Here’s a horror show of a story that you’re probably not going to see on CNN anytime soon. A report emerged on Thursday indicating that the puberty-blocking drug Leuprolide Acetate (Lupron) has resulted in tens of thousands of serious “adverse reactions” in patients, including more than six thousand deaths. That’s bad enough, but it’s even more significant when you consider that this is one of the drugs being administered by doctors to so-called “transgender children” to unnaturally prevent their normal sexual development. And the testing done on the drug by the FDA for such applications appears to be thin at best. (Daily Wire)
More than 6,300 adults have died from reactions to a drug that is used as a puberty blocker in gender-confused children, Food & Drug Administration data reportedly shows.
“Between 2012 and June 30 of this year, the FDA documented over 40,764 adverse reactions suffered by patients who took Leuprolide Acetate (Lupron), which is used as a hormone blocker. More than 25,500 reactions logged from 2014-2019 were considered ‘serious,’ including 6,370 deaths,” The Christian Post reported on Thursday.
“Lupron is being prescribed off-label for use in children who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria despite the lack of formal FDA approval for that purpose,” the outlet explained.
You can do a search of the FDA’s incident reports here and enter the name of the drug (Lupron) to see their data.
Despite the possible adverse side effects, there are approved uses for Lupron, but it tends to be administered only for serious conditions. It’s useful in treating prostate cancer in men and endometriosis in women. For children, it is sometimes used to treat precocious puberty, a condition where children begin puberty at an unusually early age, but only for a short time.
The list of potential side effects for the drug is alarming. It includes breast disorders, malignant neoplasms, and psychiatric and nervous disorders. Stop and think about that for a moment. If you have a child that is already so confused that they are questioning their “gender identity” before they’ve even reached the age where their body is dealing with such issues, do you want to give them a drug that can produce psychiatric or nervous disorders?
To top it all off, the FDA has never formally approved the use of Lupron for treating gender dysphoria in children. Two years ago the agency announced that it was beginning a study of “nervous system and psychiatric events in association with the use of … a class of drugs including Lupron, in pediatric patients.” We don’t know the results of that study yet.
What adults, including transgender individuals, choose to do with their own bodies is their business as long as they’re willing to take responsibility for the results. But the experiments being performed on confused young children who have been convinced that they were somehow born the “wrong gender” are simply monstrous. Blocking the natural arrival of puberty in otherwise healthy children should be considered child abuse and medical malpractice to begin with. All of the questions raised in this report about one of the drugs being administered to do such things makes it all the worse.
Donald Trump understood from day one that he could never win the presidency talking the way politicians talk. And he could never win by “acting presidential.”
People came to love his hilarious campaign trail shtick where he stands upright behind the podium and woodenly pretends to “act presidential” as he struts around the stage like a toy soldier, muttering meaningless politically correct bromides. It is a still-hilarious shtick that drives crowds wild. But more important, it demonstrates just how utterly useless it would have been for Donald Trump to run as some kind of normal political candidate.
No, this was a man who was out to crash the gates of Washington. And in order to do that, he had to radically upend the way the game of politics is played. He had to start by changing the language.
Such a change would not be easy. And it certainly would not be popular among politicians firmly ensconced in Washington. The royalty of the American political scene— known variously as “the Establishment” or “the elites” or “swamp creatures”—closely guard the language that is spoken in politics. It is a powerful tool in maintaining their grip on power. And the political press slavishly enforces these rules of language. (If you don’t speak the language, you don’t play the game.)
These people have spent decades establishing this vocabulary and hounding from politics anyone who veers outside the proscribed lines. They are forever culling the herd of politicians for saying things that are stupid, thoughtless, strange, or outside the acceptable range of political orthodoxy. The result of this ever-vigilant speech police is a stilted, meaningless political vocabulary that’s poll tested and riddled with preposterous euphemisms that provide for an infinite number of acceptable phrases that Democrats and Republicans yell back and forth—never actually winning any arguments and not accomplishing anything tangible for the voters they claim to represent.
Speech codes are nothing new. They have been popular among tyrants, despots, and demagogues since the beginning of human politics. Such a speech code was made famous, of course, by George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, published in 1949.
In Orwell’s fictional country of Oceana, the establishment “Inner Party” uses the official language of “Newspeak” to control the lower population of workers. The Inner Party uses all manner of media—two-way telescreens to microphones to spies—to enforce the Newspeak speech codes and report back any “thoughtcrimes” committed by the working proles. […]
The Lexicon of Lunacy
It is chilling to read 1984 today, seven decades after George Orwell published it. His ability to predict how established government authorities would use such “Orwellian” tactics to hold on to power is rivaled only by the ability of America’s Founders to ward off the very same abuses in some of their wisest elements of our Constitution.
In America, obviously, political leaders don’t enforce a “Newspeak” speech code and they certainly do not codify it. They don’t have a name for it at all, because to have a name for it would confirm its very existence. But others—outside the established “Inner Party”—do have terms for it. “Political correctness” is probably the most common description.
I call it the Lexicon of Lunacy.
The list of words, terms, and phrases in the Lexicon of Lunacy runs from the ridiculous to the deadly serious. Take the word “cisgender,” for example. I don’t actually know what it means but I know that we are supposed to use it when we are all tiptoeing around somebody’s severe midlife mental breakdown in which they decide to go under the knife to rearrange the sex organs God gave them.
Come to think of it, this is not at all funny. I feel genuinely sorry for anyone who finds himself, herself, or itself that thoroughly confused and lost in life. The only thing that could be worse would be if politicians decided to take that devastatingly depressing sorrow and weaponize it for political use.
Oh yeah, that has already happened.
So, how about this for an actually funny term from the Lexicon of Lunacy. “Overweight” has become a bad word because we don’t want to “fat shame” or “body shame” anyone. Instead we call the person “under tall.” Or, maybe “height- challenged.” Or “girth-oppressed.”
Those are funny. My children use them against me all the time.
Others are not funny at all.
The fuzzy term “pro-choice,” for instance, is the accepted euphemism for a political stance that favors killing a healthy, live human fetus that is living and developing in its mother’s body. In some cases, the term “pro-choice” can even mean the extermination and dismemberment of a healthy, growing fetus that might even be viable outside the womb. Who on earth hears of such a grisly procedure and thinks of the word “choice”? And, of course, the prefix “pro-”?
