saying Biden was “sharp” and “on his game” for years leading up to the Emperor’s New Clothes catastrophe that was the June 27 debate. As gaslighters of the public they’ve run up only rookie numbers compared to the cabal. (READ MORE from Scott McKay: Five Quick Things: They’ll Literally Say Anything, and They Just Proved It) So are to we believe that Joe Biden is dead? Is he convalescing in Rehoboth Beach? Will he recover? Will we have to wait days or weeks before he’s able to make a public statement? Are we able to know his mind vis a vis the 2024 race? Is he able to know his mind on that issue or any other? There are no answers available to any of these questions. There is merely a letter, with no proof accompanying it, and otherwise … silence from the Biden camp. And meanwhile Kamala Harris has gone from gaslighting the public as to Biden’s fitness, something she was enthusiastically doing as late as Saturday, to assuming the mantle of a presidential nominee. And being gladhandled by the same people who swore she’d be an utter disaster a week ago. I outlined a scenario in which Harris, if she were to show her political chops, could engineer a coup d’etat on Biden with the help of the Cabinet via the 25th Amendment and thus force his resignation. Was something like that done here? Was a deal cut whereby Biden would claim his remaining time in office in return for Harris ascending to the top of the ticket? What role did Barack Obama, who has yet to endorse Harris (even though he put her forward as his initial puppet candidate in 2020 before she crashed and burned), play in ushering Biden out? What role have George and Alex Soros played? Nancy Pelosi? Chuck Schumer? Hakeem Jeffries? Biden Deserves No Sympathy Please don’t construe any of this as sympathy for Joe Biden. Joe Biden didn’t do the “patriotic” thing on Sunday even if Sunday was his doing. Biden should never have run for president in 2020; he knew then that to last four years as a viable presidential leader in his cognitive condition was wildly improbable and he — and his wife especially — was being grossly reckless in running that year. But even given that, for Biden to seek reelection a year ago when he was clearly deficient in both mind and body was indefensible as “public service.” In so doing he denied Democrat voters a real choice in who their nominee would be. And as William Sullivan noted at The American Thinker on Monday, if all of this was in fact Biden’s doing he’s denied those voters — or at least the influencers within the Democrat Party — an opportunity once again to gain a real choice among candidates. As Sullivan writes, “[w]ith the last gasp of his campaign, he emphatically endorsed Kamala Harris to replace himself on the ticket. He simultaneously ended his own political future while severely wounding the enemies who conspired against him.” (READ MORE: On JD Vance and His Critics) In other words, the theory goes that Biden responded to being pressured out of the campaign by hamstringing Obama, Pelosi, Schumer, and the rest in endorsing Harris and therefore screwing the Democrats’ voters and delegates once again. He also screwed Harris, though nobody on the Democrat side will recognize this, by mailing in an endorsement which looks like somebody else crafted and released it. Because this isn’t how these things are done. It never has been. There’s a reason why we want them done in person. Nothing about this is credible, respectful, decent, or “patriotic.” It’s sleazy. It’s opaque. In keeping with previous columns, I’ll call it something else: villainous. And you don’t have to give it credit. In fact, you shouldn’t. Not until Joe Biden either faces the nation and explains himself, or — what should have already been done — resigns the presidency and admits he’s been unfit for the job for some time. Either way, it’s an outrage that the American people are being treated as though we’re the subjects of some banana republic rather than citizens of the greatest nation the world has ever seen. And it’s an even bigger outrage that the Democrats’ “influencers” are demanding we celebrate what was done on Sunday. UPDATE: After more than a day in limbo, America was at least treated to proof of life from Biden. But how convinced are you of this? A phoner. No questions answered. And stilted, seemingly scripted, dialogue. We’re going to need to see this man in person. And we’re going to need him to answer some real questions before any of this should be credited as real. The post Believe Nothing About Biden’s ‘Resignation’ appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

