* If Elon Musk was trying to defraud anyone in all of this, the process would be reasonably simple. All he would have to do is say “look I’ve got x y and z dirt on you. And I’d better get some of that kickback money or else I’m going to tell everybody else.” Obviously that didn’t happen.
# The far left is always saying ” tax the rich”… Interesting how they lean on that so heavily and not “help the poor”.
# The hysterical reaction to Donald Trump and then later on to Elon Musk and DOGE, is firmly rooted in the fear of the electorate as they increasingly become aware of how badly they’ve been taken.
# The left keeps pointing to the slight down turn in the stock market. First of all it’s back up again. Secondly if we have a downturn economically because of cutting wasteful government spending, I submit that the economic numbers that were presented for quite some time weren’t real to begin with.
# Eith the Eastern Time zone shifting last weekend, there’s a lot of speculation online that Stonehenge was used as a timepiece. It does seem an interesting conclusion, but if that’s the case it would explain why they didn’t develop the wrist watch until some 1800 years later. The early experiments must have been awfully heavy to wear on one’s wrist.
#No we’re not talking about the singer.
And then we have John Kass, who correctly observes:
“Is the Democrat message pure Jacobin hatred for anything pro-American and anything that could be considered pro-President Donald Trump? They’re feral creatures now, lonely, isolated, frightened without leadership, desperate for relevance, without any cogent message, terrified at what’s to become of them. And quite mad, like inmates in Victorian lunatic asylum.”
The saddest part of all is it’s a hell of their own creation.
The one worlders never expected Donald Trump to win a second term, particularly with the numbers that he got. So now, they are forced to try and reorient the structures of world power.
To that end, they’ve started making noises about how the wildly unpopular British prime minister Starmer is now the defective leader of the free world. A laughable concept in itself..
Town Halls Tom Knighton points out that the UK has not been part of the Free world for some years and suggest that nobody else in the EU qualifies for that mantle either.
I quoted Bobby Jindal earlier today where he talked about the left trying to lead the world from behind. That’s not how leadership works. But here it is, that’s why the left and the GOP establishment which is also de facto leftist, are working so hard against Trump. He will never leave from behind, because he recognizes being behind is not the role of a leader.
But this leads me to a thought… political correctness has led us to this pass, where are are told all cultures are equal. The weeds, in effect, are equal to the flowers. And of course the weeds, which now have that leg up, if you will, are pushing the idea that the flowers are the problem.
Back when we fought the Nazis, one of the things we fought for was the American way of life. Our culture, in short. Sadly, we cultivate that garden, our culture, no longer. Is it any wonder the weeds are doing so well?
This is a theme that I will be returning to over the next weeks and months, because i think the concept bears on everything we do as a people, both in terms of government, (and therein both domestically and internationally_ ) as well as at a personal and interpersonal level in our daily lives. That concept being the culture and its values have given the world the most benefit, even with all it’s faults attached.
For the moment, lets look at the international and governmental side of things, particularly with regards to the rise of Islam
(Notice, please, I didn’t say “Radical Islam”. Reason being I find no “moderation” in Islam. This is a point I’ve alluded to in the past and I have some writings in the pipeline that will expand on this, which will be posted in the near future.)
To this point, a years ago, Bobby Jindal spoke to the AEI. Wherein, he said, in part:
When President Obama rejects American exceptionalism, what he is really doing is embracing the idea, long-held by progressives stretching back a century, that we are simply members of a global village, all of us sharing principles and cultures of equal merit.
No country has principles that are better than another’s. There is no nation, system of government or understanding of rights that is exceptional.
I wish President Obama had watched The Incredibles, because then he’d know that when everybody’s special, nobody is.
The danger of this idea is that it ignores the unique and distinct role the United States is called to play in the world, because of her strength, her resources, and her historical commitment to freedom and human dignity.
First of all, Bobby, Obama did know this. He was pushing the ideas he was pushing and what Democrats have been pushing for generations now, toward the goal of eliminating the concept of meritocracy.