Less graphic but devastating in other ways are terms such as “free trade.” “Free trade” has become a mantra for hyperglobalization of the economy in ways that punish American workers, wildly enrich Wall Street and the captains of industry, and obliterate the ideals that have always separated America from the rest of the world.
Some of the best euphemisms, lies, and distortions in the Lexicon of Lunacy deal with illegal immigration. To be crystal clear, “illegal immigration” is when illegal aliens illegally enter our country without permission and illegally attempt to illegally reside and illegally work here.
Now, in the Lexicon of Lunacy, this activity is termed “undocumented.” And it is the only acceptable word to describe illegal aliens who are living illegally in the United States. Some of these illegal aliens illegally overstayed their visas to be living here illegally. Others illegally crossed the border to be living here illegally. Many of these illegal aliens also work in the United States illegally.
But, in our crazy political world, mentioning the word “illegal” in reference to “undocumented” people is considered hateful and even racist.
The problem with using the word “undocumented” is that not only does the term give the wrong impression, but it is a flat-out lie. “Undocumented” suggests illegal aliens have documentation that proves they are somehow here legally, but they just don’t have those documents on them at the moment.
No! If you are an illegal alien, documents proving you are legal do not exist! And if said illegal alien manufactures papers or documents to illegally and dishonestly suggest that he is somehow, in fact, here in the country legally, then he has committed additional crimes.
By browbeating people into using terms like “undocumented” to describe people who are actually “illegal aliens,” lawless leftists successfully push their dishonest agenda to erase what it means to be a citizen of the United States of America. It is their way of obliterating the sacred notion of “equal justice under law.”
Perhaps my favorite euphemism in the Lexicon of Lunacy deployed by American political establishment royalty is a term that is astonishingly dishonest and mercilessly subversive: “identity politics.”
The term, of course, describes a certain political strategy that is highly favored nowadays by Democrat politicians and the hacks they hire to do some of their nastiest dirty work. Republicans also use “identity politics” sometimes, but far less.
What is remarkable about “identity politics” is what an entirely accepted political strategy it has become today, sixty- six years after the Supreme Court declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Even the great media titans talk about “identity politics” as if it were just some innocuous strategy for reaching voters.
In fact, it is not just another obnoxious example of political correctness. It is the most insidious betrayal of the civil rights movement in America, in which a color-blind equality was so valiantly fought for. “Identity politics” represents everything that noble leaders like Martin Luther King devoted their lives to fighting against.
“Identity politics” is a strategy that separates black people and white people and Asian people and Hispanic people into different groups, based on their ethnicity and racial “identity.” Democrats go even further by dividing men and women and gays and Muslims and Jews and Christians and assigning them all to different camps.
Then Democrats tailor specific messages for each of the groups, often playing one group off another. It is a vicious mockery of Martin Luther King’s plea for all Americans to be judged not by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character. Yet it goes on openly and unapologetically in American politics today.
If public schools were doing it, it would be called “segregation.” If a town were doing it, it would be called a throwback to “Jim Crow” laws. If a storekeeper were doing it, it would be called “racial profiling.” If a regular person walking down the street were doing it, it would be called exactly what it is: racism. Yet, in the world of Democrat politics, it is considered mainstream political strategy.
Standing on the sidelines, observing all of this dishonest language concealing such deep corruption, listening to all the meaningless pablum from the Potomac swamp basin, was Donald J. Trump. And, like the brilliant salesman and master marketer that he has always been, Trump saw an opportunity to inject a little Hudson River honest, brash talk into the conversation. His amazing instincts clearly told him that voters all over would love it.
When Trump jumped into the presidential race in 2015, he was a well-known figure. He had been in the hot glare of the New York tabloid media for decades. Everything from the unveiling of golden buildings that bore his name to raunchy details about his various divorces made headlines. His business accomplishments in the real estate world and his success as a reality television star put him on par with a tiny handful of stars known around the world by one name.
But when Trump descended the escalator in Trump Tower that day, he had made political headlines more recently for something entirely different.
Four years earlier, Trump shocked the political world by launching a campaign questioning whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States. For the entire political-media establishment inside Washington, D.C., this merely proved that Donald Trump was some kind of crazy conspiracy loon. For these establishment people, it also proved Trump was a racist. […] But outside Washington, Trump simply proved he was willing to talk about things and ask questions about things that the entire political establishment had deemed unmentionable—even racist.
Having already demonstrated his unflinching willingness to go crashing wildly into the choppy waters of political incorrectness, Donald Trump was ready to announce his campaign for the presidency. From the first words, it was clear this would be a different kind of candidate running a different kind of campaign.
Donald Trump, accompanied by his wife Melania Trump, is applauded by his daughter Ivanka Trump, right as he’s introduced before his announcement that he will run for president of the U.S., Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
“Wow. Whoa,” he said, admiring the crowd cheering him from all sides and the balcony above.
“That is some group of people. Thousands,” he said.
That line still gets me. Literally, within the first ten words of Trump’s campaign—even before he actually announced his intentions—Trump was focused on crowd size. Much more on that later. But suffice it to say that in the years since Trump uttered those words, he has talked a great deal about crowd sizes, and it has driven his enemies absolutely out of their minds. Which, in turn, brings wild, lusty cheers from audiences who pack monster truck arenas to see their president perform.
After admiring the assembled crowd, he thanked them. He called it “an honor” to have them in “Trump Tower.”
Never. Stop. Selling.
I think it was along about that moment in his speech that I said to myself, This guy could be our next president.
His message was simple. Clear. Pro-American. He was selling something. He was telling a story. After seven years of bitter disappointment and the wasted opportunities of Barack Obama’s nerdy, professorial, lecture-some presidency, this guy could be just what America needs, I thought.
Quickly, Trump got back to the size of his crowd.
“This is beyond anybody’s expectations,” he beamed. “There’s been no crowd like this.”
Then he attacked. Ferociously.
Some of the Republicans who had already announced for president botched their kickoffs. The air conditioner didn’t work, or something. “They sweated like dogs,” Trump sneered.