AIR RAID, PEARL HARBOR, ‘THIS IS NO DRILL’ Perhaps no single words in American history capture the horrific transition, in a single moment, from “just another day” to “our world just fell apart.” The naval officer who ordered this famous message had only just complained of the numerous security and safety violations committed by the aircraft screaming overhead. He only recognized the planes as Japanese after he saw a bomb drop and felt the resulting explosion. Similar phrases abounded as sailors, marines, soldiers, and airmen tried to comprehend the incomprehensible. A shipboard PA announcement to “Man your battle stations” was necessarily accompanied with “This is no shit!” An officer witnessed a bomb explode but thought it an accidental explosion. Standing at the rail of the Arizona and watching the action, one sailor remarked to several others: “This is the best g–damn drill the Army Air Force has ever put on!” Only moments later 1,177 sailors and marines would perish on board Arizona as a result of this “drill.” She’s said that the buck stops with her, but … if this means anything at all, it should mean her prompt resignation. Like the vast majority of Americans, my wife and I have wondered at the utter and complete failure of the Secret Service to protect Donald Trump. There is no way to minimize this failure — only luck or the hand of God prevented the former — and likely future president — from being murdered, not by a highly-skilled professional assassin, but by a 20 year-old with no obvious tactical background. Along with the rest of the nation, our minds boggled at the evident incompetence and the lame excuses. (READ MORE from James H. McGee: On America, Hochman Strikes the Nail on the Head) But unlike most of the nation we once served as protective services professionals, my wife as an Army CID Special Agent, me working in the private sector. We both were extensively trained, and we both once performed protection duties serving high level dignitaries in high hazard environments. It’s been a long time ago for both of us, but the principles are unchanging. And the security provided by the Secret Service to Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania quite literally violated every fundamental principle taught in “Protective Services 101.” Proper training helps to make the correct response automatic when there is literally no time for deliberation. I don’t mean to pick on some of the things highlighted by other commentators. That local law enforcement had been entrusted with outer perimeter security is unsurprising. This is routine, and done properly, entirely appropriate. Well-trained and thoroughly briefed local officers, properly integrated into the Secret Service’s on-scene communications network, usually perform well the tasks associated with outer perimeter security. They know their communities well, and can zero in on unusual behavior, things not obvious to the agents who’ve just blown into town with the protectee. (READ MORE from James H. McGee: On America, Hochman Strikes the Nail on the Head) Nor is it at all unusual that the Secret Service relies on law enforcement personnel from other federal agencies to round out their operations during times of peak demand, as apparently was the case with the employment of Homeland Security Investigators as part of the Butler team. The first person I worked for in protective services had received the full Secret Service dignitary protection training and had worked numerous presidential campaigns, but he drew his paychecks — and did most of his everyday work — as an ATF agent. Finally, there’s nothing inherently wrong with employing qualified female officers in protective services work, a practice that goes back decades. A colleague of mine back in the 1980s found himself leading a protection detail for a famous supermodel, and almost immediately recognized the need for at least one qualified woman who could work closely within this celebrity’s comfort zone. In protective services, there’s nothing that a qualified female agent cannot perform successfully. Again, it comes back to native ability sharpened by rigorous training. Who, then, deserves the blame, since there’s obviously plenty of blame to go around. Start with the Pearl Harbor example, and apply it to protective services. The keys to understanding are cognitive dissonance , confirmation bias, and normalcy bias. “Cognitive dissonance” simply means “the sudden confrontation with the unbelievable,” a conflict between new information and established expectations. With “confirmation bias,” an individual tries to come to terms with cognitive dissonance by defaulting to the most comfortable interpretation of what he is seeing. At Pearl Harbor this meant assuming that the low flying planes were part of a drill, at Butler it likely meant initially disbelieving the evidence of one’s own eyes. ‘Normalcy Bias’ Threatens Our Security “Normalcy bias” represents a special case of “confirmation bias.” This refers to a latency period, the period of incomprehension and inaction following the recognition of acute danger, the moment when someone “freezes.” At best, this involves delayed reaction, at worst it represents a virtually paralytic refusal to believe “this” is happening, whatever the awful “this” might be. Again, Pearl Harbor provides numerous examples. Some people unfreeze more quickly than others, but when bombs are dropping or an assassin reveals himself, every second counts. We know that the shooter had been observed by various officers, but observation and comprehension are two different things. But refusal to believe what one is seeing is baked into such situations. It took a disturbingly lengthy period to act it appears, or even to request guidance from the Secret Service agent-in-charge. Similarly, the