And of course the idea that the traditional American culture is what drives that role, that strength.
Ideas have consequences.
It is only when you conclude that we are all just citizens of the world, with ideas that are just as valuable as anyone else’s, that you would come to the conclusion that the United States should “lead from behind” – which really means, of course, not leading at all.
It would take too much of your valuable time for me to list a bill of particulars of all of the consequences of President Obama’s failure on the international stage.
Today, we see a world in which the Obama Administration has neglected or abandoned America’s longstanding allies.
Our “special relationship” with Britain is gone, NATO is drifting, Eastern Europe is disaffected, and Israel has been purposefully alienated from the United States.
Consider the consequences of just the past year.
It has brought us the rise of ISIS and the capture of Mosul, Russia’s expansion and invasion in Crimea and Ukraine, new heights of crisis in the Middle East and Israel, genocide and destruction of religious minorities in Iraq, more Chinese aggression and conflict in the South China Sea, more bombing in Libya, more saber rattling from North Korea, a dangerous trend of anti-Semitism, and a refugee crisis on our own border.
For anyone with a degree of introspection, this would be a time to consider whether the ramifications of your ideas were leading the world to experience more chaos and less clarity.
But that is not what President Obama has done.
He has not reconsidered whether his approach to leadership is perhaps a part of the reason that the world seems to be spinning off its axis.
Instead, he once again views himself as a noble, deliberative thinker who takes his time and gets it right.
Peter Baker recently wrote an interesting piece in the New York Times about a series of off-the-record dinners President Obama has held with foreign policy thinkers.
Of course, as it always is in Washington, not even the president can really go off-the-record.
The attendees recalled the president “sarcastically imitating his adversaries,” saying, quote: “Oh, it’s a shame when you have a wan, diffident, professorial president with no foreign policy other than ‘don’t do stupid things,’ … I do not make apologies for being careful in these areas, even if it doesn’t make for good theater.”
I don’t get invited to the White House much. I wasn’t at that dinner. But if I had been, I can tell you what I would have said when he rolled out that straw man and set it aflame.
Respectfully, Mr. President, this isn’t about “good theater.”
This is about life and death, freedom and despotism, order and chaos.
This is about the role of the United States of America as the leader of the free world.
This is about nothing less than whether we will squander America’s ability to continue in that role, or whether we will pass on to our children a nation that is secure, well-armed, and confident in its ability to sustain a just peace in the world.
As Walter Russell Mead wrote in response to that anecdote, “The real criticism of the president isn’t that his foreign policy is too deliberative, it is that his deliberations don’t seem to end with policies that, well, work.”
The truth is that none of us would care how long President Obama takes to make a decision if it were the right decision.
As the great military strategist Colonel John Boyd once said, “Decisions without actions are pointless.
Actions without decisions are reckless.” Time and again, this president has managed to do both.
The problem with the “smart diplomacy” that was supposed to make everything better isn’t that it doesn’t make for “good theater.” It’s that it isn’t very smart.
This isn’t about disliking how long it takes him to come up with an idea.
It’s about the ideas and what follows from them. The Russian reset. Iraq. Afghanistan. Israel. Egypt. Iran. Libya. Europe. China.
In each of these areas, it’s not just that the President took too long to come up with an answer. It’s that the answer was wrong.
If only he’d had the help of a wise steady hand, a policy expert in dealing with foreign affairs, he’d have come up with better answers. But instead he just had Hillary Clinton.
How did we get to this point? Just ask the people who can be honest about what happened.
Ask former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who says he and others advised the president to negotiate a Status of Forces agreement with Iraq that could’ve forestalled the rise of ISIS… but says the White House refused to lead. Ask , former Ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill, who says he was abandoned and ignored by Secretary Clinton. Or ask the outgoing chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Michael Flynn, who says the world today is more chaotic than any time since the 1930s.
Today, we are living with the consequences of the Obama-Clinton ideas when it comes to foreign, domestic, and defense policy.