Worse, their crowds were too small for the rooms they hired.
And then the kill shot: “How are they going to beat ISIS?” he asked.
“I don’t think it’s gonna happen. Our country is in serious trouble.”
It’s a fair point. If you cannot pull off a simple announcement speech on television, then how on earth can you possibly be expected to destroy the most diabolical and determined jihad of our time?
There is a larger point here as well. It has to do with language.
In the very first moments of his announcement speech, Donald Trump was declaring a pact with American voters. Earlier, he had proved his willingness to go wildly off script from establishment officialdom when he brazenly questioned Obama’s birth certificate.
Now he was promising to use the same scalding rhetoric and blunt honesty to expose and fix a whole host of grievous maladies facing regular Americans across the country.
Maladies that had crept into American society over the decades under the blind—or, often, encouraging—eye of political leaders in both parties.
Terrorism, globalism, “free” trade, illegal immigration, legal immigration. Trump was willing to be as belligerent as he needed to be in order to finally stand up to ISIS, China, Japan, Mexico, and the entire global world order.
Trump shrewdly understood in that moment that if political candidates were incapable of speaking bluntly about thorny issues, or if they shied away from harshly identifying America’s enemies, then there would be no hope for anything ever getting better.
Standing there in my office, watching this amazing spectacle unfold, it was that different way of talking that most gripped my attention. A wildly fresh vocabulary with sharp notes of brazenly impolitic honesty.
“The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problem,” Trump said, just a few lines into the speech.
My goodness, I thought. Nobody in Washington talks like this. But it sounds like exactly what you hear just about anywhere if you leave Washington, D.C., or New York City.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you,” he said, karate chopping the air.
“They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems to us. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”
On its face, this statement is technically true. Illegals from Mexico (and other places south of the border) come into the United States. They smuggle drugs into the country. They certainly commit crimes (including illegally crossing our border). And some of them are indeed rapists.
Trump was highlighting a real, destructive and expensive problem that a lot of American voters care deeply about. Yet almost nobody in Washington cares about fixing it.
Democrats are desperate to change the voting electorate. So, they want every warm body they can get into the country to hustle to the voting booth. Republicans, being more business friendly, are delighted to turn a blind eye on a process that floods our country with cheap labor.
The only group without a voice in this debate were millions of regular American voters. Until Trump announced his campaign.
Donald Trump announces his candidacy for the U.S. presidency at Trump Plaza on June 16, 2015 in New York City. (Christopher Gregory/Getty Images)
Donald Trump’s furious assault on the political establishment brought condemnations from every corner of it. Sure, those people were perfectly content letting political sleeping dogs lie. China ripping off America was no big deal for them. Free trade was going gangbusters for the stock market and Wall Street. Everybody who was anybody was making a killing off illegal immigration. Cheap nannies for all!
But the seething rebukes of Trump and his announcement speech were about so much more than just those issues. They were about Trump’s language, his rough-and-tumble demeanor, and his willingness to court such political upheaval.
In her memoir, former first lady Michelle Obama eviscerated the man who followed her husband into the White House for just this. Trump’s questioning of Obama’s birth certificate, she wrote, “was crazy and mean-spirited, of course, its underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed.”
Again, any hint of questioning Obama’s American loyalty was deemed racist. Such a questioner was not just called out as dishonest or stupid or uninformed. They were flat-out racist for questioning Obama’s alliances.
That was not all Michele Obama had to say about Trump and his style of politics. Trump’s birth certificate inquiry “was also dangerous, deliberately meant to stir up the wingnuts and kooks,” she wrote. “What if someone with an unstable mind loaded a gun and drove to Washington? What if that person went looking for our girls? Donald Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendos, was putting my family’s safety at risk. And for this I’d never forgive him.”
Wow. Perhaps Michelle Obama spoke too soon when she said that she was finally proud of her country once her husband got elected.
But I have to ask: What is more incendiary? Asking questions about where a political opponent was born? Or accusing a political opponent of deliberately and willfully trying to inspire “wingnuts and kooks” to assassinate the daughters of a president?
While we’re at it, what about a president who wades into local police issues around the country and his only contribution is to inject race into them? What about a president who goes around the world apologizing for America and giving long lectures about how America is exceptional, you know, like every other country on the planet is exceptional in its own way. In other words, nothing exceptional whatsoever about America. What about a president who belittles Americans for their “guns” and their “religion”?
After eight years of insufferable academia out of the White House, it should have been little surprise that American voters would be in the mood for something very different. They would be looking for a guy who speaks bluntly and paints vivid pictures. A guy who spent years savoring his time talking to the workers and tradesmen who built his buildings, and learned to talk like them. Above all, he was listening and listening and taking to heart what he was hearing.
Every now and then, some reporter churns a Trump speech through some word program on the Internet that calculates the grade level the speech was written at. As in sixth-grade level, meaning a sixth grader could understand it. And these simpering, obnoxious, arrogant asses somehow think that speaking so plainly is an insult, when Trump—along with American voters—knows it is actually the highest, most honest achievement there is.
Independent Authenticity Voter
Strangely, this was a counterintuitive gambit for some of the very same voters who wound up stunning the political establishment by voting for Trump—after having voted for Barack Obama. Twice! I call them the independent authenticity voters. They don’t much care about parties and don’t particularly like Washington politics. But every four years they generally turn out and vote. And when the noise of the campaign gets as loud as it does every four years, they are reminded of how much they despise politics and most politicians. But they mostly turn out and vote.
Overwhelmingly, they choose the lesser bastard. The least dishonest one. The one they think comes closest to being genuine and authentic. In 2008, that was obviously Barack Obama. His hopeful campaign about neither red America nor blue America but one red, white, and blue America resonated with these voters. Funnily enough, the late senator John McCain would have appealed to these very voters eight years earlier when he was still a true political “maverick” and before he got co-opted by Democrats and the media (I repeat myself) to kneecap Republicans at every turn. As bad as things were in 2012, President Obama still had enough authenticity left in the tank to beat the hopelessly repackaged Mitt Romney.
