The rhetoric at the NATO summit this week is predictable: we must send more weapons to Ukraine! But behind the rehearsed facade, there are increasing cracks in the alliance...and among the peoples of Europe. Even Blinken is changing his tune a bit. Watch today's Liberty Report... read on...
Ladies and gentlemen, we face a grave danger. The leader of a major European power wants to make territorial revisions. He is surrounded by hostile powers who threaten him. He does not seek war with other countries but if the hostile powers continue to encircle him, he will fight. A European war looms.
You probably think I’m talking about the current crisis between Russia and the Ukraine, but I’m not. I’m talking about Europe just before World War II began in September 1939. At that time, Hitler wanted small territorial revisions with its Polish neighbor. East Prussia was cut off from the rest of Poland by a band of territory called the Polish Corridor.
As the great British historian A.J. P. Taylor explains, “The losses of territory to Poland were, for most Germans, the indelible grievance against Versailles. Hitler undertook a daring operation over this grievance when he planned co-operation with Poland. But there was a way out. The actual Germans under Polish rule might be forgotten—or withdrawn; what could not be forgiven was the ‘Polish corridor’ which divided East Prussia from the Reich. Here, too, there was a possible compromise. Germany might be satisfied with a corridor across the corridor—a complicated idea for which there were however many precedents in German history. German feeling could be appeased by the recovery of Danzig. This seemed easy. read on...
With the country crippled by record gas prices, President Biden has taken to yelling at oil companies for NOT drilling. But didn't he promise to end drilling and fossil fuels? Also today: horrific cost of covid lockdowns revealed. And - "Inflation? Ha! We're sending another $650 million for weapons to Ukraine!" Don't miss today's Liberty Report... read on...
In my blog post of May 18, 2022, I raised the possibility that the $40 billion aid package that Congress quickly approved for Ukraine was going to be used, at least in part, to pay multimillion dollar bribes to Ukrainian officials. After all, why else would the members of Congress, as well as the Pentagon’s assets within the mainstream press, react so vociferously against the idea of having the Inspector General monitor how the money is being used? And what better way to ensure that Ukrainian officials remain on board for perpetual war than the payment of bribes to officials serving in what is perhaps the most corrupt regime on the planet?
For skeptics, I refer to an article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal whose title pretty much tells it all: “High-Ranking Afghan Officials Escaped to Luxury Homes Abroad.” The opening paragraph states, “Some senior Afghan officials and their families spent millions purchasing expensive homes in the US and abroad in the final years of the war, which became luxurious landings when they escaped the escalating violence in Afghanistan.” The article then goes on to detail some of those “luxurious landings.”
Okay, yes, it is conceivable that those Afghan officials are all honest politicians and bureaucrats in an impoverished nation who became millionaires by dutifully saving portions of their government salaries.
But there is another possibility, a much more likely one in my opinion. Do you remember those planeloads of US-taxpayer-provided hundred-dollar bills that Pentagon officials were shipping into Afghanistan? Do you recall how there wasn’t any Inspector General monitoring how all that moolah was being disbursed? I think there is a very good chance that it was being handed out to Afghan officials as bribes to bring them on board in support of the US invasion and occupation of their country. read on...
Indeed, at a time when red flag gun laws (which authorize government officials to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others) are gaining traction as a legislative means by which to allow police to remove guns from people suspected of being threats, it wouldn’t take much for police to be given the green light to enter a home without a warrant in order to seize lawfully-possessed firearms based on concerns that the guns might pose a danger.
Frankly, a person wouldn’t even need to own a gun to be subjected to such a home invasion.
Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have adopted laws allowing the police to remove guns from people suspected of being threats. If Congress succeeds in passing the Federal Extreme Risk Protection Order, which would nationalize red flag laws, that number will grow. read on...
Marx tells us that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. We may be at that stage with the ridiculous January 6 Committee prime-time hearings - staged for television by a former news producer. Chairman Benny Thompson swears "no criminal referrals" will be handed down while Pelosi's hand-picked Republican ranking member Liz Cheney rebuts him with "not so fast!" Far from justice, these hearings demonstrate that DC Dems are in a box of their own making. Also today: Poland demands new weapons to replace the old weapons they shipped to Ukraine. Watch today's Liberty Report... read on...