And those ideas have set America on a path that will create more chaos, more conflict, and more wars.
All of this leads directly back to the misbegotten notion that our culture, and the principles that have historically driven that culture are no better than any other… a mindset that has driven leftist thought for decades. Yes, even Islam, which gives us ISIS, which gives us the beheading of the week on YouTube.
As I said the other day, all of this is because we have entrusted the power of government to those who don’t believe in traditional American culture, who are using the power of government to over-ride and debase that culture.
Wait, what?
Yeah it really was a thing.
I thought my post yesterday would put the Zelenskyy debacle to rest but overnight I was included in a Zoom call with some European friends from France, Germany, and the UK. I also went back and watched the whole video of the White House encounter. To say I am horrified at what I missed is an understatement. I got some of this Info from Tucker Carlson and many other podcasts. I just couldn’t believe that little dictator called Vice President Vance a “Bitch.” Hopefully, this post puts the debacle together for those who did not see it.
Did you realize in the exchange with Vice President Vance, Zelenskyy mumbled “Bitch” in his language. This is why the Ambassador to Ukraine, Oksana Markarova, had her hands on her head. She knew what he said. Not only that, but Zelenskyy outright threatened the United States on live TV. What made President Trump angry was when Zelenskyy said the oceans separating us would no longer protect us and we would “feel” the war and terror. This is when President Trump started telling him not to say how we are going to feel. He knew it was a threat and our President went after him.
I am going to try to keep this brief. I knew it was serious when the biggest war hawk in Congress, Lindsey Graham, stood in front of the cameras and went after Zelenskyy, disavowing him. These two men are friends. Graham has been responsible for getting Zelenskyy billions of dollars from the US. He knew the threat had been made. This wasn’t just a shouting match and he wanted to distance himself before something happened.
What disturbs me is what Zelenskyy has been doing with the money and weapons received from the US. Over the past three years, with the tacit support of its Western patrons, the Ukrainian government has committed a remarkable number of serious crimes. The Ukrainians sold huge quantities of American weapons on the international black market at twenty cents on the dollar. These weapons are now in the hands of armed groups around the world, including Hamas, the Mexican drug cartels and the forces now controlling Syria. God knows what the Ukrainians have done with the pathogens in American biolabs in their country. Even US intel agencies aren’t sure. The Ukrainians have also murdered several people in various countries in political assassinations and tried to murder others, including American journalists and a European head of state. This is all true, and it’s all going to come out at some point.
I have never supported Ukraine and it hurts to see so many Americans flying the Ukranian flag on their FB pages. How propaganda has worked on our citizens! Zelenskyy is a part of the party that overtook Europe in 1939 that starts with an “N.” It has been covered up because Obama and Biden were a part of this. Trump was impeached just for questioning them about Ukraine.
I am glad we all got to watch as it unfolded because it was more than a shouting match. We, our Country, the United States, were threatened in the Oval Office yesterday on live television, by a pathetic, diabolical dictator.
The writer of this was unknown to me, but from what I have observed, and researched, this is far closer to the truth than what you will hear on MSM. I hope all my friends who unfriended friends, and changed their profile to the Ukrainian flag, will reconsider.
America first!
AOC calling Elon Musk stupid is like a bartender going a rocket scientist stupidm Ummm… Hmm. Wait a minute…
# How the hell did we go from Democrats complaining Donald Trump was going to start WWiii to complaining that he wasn’t going to start WWiii? It’s like this:
# If you’re working for the Federal department of education, and you get fired because the department is closing, and you’re posting angry notes on social media, just be aware that there’s a goodly chunk of kids, thanks to your efforts, who won’t be able to read them or anything else for that matter. Which just might have something to do with why you no longer have a job.
#
# Particularly given what the CBS tlpoll is saying (which by the way probably annoys the heck out of the CBS supposed news people) I wonder if the Democrats realize the kind of damage they’ve done to their brand at the State of the Union address the other night.