These voters yearned for someone authentic to be president. Most horrifying to mainstream political observers is the number of voters who voted for President Barack Obama—twice!—because they thought he was that authentic nonpolitician. Oh, how they were betrayed!
The accepted language of politics is defended by those who practice it as merely polite and responsible. And this is often true. I know many decent politicians and staffers and journalists who embrace polite language. And they are disgusted by anything else in the political arena.
If the 2016 election proved anything, it proved that Donald Trump was exactly right. There was, after all, a tremendous thirst out there for something different. Something new. Above all, something authentic.
So, from the very first lines of his announcement speech that day at the foot of his glass escalator, Mr. Trump proved to be impolitic. Unpolished. Dripping with authenticity. That guy you know who talks rough, who doesn’t own a set of church clothes but would be the first person you would call if you found yourself in a life-threatening situation and needed some really dirty work handled.
Trump knew at that moment that he had to break through all the soft, white noise of modern American politics. All the fake niceties of acceptable political speech. After all, it was a lie and had been for a very long time. Behind all those fake niceties were the raw, brutal realities of vicious politics played by the nastiest of operatives going back decades. They peddled in the most dishonest, soul-crushing, character-destroying sewage that you could imagine—but then wore nice seersucker suits at garden parties, talking all sorts of high-minded pleasantries.
Yuck!
Donald Trump saw all of this for exactly what it was. It was a fraud. Whether it was trade, immigration, wars, spending, or taxes—it was all a fraud. The American people were getting taken to the cleaner’s financially, and the American people were getting sold out as losers.
And Trump wasn’t even president yet! He was still just one of sixteen people vying for the Republican nomination. If you polled the media that day, every single reporter in all of politics would have given Trump a zero percent chance of winning the nomination, let alone the presidency.
After the speech was over, I called my office at the Washington Times and told my editor to scrap the column I had filed—that a new one was on the way. I endorsed Donald Trump, something I had never done before in a newspaper column. Because, after all, who gives a crap what I think about anything? But this was clearly something different. The speech was brilliant. It was daring, to be sure, but it also reflected an enormous amount of intentional thought. Trump had been listening very closely to voters. He had also been talking to some very smart people who clearly follow politics closely and understood the political landscape far better than any of the self-anointed geniuses inside the Beltway.
So I picked up the phone and called Steve Bannon, a friend who I knew liked to dabble in the more contrarian world of counterpolitics. We agreed the speech was great and, of course, Bannon told me he had been talking to Trump. A speech had been written. Bannon had seen it as late as the night before, he said. But the speech Trump delivered on live television to the country was entirely different than the one that had been prepared.
“Yeah, he didn’t read the speech,” Bannon marveled. “He got up there and just decided to wing it!”
Even at that point, Trump was not to be handled or scripted or managed or staffed. He was going on nothing but his own raw political instincts. And in the end, voters trusted Donald J. Trump to remain in character more than they trusted any politician to keep his campaign promises.
If you were to file a whistleblower report with the intelligence community inspector general, up until Sept. 24, the conduct you were blowing the whistle on officially had to be witnessed firsthand.
The “Disclosure of Urgent Concern” form — the channel by which one reported such things — specifically stated that any kind of second-hand information about alleged wrongdoing wouldn’t do.
This appears to have changed at 4:25 p.m. on Sept. 24, when a new form was uploaded to the Director of National Intelligence’s website.
On the new form, individuals who “heard about [wrongdoing] from others” can also report it.
That date is pretty significant because it was just two days before the biggest whistleblower report in the intelligence community’s history was released to the public.
Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist, reported Friday the firsthand knowledge requirement was canned sometime over the past year and change — and while it’s difficult to pin down when, evidence points to August.
“Between May 2018 and August 2019, the intelligence community secretly eliminated a requirement that whistleblowers provide direct, first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings,” he wrote.
“This raises questions about the intelligence community’s behavior regarding the August submission of a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump. The new complaint document no longer requires potential whistleblowers who wish to have their concerns expedited to Congress to have direct, first-hand knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing that they are reporting.”
The change was first noted by researcher Stephen McIntyre, who said the revision and the timing was “something seriously strange.”
Here is something seriously strange. The Disclosure of Urgent Concern Form located earlier today at DNI is only two days old according to its pdf properties. https://t.co/l8foAAj2sCpic.twitter.com/0iwXTxcgIv
The previous form had a bold section with the header “FIRST-HAND INFORMATION REQUIRED.”
“The IC IG cannot transmit information via the ICPWA based on an employee’s second-hand knowledge of wrongdoing,” the form read.
“This includes information received from another person, such as when an employee informs you that he/she witnessed some type of wrongdoing.”
“If you think that wrongdoing took place, but can provide nothing more than second-hand or unsubstantiated assertions, IC IG will not be able to process the complaint or information for submission as an ICWPA.”
Do you think the whistleblower’s allegations are valid?
0% (0 Votes)
0% (0 Votes)
That previous version notes it was approved on May 24, 2018. The new form, meanwhile, states it was revised sometime in August 2019 but it doesn’t specify a date.
That becomes important when you realize that the whistleblower complaint about Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — which included no firsthand knowledge about the call — was filed on Aug. 12.
Davis noted the report has plenty of references to knowledge that’s second-hand at best.
He wrote: “The Ukraine call complaint against Trump is riddled not with evidence directly witnessed by the complainant, but with repeated references to what anonymous officials allegedly told the complainant: ‘I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials,’ ‘officials have informed me,’ ‘officials with direct knowledge of the call informed me,’ ‘the White House officials who told me this information,’ ‘I was told by White House officials,’ ‘the officials I spoke with,’ ‘I was told that a State Department official,’ ‘I learned from multiple U.S. officials,’ ‘One White House official described this act,’ ‘Based on multiple readouts of these meetings recounted to me,’ ‘I also learned from multiple U.S. officials,’ ‘The U.S. officials characterized this meeting,’ ‘multiple U.S. officials told me,’ ‘I learned from U.S. officials,’ ‘I also learned from a U.S. official,’ ‘several U.S. officials told me,’ ‘I heard from multiple U.S. officials,’ and ‘multiple U.S. officials told me.’”
