Cruz on Gaetz: Er … Let’s See

Last week, America took an IQ test -- and passed. “President Biden, when he came into office, said that he would be the most progressive president since FDR, and I think on domestic issues ... he has kept his word.” -- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Nov. 10, 2024 Indeed, Sen. Sanders, that is why Vice President Kamala Harris, who said she would have done “nothing” differently, lost the election. Pollster Frank Luntz explained: “... (I)n the end, (Harris) decided not to differentiate herself. And you can be supportive of someone and still say, ‘I am something different. I don’t look like him, I don’t sound like him. We have complementary points of view, but they are not identical.’ And then she could’ve gone off and differentiated herself. Once again, it was her choice to align with Biden that tightly. Was she loyal? Absolutely. Did it hurt her in the campaign? Absolutely.” Harris got millions of fewer votes than did Joe Biden, leading some to claim there are millions of “missing votes.” But there is an easy explanation. First, not all the votes have been counted, including those from California, so the number of “missing votes” will ultimately be smaller. Second, because of COVID, more Democrats in 2020 relied on the ease of voting by mail in 2020, many of whom would otherwise not have voted at all. The percentage of eligible voters who voted in 2020 was higher than in 2024. Donald Trump in 2024 got about the same number of votes as in 2020. But a lot of Democrats decided not to vote this time because they considered themselves worse off than four years and blamed Biden-Harris but felt “fascist” former President Trump would be even “worse.” So, they sat this one out. Nancy Pelosi told The New York Times fewer illegal aliens “came in under Biden than under Donald Trump.” Really?!? Under Biden, an estimated 10 million illegal aliens entered the country versus an estimated 2.5 million under Trump. This lie goes along with others pushed by Democratic politicians including, but not limited to, Trump said “there were good white supremacists and neo-Nazis on both sides”; Trump said “he’d be a dictator”; Trump said “there would be a bloodbath if he lost”; and Trump, to combat COVID, said to “drink bleach.” For their support, the Harris campaign allegedly paid Oprah Winfrey $1 million, Meghan thee Stallion $5 million, Lizzo $3 million and Beyonce $10 million. Who knew “joy” could be so lucrative? It looks like poor Dick and Liz Cheney endorsed Harris for free. Will they whip out the race card? Why doesn’t “Border Czar Tom Homan” keep the illegals -- and deport the celebrities? Why did Harris take so long to concede? Maybe they couldn’t find a teleprompter and had to wait for a speechwriter to sober up. Harris, who advocated a mandatory gun buy-back, called Trump “a fascist.” Why did she advocate restrictions on the Second Amendment, the very purpose of which is to prevent tyranny? If she believed her own rhetoric about “fascist” Trump, she should be passing out guns like Halloween candy. President-elect Trump, to hit the ground running, has asked architects to submit designs for concentration camps. California Gov. Gavin Newsom vows to stop the Trump administration from deporting illegal aliens from California -- but will continue chasing away businesses, aspiring homeowners, law-abiding citizens and the middle class. If Trump does go after “comedians,” Jimmy Kimmel can relax. Democrats were so demoralized by the Trump landslide they couldn’t even muster the energy to riot, loot or burn down American cities. Depressed vice presidential candidate Tim Walz was temporarily put on suicide watch -- until officials remembered he didn’t know how to load a firearm. Harris, suffering buyer’s remorse about Walz, has asked Taylor Swift to write a song about picking the wrong running mate. Sources say MSNBC, to boost its post-election declining ratings, has offered the Trump would-be assassins positions as political commentators on the “Morning Joe” show. Walz has updated his biography. It now says he ran for vice president after having served in combat while packing an “assault weapon.” But enough about Chicago.