Secret Service team apparently approached the entire event in a lackadaisical manner. I don’t mean to pick on the Secret Service sniper, who, after all, neutralized the threat relatively quickly once shots were fired. But one sees in the video that the sniper seems to have already locked onto Crooks. Why didn’t he shoot? Were the rules of engagement such that he had to wait either for a command from the agent-in-charge or for shots to be fired before acting. We’ve learned over and over again that restrictive rules of engagement actually reinforce normalcy bias — was this an example? In recent years reluctance to act, even in deadly force situations, has been pounded into law enforcement everywhere. No one wants to get it wrong, and then face prosecution and prison for killing an innocent man. It always comes down to having the right kind of people — protective services isn’t for everyone — and making sure that they have both the right kind of initial training and also behavioral reinforcement through rigorous and frequent refresher training. Were the Homeland Security augmentees properly trained? Simply bearing a federal law enforcement credential isn’t good enough. For that matter, had the Secret Service agents on the Butler team received adequate continuation and refresher training. When the tempo of operations accelerates, as it always does during an election season, training time often is sacrificed. You can’t rotate personnel through training if you don’t have enough bodies to support the workload. Moreover, did the Secret Service team agents at Butler do an adequate job of integrating the Homeland Security augmentees and the local officers into the operational plan? Did they assure effective communications? Anyone who has worked with the Secret Service knows that, when they take charge of an activity, they insist on unquestioned obedience from everyone involved. This may be understandable, at least in terms of ensuring close coordination, but also stifles initiative. (READ MORE: We Must End the Democrats’ Failed Foreign Policy) Training, then, should be the focus of any after action review. Proper training helps to make the correct response automatic when there is literally no time for deliberation, and thus is a necessary ingredient in overcoming normalcy bias. Necessary, but not sufficient, because it is also absolutely critical that senior management infuses the right attitude throughout the ranks. Secret Service Leadership The Secret Service Director has, absurdly, defended the decision not to post an officer on the roof as a necessary concession to “safety.” This, as anyone could see, was patently ridiculous; this one decision, more than anything else, brought a bullet to within millimeters of President Trump’s brain. But worse, this kind of thinking, whether by the Secret Service Director or the on scene agent-in-charge, conveyed a message of “business as usual” rather than “prepare for an acute threat.” This was utterly unconscionable given the threat environment, including reports that professional Iranian assassins might be operating inside the U.S. But this is of a piece with an agency culture that now seems more focused on achieving DEI goals — and wasting precious training time on DEI seminars — than on building a culture of operational excellence. One suspects that the Secret Service’s recruitment and retention crisis reflects a culture that has lost its way, that no longer offers the prospect of becoming part of an elite. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle was once, we are told, a good Secret Service agent, which, if true, means that she should understand how lame her excuses for the Butler failure now seem. She’s said that the buck stops with her, but, the patronage of Jill Biden to the contrary notwithstanding, if this means anything at all, it should mean her prompt resignation. It should also mean the appointment of someone prepared to “kick ass and take names” to insure the right kind of attitude throughout the ranks, and attitude attuned to today’s threat environment. Pearl Harbor meant the end of peacetime “normalcy bias” in the U.S. Navy. Let’s hope that Butler means the same for the Secret Service. James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. His recent novel, Letter of Reprisal, tells the tale of a desperate mission to destroy a Chinese bioweapon facility hidden in the heart of the central African conflict region. You can find it on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback editions, and on Kindle Unlimited. The post Security Breach From Pearl Harbor to Butler PA appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