Up until the afternoon of Sept. 24, you likely wouldn’t be able to report any of this on the “Disclosure of Urgent Concern” form. It’s unclear when the firsthand knowledge requirement actually went away — as Davis noted, it could be anytime between May 24, 2018 and sometime in August.
This could all be a coincidence. But that would be a pretty massive coincidence.
It’s difficult to definitively state a causal relationship here, but the timing certainly makes it look as if some wider allowance was made for the specific complaint at some level.
This doesn’t necessarily mean the change wasn’t warranted or the whistleblower complaint wasn’t something that should have been examined, either — but if this is more than a coincidence, it puts the complaint and the initial decision not to release it in a new light.
An official with the Director of National Intelligence wouldn’t comment on when the revision to the form was made or what the reasoning behind it was when reached by The Federalist, either. That shouldn’t be a good augury for anyone.
There are plenty of answers that need to be provided in the wake of this whistleblower complaint.
Republicans and conservatives shouldn’t kid themselves: Some of them need to come from the president and those around him.
The intelligence community needs to provide some answers about this, too.
It would be edifying, for instance, to find out when this form was revised. I think a lot of people would also like to know what input prompted the change.
If those are questions the intelligence community can’t quickly and decisively answer, this report is looking swampier and swampier.
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In testimony before the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship on Thursday, former ICE Director Tom Homan criticized Acting Chairman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) for selectively noting immigration failures in the Trump administration but not disclosing that the Obama administration followed many of the same policies. “That’s dishonesty, it’s pathetic and it’s said,” he said.
Homan also criticized the Democrats overall for not working with President Trump to secure the border. When he said that, Jayapal cut him off with a pounding gavel, to which Homan responded, “this is a circus, this is a circus.”
Thursday’s hearing was labeled ”The Expansion and Troubling Use of ICE Detention.”
In a statement, House Judiciary Chariman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said, ”Over the last seven months, this Committee has devoted considerable attention to the Trump Administration’s cruel policies at the border and its attempts to deter individuals from seeking asylum and other humanitarian protections from our nation. Today, we shift our focus to examining the impact of the Administration’s approach to immigration detention in the interior of the United States.”
During the hearing, Acting Chariman Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) criticized the Trump administration’s handling of thousands of illegal immigrants at the border, many of whom are being held in detention centers until their claims for political asylum in the United States can be processed.
At one point in the hearing, former ICE Director Tom Homan was asked if he wanted to address some of the points made by Jayapal. He said, “I’d like to respond to Acting Chairman Jayapal and your comment about the Trump administration moving money around for more detention beds. I’d like to remind you that under the Obama administration we did that most of the years he was president. We [DHS] moved money around – it’s called reprogramming.”
“We did that under the Obama administration and I don’t remember any hearings on that,” said Homan. “And I’d also like to remind you that under the Obama administration – you’re quick to point out the cages – they were built under the Obama administration. I was there.”
Women hold signs as people gather to protest the treatment of immigrants in detention centers during the “Lights for Liberty: A Vigil to End Human Concentration Camps” event in San Diego, California, on July 12, 2019. (Photo credit should read JAVIER TOVAR/AFP/Getty Images)
Homan continued, “Family detention — we had 100 family beds under the Obama administration and we built 3,000 more. When there was a surge in FY14 and FY15, Congress was quick to give all the money we needed to build detention facilities, get transportation contracts. We reprogrammed money out of the majority of the years he was president – that was fine.”
“If this is about transparency, let’s be factual about it,” said.
Jayapal replied that she did not like it under the Obama administration either, to which Homan said, “Well, be honest with the American people. You can’t point out faults in the Trump administration when it happened under the Obama administration. That’s dishonesty. It’s pathetic and it’s sad.”
A woman protests against the upcoming ICE raids and detentions of refugee asylum seekers at a vigil outside the main ICE detention center (background) in downtown Los Angeles on July 12, 2019. – Numerous vigils were held across the US as part of the Lights for Liberty movement’s campaign to call for an end to “inhumane conditions at the border” and the deportations of refugee asylum seekers. (Photo credit should read MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)
Jayapal then repeatedly banged the gavel down to silence Homan. She refused to allow him to respond further.
Later, Homan was then given some time by a Republican member of the subcommittee. He said, “Look, you want to know why there are 50,000 people in detention? You want to know why there are a million illegal entries in the United States? You want to know why we have these issues? Because you have failed to secure the border.”
“You guys failed to work with this president to close the three loopholes we’ve asked for two years to close,” said homan. ”If you want to know why this issue exists, you need to look in the mirror. You have failed the American people by not securing the border and closing loopholes.”
At that point, Jayapal again cut off Homan’s time and repeatedly slammed the gavel for silence.
“This is a circus,” said Homan. “This is a circus.”
Earlier in the hearing, Homan criticized remarks made by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in June, when she compared the border detention centers to Nazi concentration camps.
“That comparison is 100% inaccurate and it is disgusting,” said Homan. “Now, forgive me, I didn’t think Nazi death camps had detention standards. I didn’t think they had health care. I didn’t think they had recreation, law libraries, visitation, three squares a day. It’s an insulting comparison.”
“This is a war against the highest noble man who has defended our country,” Academy Award-winning actor Jon Voight says in a Twitter video urging Americans to “stand with our President Trump” against Democrats’ “evil words crying for impeachment.”
“The left are afraid. Their power is lessening with every deal that is accomplished by Donald Trump,” Voight warns, adding that their anger has been steadily growing – and has reached a breaking point that they’re now resorting to “such evil” because they want to run American “like a corrupt ring.”
“How can a human being have such anger?” Voight asks. He then explains that it is because the Left “have no open heart of loving and seeing the truth.”
Voight closes by asking God to show truth to all Americans – and implores all Americans to, in the name of God, stand strong with Trump against “such evil among us.”
“I say: stand now with Trump. Let truth prevail. And, may God show all the truth: that we are truly a nation stronger because of our president.
“The left are afraid. Their power is lessening with every deal that is accomplished by Donald Trump.
“In the name of God, and his power for this nation, let us stay strong – and without such evil among us.”
War – this is war against truths. This is a war against the highest noble man who has defended our country and made us safe and great again.
Let me stand with our president – let us all stand with our President Trump – in the time of such evil words crying for impeachment.