The US Constitution explicitly gives Congress, not the president, the authority to determine if the republic should go to war. Unfortunately, that fundamental point is now little more than a quaint historical footnote. Congress has issued no declarations of war since the early 1940s, when it did so against Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and other Axis powers. Yet the United States has launched more than a dozen significant "presidential wars" since then. Moreover, that pace shows little sign of slowing.
Most analyses of the rise of the imperial presidency since World War II have focused on the executive’s inexorable usurpation of congressional war powers – although a more wide-ranging view. Usurpation indeed has been the dominant factor. When Harry Truman sent more than 200,000 US troops to intervene in the conflict that had erupted on the Korean Peninsula, he showed no inclination whatever to seek a declaration of war from Congress. Indeed, he acted as though getting a resolution from the United Nations Security Council authorizing member states to send forces was more legally relevant than getting any kind of congressional approval. Later presidents likewise ignored Congress and acted entirely on their own alleged authority (Johnson in the Dominican Republic, Reagan in Lebanon and Grenada, Obama in Libya). In one case (Clinton in Kosovo), a president even disregarded the legislative branch’s refusal to give approval for military action. More often, though, White House occupants preferred supportive, "blank check" congressional resolutions (Johnson in Vietnam, the elder Bush in the Persian Gulf, and Bush the younger in Afghanistan and Iraq).
America’s would-be emperors indeed have been bold in expanding US power throughout the international arena and making a mockery of the Constitution in the process. However, another important factor has been persistent sycophantic behavior on the part of Congress. Too often, the legislative branch has willingly – even eagerly – abdicated its constitutional responsibility to decide whether America should go to war. The failure of Congress to halt brazenly unconstitutional presidential wars – starting with the Korean "police action" – has been the most graphic example of such dereliction of duty. read on...
American’s capacity for denial is truly a thing to behold. For at least 27 months, it should have been obvious that we were headed for a grave crisis. Not only that: the crisis was already here in March 2020.
For weird reasons, some people, many people, imagined that governments could just shut down an economy and turn it back on without consequence. And yet here we are.
Historians of the future, if there are any intelligent ones among them, will surely be aghast at our astounding ignorance. Congress enacted decades of spending in just two years and figured it would be fine. The printing presses at the Fed ran at full tilt. No one cared to do anything about the trade snarls or supply-chain breakages. And here we are.
Our elites had two years to fix this unfolding disaster. They did nothing. Now we face terrible, grim, grueling, exploitative inflation, at the same time we are plunging into recession again, and people sit around wondering what the heck happened. read on...
The New York-based Council on Foreign Relations held a videoconference on May 31 titled Russia’s War in Ukraine: How does it end? The president of the think tank Richard Haas chaired the panel of distinguished participants — Stephen Hadley, Prof. Charles Kupchan, Alina Polyakova and Lt. Gen. (Retd) Stephen Twitty. It was a great discussion dominated by the liberal internationalist stream that has so far guided President Biden’s national security team, which wants to help Ukraine fight a long war against Russia.
The striking thing about the discussion was the acknowledgement candidly articulated by an ex-general who had actually fought in wars that there is no way Russia can be defeated in Ukraine, and, therefore, there has to be some clarity as to the stated endgame to “weaken” Russia. The gloomy prognosis was that European unity apropos the war is no longer holding.
Third, one plausible scenario would be that Russia turns Ukraine into a “frozen conflict” once the current phase of the war reaches the administrative boundaries of Donbass, connects Donbas to Crimea and incorporates Kherson and a “strategic pause and a stalemate in the not-too-distant future” may open the door for diplomacy.
Conceivably, a cold air of realism is blowing across the Washington establishment that Russia is winning the Battle of Donbass and an ultimate Russian military victory over Ukraine is even within the realms of possibility. read on...
Thanks to the diligent work of Sens. Grassley and Hawley - and a whistleblower from within the Department of Homeland Security - we now know that DHS's work on the "Disinformation Governance Board" began back in September, 2021, not this spring as DHS Secretary Mayorkas testified. Also we know from leaked documents that the focus was not on "foreign adversaries" but was to focus on “conspiracy theories about the validity and security of elections” and “disinformation related to the origins and effects of COVID-19 vaccines or the efficacy of masks.” Also: smoking gun proof that DHS senior officials sought high-level meetings with Twitter to push censorship of Americans! Will more Senators show interest in these lies and attacks on the First Amendment? Watch today's Liberty Report... read on...