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When asked about Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida's nomination for attorney general, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin responded by holding up a photo of two transgender appointees from President Joe Biden's administration.Johnson's printed-out pictures included a photo of Rachel Levine, who serves as the assistant secretary of health for the Department of Health and Human Services, and a photo of Sam Brinton, who was nominated as deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy. When pressed about Gaetz' nomination, Johnson held up the photos and asked reporters whether they ever "harassed" Democratic lawmakers about those nominees. Although Gaetz has sparked controversy online and hesitation from certain members of Congress, Johnson pointed out past nominees who have been just as controversial as, if not more than, the Florida firebrand. Both nominees have scandal-ridden histories. In Levine's case, he pressured Biden administration officials to remove age requirements for transgender surgeries and puberty blockers for minors. Levine has also made claims that "climate change is having a disproportionate effect on the physical and mental health of Black communities." On the other hand, Brinton, who identifies as "nonbinary," has faced federal charges for allegedly stealing Tanzanian designer Asya Khamsin's suitcase at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia. Brinton was caught when he was photographed wearing one of Khamsin's designs, making this the third alleged incident of luggage theft Brinton had been involved with. Brinton pled guilty in a sweetheart deal, receiving no jail time. Brinton is no longer serving in the Biden administration. Although Gaetz has sparked controversy online and hesitation from certain members of Congress, Johnson pointed out past nominees who have been just as controversial as, if not more than, the Florida firebrand. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

After a pitched battle between federal prosecutors and Jan. 6 defendant William Pope, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras has agreed to delay Pope’s trial, saying it could be a waste of resources given the possible issuance of pardons by President-elect Donald J. Trump. Pope, 38, of Topeka, Kansas, was scheduled to begin trial in Washington, D.C., Dec. 2 on five criminal charges, including a felony civil disorder count and four misdemeanors. “I'm relieved that my four-year battle with the government is almost over,” Pope told Blaze News. “I'm going to win.” 'The circumstances in my case are inseparable from the election of President Trump.' Contreras adopted Pope’s reasoning from a Nov. 13 filing that said a long trial would be a waste of court resources given the post-election realities in Washington, D.C. “Unfortunately, the prosecutor’s facial expressions won’t make it into the court transcript,” Pope wrote on X after the court’s ruling. — (@) Regarding Contreras' decision to delay Pope's trial, Daniel Ball, a public affairs specialist for the U.S. Attorney's Office, told Blaze News: "No comment." Over more than 45 months, Pope, publisher of the news site Free State Kansas, has run circles around the government. He got three of his original eight charges dropped and exposed the potentially extensive presence of FBI agents and informants in the crowd. Pope also brought to light the misconduct of undercover Metropolitan Police Department officers, forcing prosecutors to admit in March 2023 that officer Nicholas Tomasula acted as a provocateur in the crowd on the west side of the Capitol. In his Nov. 13 response to the court, Pope said continued prosecution of his case ignored the political realities created by Trump’s landslide Nov. 5 re-election victory. “The government’s continued prosecution of me is also a continued prosecution of President Trump’s elected mandate, which is a prosecution of the will of the people,” Pope wrote. “The government should cease their attack on democracy immediately!” 'They had received reports that the individuals were carrying weapons.' Pope cited the DOJ’s refusal to apply the same standards as those used by special prosecutor Jack Smith when he asked the judge in Trump’s Jan. 6 case to vacate all scheduled court dates. The DOJ said the “unprecedented circumstance” cited by Smith should not apply to all January Sixers. “To entertain this argument, one must first be blind to the will of the American people who just elected President Trump to carry out his mandate to end the January 6 prosecutions,” Pope wrote. “However, these facts cannot be ignored. The circumstances in my case are inseparable from the election of President Trump.” Pope won a court order to make a tour of the U.S. Capitol as part of his trial preparations. The Oct. 20 tour was attended by three FBI agents, two federal prosecutors, and legal counsel for U.S. Capitol Police. In addition to dozens of battles on his own case docket, Pope has advocated for fellow Jan. 6 defendants and provided material that has been cited in many other defense cases. Metropolitan Police Department undercover officers Ricardo Leiva (left) and Michael Callahan look out on the West Plaza crowd on Jan. 6, 2021. Defendant William Pope exposed their activities and those of other undercover officers at the U.S. Capitol.Metropolitan Police Department via William Pope/U.S. District Court He identified MPD undercover officer Ryan Roe, who apparently