This is a crime – that the left are trying to force. This is a disgrace by such ignorant followers that have no truth of what truly has been brought back to our country. We have gained greatness, we have gained jobs, we have gained more than any president has promised.
This radical left are destructive. Their codes, of what is supposed to be, are corrupt with lies, deceit and anger. And, we ask why.
We ask how: how can a human being have such anger toward the greatness of our country’s glory?
I’ll tell you why. Because, for so long, their anger has been growing, and with such deep pain, with no open heart of loving and seeing the truth.
The truth of what truly matters is the productivity of what was promised and what we, the people of the United States were promised – and have received.
And, what does the radical left do for such greatness? They want to destroy it. They want civilization to be run like a corrupt ring.
I say: stand now with Trump. Let truth prevail. And, may God show all the truth: that we are truly a nation stronger because of our president.
The left are afraid. Their power is lessening with every deal that is accomplished by Donald Trump.
In the name of God, and his power for this nation, let us stay strong – and without such evil among us.
.@AmbassadorRice: “Normally there is a full, verbatim transcript” of calls like Trump’s w/ the Ukraine president. Says he tried to “bury” it on a more secure server, but acknowledges the Obama Admin. sometimes did the same. pic.twitter.com/B6zZNbZsTG — Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 27, 2019 So basically they want to impeach Trump for making the conversations […]
The child actor who starred in a series of parody videos as “Mini AOC” is back, after having been bullied off the internet with death threats in July, as Fox News reported back then
The 8-year-old child actor who went viral for impersonating Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, is no longer going to make videos due to death threats and harassment she and her family have received.
Earlier this year, Ava Martinez, known as “Mini AOC,” brought joy to her fans with several videos poking fun at the socialist darling, collecting millions of views on social media.
However, the fun came to a screeching halt on Wednesday when Martinez’s family announced that she would no longer be impersonating Ocasio-Cortez and that all the videos created would be removed.
Ava will not being doing any more MINI AOC content.
The Left’s Harassment and death threats have gone too far for our family. We have been getting calls on our personal phone numbers.
For our safety and for our child’s safety, we deleted all Mini AOC accounts.
Since children in political videos are now such a hot topic, or maybe “inspired” by Greta Thunberg’s PR blitz, or maybe because the death threat thugs have been apprehended, Mini AOC is back. And her comeback video is better than ever. Eat your heart out, Greta!
The child actor who starred in a series of parody videos as “Mini AOC” is back, after having been bullied off the internet with death threats in July, as Fox News reported back then
The 8-year-old child actor who went viral for impersonating Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, is no longer going to make videos due to death threats and harassment she and her family have received.
Earlier this year, Ava Martinez, known as “Mini AOC,” brought joy to her fans with several videos poking fun at the socialist darling, collecting millions of views on social media.
However, the fun came to a screeching halt on Wednesday when Martinez’s family announced that she would no longer be impersonating Ocasio-Cortez and that all the videos created would be removed.
Ava will not being doing any more MINI AOC content.
The Left’s Harassment and death threats have gone too far for our family. We have been getting calls on our personal phone numbers.
For our safety and for our child’s safety, we deleted all Mini AOC accounts.
Since children in political videos are now such a hot topic, or maybe “inspired” by Greta Thunberg’s PR blitz, or maybe because the death threat thugs have been apprehended, Mini AOC is back. And her comeback video is better than ever. Eat your heart out, Greta!
One of the greatest public services President Donald Trump has done for the nation is forcing institutions and people to reveal their true character.
While this has been the most valuable when it comes to the media, it has also been valuable when it comes to unmasking globalist Republicans.
This was again on display this week, most notably in the revelation that Paul Ryan was inciting Fox News from his position on the board of Fox Corporation to “decisively break” with President Trump. Ryan has apparently graduated from providing the worst advice to the president as the speaker of the House to providing the worst advice to Fox News.
Were Fox to follow this advice, the network would have even fewer viewers than CNN, which can at least count on hapless airport captives to boost its numbers. I find it hard to believe that any of Fox’s viewers are not to the right of Shepard Smith and Chris Wallace. If Fox management thinks it can somehow compete for liberal viewers, it is delusional.
These people are supposedly preparing for life after Trump, but more likely, they are preparing for life without viewers. For when they speak of chasing moderates, what they are really suggesting is appealing to liberals. These viewers are never going to tune in to the object of their hatred when they have so many long established liberal echo chambers, no matter how many Donna Braziles they bring on board. But Fox management can certainly chase off its audience by following Ryan’s advice. One America News, or another network to be named later, would welcome their viewers.
Most Republican voters did not realize how in thrall so many of its leaders were to globalism and open-border insanity. They do now.
Trump has realigned the Republican Party, and there is no going back any time soon — not without completely destroying the party and likely the country in the process. That realignment has offset what looked to be a permanent demographic advantage for the Democrats as Trump’s commonsense nationalism is chewing into voting blocs Democrats thought they had locked up for generations.
This is why the latest impeachment gambit is an act of pure weakness, a sign that the Democrats do not think they can beat Trump’s message at the ballot box.
Trump’s approval rating is at least 91% among Republicans. But that number tells only part of the story. That approval runs deep.
Why? Because Trump kept his promises to his voters. His record of accomplishment on the full gamut of issues that his voters care about is impressive. He has been the best Republican president of the modern era on what matters the most (energy independence, unleashing the economy, appointing Constitution-minded judges, keeping the U.S. from further foreign entanglements, advancing the pro-life cause, the Second Amendment, etc.).
A Trump-hating liberal colleague and friend asked me what Trump would have to do to lose my support. The answer was easy: abandon both his principles and his supporters. Judging from his splendid speeches last week in defense of religious freedom and serving the national interest, that is not going to happen. A national election is a binary proposition. It is simply not possible for Trump to devolve to the point where any of the current Democrat options would be preferable.
Republican voters are no longer going to tolerate globalists or Weekly Standard–reading foreign adventurists. That era is gone. Those voters are all too aware of the rigged system that was passed off as free trade, even as the U.S. and working-class Americans were ripped off.