It is a sport like Whack-a-Mole. Players follow every Trump word, gesture, movement — and, as soon as they spot the thing, they whack at it, presumably to get a point or a “like” or a “follower” or a smiley emoji. It stinks, but this is an underbelly of society. I went through it myself at one rabbinic position I held briefly during my 32-year (so far) rabbinic career. I had been hired by a congregation’s “rabbinic search committee,” and the committee was split. A solid majority loved my wife, Ellen of blessed memory, and they liked me enough. I was the rabbi they were looking for. But a distinct, if not distinguished, minority absolutely hated me. The Zelensky Impeachment. We now know that it was the Bidens who grifted their way through the Ukrainian economy. That is not surprising, I guess. I take my stands and speak my mind. Most people like encountering such a person; some people hate it. Read Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged and you will get the idea. Still, the majority ruled, and I was retained. Within two weeks, the opposition secretly coalesced and laid out a methodical strategy to get me fired. They would work to persuade synagogue members to cancel their memberships, an important component of shul funding. I launched a Youth Program, and they worked to persuade parents not to send their kids. (Crazy, right?) I started a weekly program that I myself had experienced a few years earlier with my son, and we loved it.  It was called “Parents and Kids Torah Learning,” and parents would come to the synagogue with their kids every Saturday night to devote an hour to studying some Bible together, or parents would help their sons and daughters with homework assigned by their religious-studies teachers at the Jewish school.  (READ MORE from Dov Fischer: Trump’s Excellent History-Changing Populist Republican Convention) Toward the end of the hour, I would tell a Bible story, and then Ellen would arrive with boxes of pizza. The kids loved it. We even upped it a notch: the boy and girl who attended most frequently got to spend an entire day at Disneyland with the rabbi and his wife, and ended the night by stopping by our home for Ellen’s (amazing) chocolate chip cookies. When word got out that the project was booming, the satans plotted to kill it. They actually convinced parents to stop coming, stop bringing their kids. One father and grandfather showed up with their son/grandson and soon were getting yelled at in public by the lead Satan for breaking the boycott. “But [name of boy] loves this thing. He talks about it all week.” The satans excluded the guy from their inner circle. He could not take the social isolation, so he stopped bringing his son (a darling kid). There is a book about such people, written by a Christian pastor, based on similar situations in Protestant churches, called Clergy Killers. A pastor friend recommended it to me when he and I shared our “Twilight Zone” moments. Others in that genre: Ten Ways to Kill a Pastor and Pastor Abusers. I share one anecdotal example that brings me back to Trump’s TDS haters: In a Shabbat sermon, I was discussing the Biblical account of Avraham’s (Abraham’s) effort to marry off his son, Yitzchak (Isaac), to a woman worthy of becoming the second Matriarch of the Jewish people. Toward that end, Avraham sent his majordomo, Eliezer, from Canaan back to Charan, where Avraham was born and where his extended family lived. Eliezer went by camel, laden with gifts of wealth, which he would offer to a family whose daughter would be the right one. However, Eliezer was concerned that, as a simple majordomo, he was hardly qualified to pick such a perfect wife for both Yitzchak and the future Jewish people. Therefore, he boldly endeavored to make a deal with G-d: “Here I stand by the spring as the daughters of the townspeople come out to draw water; let the maiden to whom I say, ‘Please, lower your jar that I may drink,’ and who replies, ‘Drink, and I will also water your camels’ — let her be the one whom You have decreed for Your servant Isaac. Thereby shall I know that You have dealt graciously with my master.” (Genesis 24:13-14) Continuing with my sermon, I related that Rivkah (Rebecca) emerged and indeed unknowingly fulfilled the prophecy. She brought Eliezer water, and then — despite the physical challenge amid the heat of the day — this young girl walked all the way back to the well, drew more water, and carried that heavy bucket a distance to slake the camel’s thirst. I then threw in the kind of quip that has trademarked me for some fifty years. I said, “Now that’s someone who would walk a mile for a camel.” (If you are of an age when that company advertised regularly on TV, radio, and in newspapers, you will catch the reference.) Well, the sermon was well received, and the quip drew some giggles. But the satans went to work. Soon enough, an emergency meeting of the synagogue’s executive board was called — an emergency meeting on these charges: “The rabbi is publicly encouraging kids in shul to start smoking cigarettes.” End of story. Point made. I think back to that garbage every time I see or hear the mainstream leftist media attack Donald Trump over every minor nothing they can swat at. They search and dig to find any blip they can. When they can’t find a thing, they fabricate it from thin air. The Russian collusion with Putin? That tied him up for two years. Schiff, the despicable liar who soon will be a California Senator, swore he had documentary proof of it. Of course it was absurd! Honestly, even if you hate Trump, why would Putin help Trump get elected over Hillary? It makes no sense. Putin owns the Clintons. And they are so weak. Remember the American ambassador