encountered a suspect known only as #FenceCutterBulwark while he cut down temporary green plastic fencing on Capitol grounds. “Appreciate it, brother,” Roe was heard to say to #FenceCutterBulwark on video. In previous filings, Pope described several self-identified Antifa supporters who were allegedly intercepted by undercover MPD officers, including one who was carrying a gun. MPD officers reportedly made a traffic stop at 10:15 a.m. on Jan. 6 of a vehicle containing three Antifa operatives: Jonathan Kelly, Logan Grimes, and Dempsey Mikula. “Undercover officers who stopped their vehicle said they had received reports that the individuals were carrying weapons,” Pope wrote. “No footage of this incident has been produced by the government in discovery. However, Kelly livestreamed part of the police stop to Facebook.” Metropolitan Police arrested Grimes, who identifies as a woman and uses the name Leslie, for carrying a pistol without a license and being in possession of a high-capacity magazine and unregistered ammunition. The charge was dropped on Jan. 7, 2021. Pope also brought attention to the dozens of members of the Ohio-based Salt & Light Brigade, including the highly visible provocateur activities of Pastor William Dunfee. Using a bullhorn on the East Plaza, Dunfee urged protesters to storm the Capitol. Video shows him celebrating outside the historic Columbus Doors after protesters forced their way into the Capitol. After Dunfee's activities were exposed, the FBI arrested him in October 2022. He was indicted in early 2023 and found guilty of three counts in a January 2024 bench trial. One of the counts was later dismissed based on the Supreme Court ruling in Fischer v. United States. Judge Reggie Walton sentenced Dunfee to 30 months in prison on Sept. 19, 2024. The crowd incitement by Pastor Bill Dunfee of the Ohio-based Salt & Light Brigade was uncovered by defendant William Pope during his own Jan. 6 case investigation. Dunfee was eventually sentence to 30 months in prison.U.S. Department of Justice Photos Pope sought to force the government to unseal more U.S. Capitol Police security video than was made public by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his successor, Mike Johnson. He posted dozens of hours of bodycam footage on his Rumble page that was not restricted by the government as “sensitive.” He pointed out dozens of security cameras whose footage was apparently missing from the Capitol Police database held by Congress. Pope got prosecutors to admit that the “parading” misdemeanor charge against him was brought because he carried an American flag on Jan. 6 “in support or disapproval of a particular viewpoint.” “Biden has made the American flag and wrongthink a crime!” Pope said in May 2024. Under Title 40 U.S. Code §5104, a person may not “parade, stand or move in processions or assemblages in the grounds;” or “display in the grounds a flag, banner or device designed or adapted to bring into public notice a party, organization, or movement.” Pope said he fully expects President-elect Trump to issue Jan. 6 pardons, but the solution to his case is much simpler. “I believe that in my case the government should just be able to drop my charges,” he said. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team drafted an executive order to “create a board to purge generals,” potentially enabling the swift removal of flag and general officers “lacking in requisite leadership qualities.” According to the Journal, this effort “could also create a chilling effect on top military officers” due to Trump’s past vow to fire “woke generals,” referring to officers who place diversity over military readiness. Trump’s opponents quickly seized on the draft order, accusing him of attempting to “politicize” the military. By using the term “purge,” critics evoke comparisons to Stalin’s elimination of senior Red Army officers before World War II, which led to significant Soviet military failures during the war’s early years. The greatest challenge facing the U.S. military today is the weakening of the military ethos, which underpins its effectiveness. The implication is that any attempt to remove flag and general officers from the U.S. military, like Stalin’s purge, is ideologically motivated — intended to eliminate officers deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump and his administration. Although Trump’s relationship with senior U.S. military leaders has always been fraught, the suggestion that he seeks to purge officers based on loyalty is, at best, an overreach and, at worst, a slander. A more accurate interpretation of such a board would be an effort to restore accountability, which has been lacking in the U.S. military for some time. Recently, a Marine officer was court-martialed after calling for accountability following the deaths of 13 service members in a suicide bombing at Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Appearing in uniform on multiple occasions, Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller demanded that political and military leaders be held responsible. In a 2009 article for World Affairs, Richard Kohn, a prominent American military historian, noted that “nearly twenty years after the end of the Cold War, the American military, financed by more money than the entire rest of the world spends on its armed forces, failed to defeat insurgencies or fully suppress sectarian civil wars in two crucial countries, each with less than a tenth of the U.S. population, after overthrowing those