Any Republican politician who thinks his constituency is the media and not the voters is in for a rude awakening. Mitt Romney, who once all but rolled over onto his back so Candy Crowley would scratch his belly, has been one of the worst offenders. Apparently, Crowley is way scarier than Trump, since Romney did not have a bad word for her as she eviscerated his campaign.
Even though Utah is not among the most pro-Trump Republican states, Romney’s approval is crashing among the broader Republican electorate. He is of that breed of Republican, following in the footsteps of George W. Bush and John McCain, who would not dare criticize a Democrat, reserving his fiercest barbs for a fellow Republican. Why? Because these politicians become addicted to being a hero in the media’s story.
Romney is more Fredo than Lando, too foolish to realize how badly he is being used even as he listens to the media sirens calling from the rocks. It’s bad enough when Republican voters see Democrats opposing Trump. But the way so many Republicans do it is disgraceful and dispiriting.
This is not to say the president is above criticism. But adding Republican voices to obvious liberal insanity is a sad spectacle of self-loathing. It’s mostly a media phenomenon. If you are a Republican, the media are the enemy. Any Republican who does not understand this dynamic is not fit for office.
Barack Obama could always count on full party loyalty, and the media would have crushed any dissenting Democrat voice that broke from him. Those same media will celebrate any Republican who breaks from their party. John McCain practically built a career out of bowing to the media, and Romney seems committed to being his heir to that party-bucking label.
When Republicans go bad, they quickly progress through the seven stages of stupidity. Bill Weld suggested that President Trump should face the death penalty over Ukraine. For what is anyone’s guess. He must really seek media adoration to have eclipsed the insanity emanating from the Democrat clown car. Shocker that he is down by only 67 points in New Hampshire. Hey, there is still time for George Will to jump into the race to really shake things up.
Many former Republican pundits and washed up former politicians labor under the delusion that Trump is an aberration and that their audience will come back begging them to toss their pearls of wisdom before deplorable swine. It’s never going to happen. Their audience is gone unless they have a serious conversion moment.
Without Trump, many Americans would not know how awful so many of these politicians and pundits truly were, even as they helped advance the Democrat anti-nation globalist nightmare vision.
It was a good con while it lasted, but it’s over. While the Paul Ryans of the world were vastly preferable to most Democrats, they were still awful, wrong on far too many issues and not committed to actually championing anything of value or opposing the destructive forces arrayed against the Republic. This latest outrage brings further clarity to Ryan’s long track record of failure in the House of Representatives.
Most Republicans will never again care what Mitt Romney thinks about anything, nor will they look to Paul Ryan for guidance or direction. Unless the Murdochs really are set on CNNing their empire, they would do well to send Ryan packing.
Fletch Daniels blogs at deplorabletouchdown.com and can be found on Twitter at @fletchdaniels.
One of the greatest public services President Donald Trump has done for the nation is forcing institutions and people to reveal their true character.
While this has been the most valuable when it comes to the media, it has also been valuable when it comes to unmasking globalist Republicans.
This was again on display this week, most notably in the revelation that Paul Ryan was inciting Fox News from his position on the board of Fox Corporation to “decisively break” with President Trump. Ryan has apparently graduated from providing the worst advice to the president as the speaker of the House to providing the worst advice to Fox News.
Were Fox to follow this advice, the network would have even fewer viewers than CNN, which can at least count on hapless airport captives to boost its numbers. I find it hard to believe that any of Fox’s viewers are not to the right of Shepard Smith and Chris Wallace. If Fox management thinks it can somehow compete for liberal viewers, it is delusional.
These people are supposedly preparing for life after Trump, but more likely, they are preparing for life without viewers. For when they speak of chasing moderates, what they are really suggesting is appealing to liberals. These viewers are never going to tune in to the object of their hatred when they have so many long established liberal echo chambers, no matter how many Donna Braziles they bring on board. But Fox management can certainly chase off its audience by following Ryan’s advice. One America News, or another network to be named later, would welcome their viewers.
Most Republican voters did not realize how in thrall so many of its leaders were to globalism and open-border insanity. They do now.
Trump has realigned the Republican Party, and there is no going back any time soon — not without completely destroying the party and likely the country in the process. That realignment has offset what looked to be a permanent demographic advantage for the Democrats as Trump’s commonsense nationalism is chewing into voting blocs Democrats thought they had locked up for generations.
This is why the latest impeachment gambit is an act of pure weakness, a sign that the Democrats do not think they can beat Trump’s message at the ballot box.
Trump’s approval rating is at least 91% among Republicans. But that number tells only part of the story. That approval runs deep.
Why? Because Trump kept his promises to his voters. His record of accomplishment on the full gamut of issues that his voters care about is impressive. He has been the best Republican president of the modern era on what matters the most (energy independence, unleashing the economy, appointing Constitution-minded judges, keeping the U.S. from further foreign entanglements, advancing the pro-life cause, the Second Amendment, etc.).
A Trump-hating liberal colleague and friend asked me what Trump would have to do to lose my support. The answer was easy: abandon both his principles and his supporters. Judging from his splendid speeches last week in defense of religious freedom and serving the national interest, that is not going to happen. A national election is a binary proposition. It is simply not possible for Trump to devolve to the point where any of the current Democrat options would be preferable.
Republican voters are no longer going to tolerate globalists or Weekly Standard–reading foreign adventurists. That era is gone. Those voters are all too aware of the rigged system that was passed off as free trade, even as the U.S. and working-class Americans were ripped off.
Any Republican politician who thinks his constituency is the media and not the voters is in for a rude awakening. Mitt Romney, who once all but rolled over onto his back so Candy Crowley would scratch his belly, has been one of the worst offenders. Apparently, Crowley is way scarier than Trump, since Romney did not have a bad word for her as she eviscerated his campaign.
Even though Utah is not among the most pro-Trump Republican states, Romney’s approval is crashing among the broader Republican electorate. He is of that breed of Republican, following in the footsteps of George W. Bush and John McCain, who would not dare criticize a Democrat, reserving his fiercest barbs for a fellow Republican. Why? Because these politicians become addicted to being a hero in the media’s story.
Romney is more Fredo than Lando, too foolish to realize how badly he is being used even as he listens to the media sirens calling from the rocks. It’s bad enough when Republican voters see Democrats opposing Trump. But the way so many Republicans do it is disgraceful and dispiriting.