in Libya on her watch? Trump is such a tough sonovogun. Why would Putin want Trump in the White House? Indeed, Trump’s election stopped Putin’s designs on Ukraine for four years. One lie after another, grasping at straws. The Zelensky Impeachment. We now know that it was the Bidens who grifted their way through the Ukrainian economy. Then the second impeachment. All were conducted at Christmas time, aimed at humiliating and destroying Trump. The irony: If things continue as they hopefully seem, history instead will report not that he is the only president in American history to have been impeached twice but that he was twice impeached by a corrupt Congress voting on straight party lines and yet was then reelected by the American people to serve as president again while (i) Nancy Pelosi, the Wannabe Kingslayer, ended up spending her last days trying instead to take down her own party’s president, and (ii) Liz Cheney was voted out of Congress by her electorate and went on to a career in … (What does she do anyway?) It continues after President Trump’s amazing Republican National Convention success. Every speech was great, from all sectors of the American social spectrum. The energy was contagious. A very solid Vice Presidential choice. A great family that many, many, many people wish they could say about their own kids. And yet the media satans went right to work. (READ MORE: The Democrats’ Panic Reveals Vance’s Strength) Yes, let’s all be fair: He spoke too long. And he should have stuck more to the perfectly scripted speech, which was knocking home runs all over the place and setting off all the lights and bells on the pinball machines. The moving call for unity, the gripping account of the assassination attempt, the emotional homage to the heroic firefighter, Corey Comperatore.  He shouldn’t have ad-libbed as much as he did. True is true; fair is fair. A few ad-libs, OK. Trump must be Trump. If the satans had focused their criticisms there, in moderation, OK. But the satans’ hatred never stops. They always search and scrounge, hunting for sound-bites to take out of context and then to attack or mock. So they ripped him for mentioning Hannibal Lecter. Really, that’s your best shot? The reference was valid: countries like Venezuela and El Salvador are releasing sickos and nut jobs from their mental institutions and, with the Biden-Kamala porous border, sending them here, where they seize, rape, and murder American females like Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, and Jocelyn Nungaray. They are not literally sending cannibals (like those who ate Biden’s uncle?) but indeed are sending mental cases who rape and murder. Trump was speaking figuratively, to impress an image with a New Yorker’s style of showmanship, and then the satans mangled his words to mischaracterize them. Or when he said that Kim Jong Un misses him. They take that out of context and make it sinister. He obviously was quipping and kidding. That is how New York humor works. My congregants and readers know I do that, too. I am a Jew from Brooklyn. That’s how we Outer Borough types are. And leftists know it darn well because, when it is a leftist from Brooklyn, they laugh at his Curb Your Enthusiasm schtick for twelve annual seasons. This despite the fact that Larry makes fun of blacks (with “Black Leon” the most stereotypical Black imaginable, hyper-sexed, every sentence an “MF,” since Amos and Andy), and mocks “fat people” and people in wheelchairs and Hispanic toll collectors and maids. From Larry, all the progressive woke opinion makers laugh and laugh. But when Trump jokes far less offensively, they call him a “racist” and berate him. Shame on them. It is like the satans I encountered during that one isolated bizarre three-year period at that temple. Each and every sentence, quip, pun, and aside was scrutinized as a possible basis to fire me. It was terribly annoying. But I had a very sweet and resolute wife, my own strong disposition, and I came out OK. I ended up with a fabulously better congregation through these past 19 years; freedom at the pulpit, freedom to expand by starting writing honestly and forthrightly here, freedom to teach law for twenty years, and freedom to thank G-d for endowing the satans with the wisdom to agree to a six-figure settlement. Even so, I never had to put up with the persecution President Trump has faced: investigations based on cruel and vicious lies from the day he assumed office, two impeachments based on nothing, lawfare in three states and the District of Columbia — which is not a state — gag orders, bans from social media, efforts to shame him publicly in the eyes of his wife and children, and a gunshot at him. May He come out of it not only “OK” but as the 47th President. If finding fault in Trump is a sport, those who play it are vicious and evil sorts. And they keep losing at their own game. Subscribe to Rav Fischer’s YouTube channel here at bit.ly/3REFTbk  and follow him on X (Twitter) at @DovFischerRabbi to find his latest informative and inspiring classes, interviews, speeches, and observations. The post The Sport of Finding Fault in Trump appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.