nations’ governments in a matter of weeks.” What, he asked, accounted for this lack of military effectiveness? Accountability lost In his 2012 book, “The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today,” Thomas Ricks, formerly of the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, explained our military’s recent failures. He argued that many of these failures stem from a lack of accountability among officers for battlefield losses. During World War II, relief of command was common. Gen. George Marshall, the “architect of victory,” routinely relieved subordinates who fell short. In the decades following the war, political leaders — not military authorities — handled any officer reliefs. Often, officers were simply “kicked upstairs,” as in the cases of William Westmoreland in Vietnam and George Casey in Iraq. An Army officer during the early stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom noted, “A private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.” It’s also crucial to remember that while the president needs Senate consent to appoint officers, he has the power to fire them without congressional approval. Presidents have exercised this authority since the early days of the republic. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, appointed officers based on ideological alignment, aiming to replace Federalist-dominated Army leadership with Republicans. Establishing West Point was one way to accomplish this goal. Clearing the ‘dead wood’ Commissions like the one Trump’s team is considering are not new in American military history. During the Civil War, Congress formed the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, which examined operational and tactical issues along with the performance of officers in the field. Before World War II, Marshall created a board led by retired officers to review officer records and “remove from line promotion any officer for reasons deemed good and sufficient.” The goal was to clear out “dead wood” to make room for younger, more capable officers. The U.S. military is in trouble. Although still held in relatively high regard by the American public, its esteem has declined in recent years. Military failure likely contributes to this decline, but a more significant factor is what the late political scientist Samuel Huntington called “transmutation.” This term refers to the slow but steady erosion of the military ethos, replaced by priorities such as “diversity,” which now often supersede military effectiveness as a policy goal. Efforts by the military to address an alleged lack of diversity can sometimes worsen the situation. By promoting “identity politics,” which implies that justice depends on attributes like skin color rather than individual identity, these efforts risk dividing people instead of unifying them. In my view, the greatest challenge facing the U.S. military today is the weakening of the military ethos, which underpins its effectiveness. If Trump’s proposed board can address this challenge, I fully support it. In fact, I would endorse Voltaire’s satiric quip about the execution of Admiral Byng for his lack of aggressiveness at the Battle of Minorca: "In [England] it is well to shoot an admiral now and then pour encourager les autres." And I am confident that the vast majority of active duty and retired service members would agree with me.

Americans were never really convinced that Jill Biden and Kamala Harris had a loving friendship, but now there may be proof. When Kamala Harris called Joe Biden a “racist” in past debates, Jill reportedly took it to heart. “According to reports, that’s a fact. She never got over that,” Pat Gray of “Pat Gray Unleashed” explains, and Keith Malinak believes recent video footage of Jill and Kamala cements the claim. The video takes place as Kamala and Douglas Emhoff approached their seats reserved at the Arlington Cemetery for a prestigious Veterans Day event. Jill is sitting down while Kamala shakes hands with everyone around her. “Jill doesn’t even turn toward her,” Malinak says. “I think this is important. Jill is making it clear to Kamala that ‘I see that you’re there.’ In other words, Jill’s not acting like she’s distracted by something off to her left, she’s making sure that ‘you see that I see that you’re there.’” “And the look on Kamala’s face is just like, ‘Yep,’” he continues, noting that Kamala then sits down next to Jill with a pained expression, and still, neither of them turn to say hello or acknowledge each other. “How much are you looking forward to them being out of our lives?” Pat asks. Want more from Pat Gray?To enjoy more of Pat's biting analysis and signature wit as he restores common sense to a senseless world, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

I don’t think anyone at Konami way back in 1986 could've ever foreseen the impact that Castlevania would have. Combined with Metroid it spawned a whole genre of games, and without it we wouldn’t have stone-cold classics like Hollow Knight, Dead Cells, Ori and the Blind Forest, or Axiom Verge. The Castlevania Anniversary Collection launched back in 2019 to give fans a taste of the early days for the series, and now it’s free to keep, giving you eight games for the grand price of nothing. Continue reading Grab the Castlevania Anniversary Collection for free in this time limited offer MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best Metroidvania games, Best platform games, Best classic games

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