This is not to say the president is above criticism. But adding Republican voices to obvious liberal insanity is a sad spectacle of self-loathing. It’s mostly a media phenomenon. If you are a Republican, the media are the enemy. Any Republican who does not understand this dynamic is not fit for office.
Barack Obama could always count on full party loyalty, and the media would have crushed any dissenting Democrat voice that broke from him. Those same media will celebrate any Republican who breaks from their party. John McCain practically built a career out of bowing to the media, and Romney seems committed to being his heir to that party-bucking label.
When Republicans go bad, they quickly progress through the seven stages of stupidity. Bill Weld suggested that President Trump should face the death penalty over Ukraine. For what is anyone’s guess. He must really seek media adoration to have eclipsed the insanity emanating from the Democrat clown car. Shocker that he is down by only 67 points in New Hampshire. Hey, there is still time for George Will to jump into the race to really shake things up.
Many former Republican pundits and washed up former politicians labor under the delusion that Trump is an aberration and that their audience will come back begging them to toss their pearls of wisdom before deplorable swine. It’s never going to happen. Their audience is gone unless they have a serious conversion moment.
Without Trump, many Americans would not know how awful so many of these politicians and pundits truly were, even as they helped advance the Democrat anti-nation globalist nightmare vision.
It was a good con while it lasted, but it’s over. While the Paul Ryans of the world were vastly preferable to most Democrats, they were still awful, wrong on far too many issues and not committed to actually championing anything of value or opposing the destructive forces arrayed against the Republic. This latest outrage brings further clarity to Ryan’s long track record of failure in the House of Representatives.
Most Republicans will never again care what Mitt Romney thinks about anything, nor will they look to Paul Ryan for guidance or direction. Unless the Murdochs really are set on CNNing their empire, they would do well to send Ryan packing.
Fletch Daniels blogs at deplorabletouchdown.com and can be found on Twitter at @fletchdaniels.
A 16-strong knife gang targetted a group of young athletes in London’s Finsbury Park, robbing and threatening to kill the three white people in the group but telling the black people with them “You’re good.”
The six victims, while walking home through the eponymous park, found “They were being tailed by one of [the gang] on a bike,” recalled Adrian Klemens, a coach at the Dynamic Sports Academy, in comments reported by the Islington Gazette.
“Then there were 16 of them. They circled them and picked one [of the victims] off to the side and said: ‘Give me your phone or I will stab you — put in your Apple Pay password’,” Klemens continued.
“Out of our group three were white and three were black and they said to the black guys: ‘You’re good,’ and just attacked the white guys.”
‘White People Are Devils, I Hate You’ – Man Launches Racist Tirade Against London Underground Commuters https://t.co/kkyXhGyoA4
However, the victim did not know the password, as it was mother’s account, and after getting it wrong several times was warned: “If you get this wrong again you’re dead.”
Fortunately, he had the athleticism to make a dash for freedom, escaping the potentially murderous group. The other two white members of the group had their phones taken from them.
The victims were young, aged 17 to 22, and the one who had to run for his life is now too frightened to return to the academy.
“The kid who ran off said he’s scared to come now — they threatened to stab him,” explained Klemens.
The coach suggested that the forces of law and order have a weak to non-existent presence in Finsbury Park, located in a multicultural area best known for its links to radical Islam.
“I’ve been running that sports academy for 13 years and I’ve never seen police,” he said.
Curiously, the Islington Gazette provided no description of the suspects, despite the attack’s racially-charged overtones.
UK: Whites Scared, White-Owned Businesses Stoned in a Racially Divided Bradford ‘Heading for Disaster’ https://t.co/Rd1O6L29HD
The craziness in New York City continues unabated. In the municipal government’s endless war against the insufficiently woke, a new weapon has been added to the social justice warriors’ arsenal. The City Hall Commission on Human Rights has now issued an edict saying that it will henceforth be illegal to use the phrase “illegal alien” if it’s directed at someone in a way that is “motivated by hate.” You will also be in violation of the law if you threaten to call immigration enforcement on an illegal alien. And the fines you can be hit with are jaw dropping. (NY Post)
It’s now against the law in New York City to threaten someone with a call to immigration authorities or refer to them as an “illegal alien” when motivated by hate.
The restrictions — violations of which are punishable by fines of up to $250,000 per offense — are outlined in a 29-page directive released by City Hall’s Commission on Human Rights.
“‘Alien’ — used in many laws to refer to a ‘noncitizen’ person — is a term that may carry negative connotations and dehumanize immigrants, marking them as ‘other,’” reads one passage of the memo. “The use of certain language, including ‘illegal alien’ and ‘illegals,’ with the intent to demean, humiliate, or offend a person or persons constitutes discrimination.”
So using the same phrase that appears all through Title 8 of federal law to identify an illegal alien in New York City can now land you in hot water. And if you inform the illegal alien that you are going to report their unlawful presence in the country to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), not only will the police not assist the feds in taking the illegal into custody, but they may be dispatched to take you in if the person files a complaint.
Then you may have to cough up a quarter-million dollars in fines to the city. (And given how badly the budget has been mismanaged under the de Blasio administration, they could probably use the money.) Isn’t that just lovely?
The ironic thing here is that it’s still technically legal (though very messed up) to use a racial epithet against a citizen, provided it’s not in the workplace, it’s against the law to identify a criminal based on their illegal status. And while you are encouraged to report virtually any other crime you observe to the police for investigation, suggesting that you might report this particular crime can wind up bankrupting you in municipal court.
Oh, and there’s even more good news for illegal aliens in the Big Apple. The Mayor is going to try to order bars and restaurants to accept city ID cards (which illegal aliens in New York City can now sign up for, along with driver’s licenses). And he’s doing it despite the fact that it’s a violation of state law to accept that ID for the sale of alcohol. (They can only accept a driver’s license, a non-driver ID card issued by the DMV, a U.S. military ID, a valid passport or a visa from any country.)
In New York City the patients are now running the mental asylum. Flee while you can, folks. Somebody is eventually going to wise up and just build a huge wall around Gotham and trap you all there.