“Unelected”
Elon Musk has no actual power. He is simply an advisor to the president. Anyone has the ability to advise the president. Even you.
“Foreigner” “we need to deport him”
Well, that’s not true either. Elon Musk is an American citizen having been naturalized over 20 years ago. Be therefore has the same rights as any other Americans citizen.
There is this also, after 50 years and longer of the American left extolling the virtues of immigrants, your objection to Musk calling him a foreigner falls on its face even absent the fact that he is an American citizen.
“He’s burning up the basis of our economy!!”
Oh this one is just rich I’ve seen it being passed around today. So you’re assuming the government is the basis of our economy? Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the government is a parasite on the economy. How well the economy does is directly tied to how much of government we are able to keep out of the way. Which by the way is precisely why the founders of our great country wrote the Constitution the way they did. To keep government reigned in. We are in trouble now to the precise degree we are because we’ve lost sight of that as a country.
Finally we should perhaps consider the fact that the top 1% of the wealth holders in this country voted overwhelmingly for Harris and the Democrats. Obviously, they think they gain something from Democrat party policy.
And I won’t even discuss the number of times I’ve seen people calling for his extermination.
Donald Trump promised to do certain things if elected. Elon Musk is helping him do that. This is a rather unique situation within the last 50 years or so that an elected official actually does what he says he’s going to do.
Now, on to the IRS.
If you’ll recall, this is precisely what I said what happen:
Zelenskyy has undergone a remarkable transformation over the past few days, and now he’s now desperately groveling to President Trump. In stark contrast to his previous posturing, Zelenskyy is now seeking to mend fences and align himself with Trump’s strong leadership. Zelenskyy opened his statement by pledging Ukraine’s commitment to peace: “I would like to reiterate Ukraine’s commitment to peace. None of us wants an endless war.” This is a shift from the rhetoric we’ve heard in the past, where the Ukrainian president seemed more focused on demanding American aid than negotiating for peace
On the day of that meeting in the White House I predicted he was going to back down. I said he didn’t have a choice.
But there’s other things going on here that the press refuses to mention. For one thing, Trump has been trying to get the EU to pony up for its own defense for a long time. Guess what happened after zielinski got backhanded in the oval office? Suddenly the EU found money for the purpose. And like I said the other day how in the hell did we get from the left worrying that Trump was going to start world war 3 to being annoyed that he wasn’t going to start world war 3?
* Interesting how we haven’t seen anything out of Snopes showing up in social media during the Biden misadministration. For long years and we haven’t seen anything. But apparently, the zombie apocalypse is upon us because within the last 4 weeks we’re suddenly seeing a spike of references. I’ve written several times over the years where Snopes just gotten caught flat out lying, and covering for the Democrats. Let me be clear on this point; The list of things that I trust more than I trust Snopes includes absolutely everything.
* A leftist, as a rule, is somebody that wants everything you’ve got, except your job.
* Donald Trump has been trying desperately to get Europe to pony up for its own defense. Well, guess what happened after the grifter Zielinsky got backhanded in the oval office? That said, and as expected the response from Europe was vocally encouraging but fiscally disappointing. If you’ll remember I predicted this outcome just a few days ago.
* I’m hearing quite a bit just now about Zielinsky not wearing a suit to his meeting with the president and the vice president. I suggest that he was trying to play the desperately leader of the third world country, the aggrieved and poor president. Trouble is he’s got four or five houses scattered all over Ukraine and a million Dollar Plus layout in Florida. And yes I’m saying we shouldn’t be impressed by his “poor me” act. My old boss Roger Kimball has more.
* We’ve been hearing from the Democrats for quite some time about January 6th protesters interfering with official proceedings. So why hasn’t this guy been charged with such? Being disruptive in congress, so easy a caveman could do it. And did.
* And while we’re on the subject of the State of the Union…
* There’s a little cautisal in the Ukrainian Constitution which says that no elections can occur when there’s a war on. Does it really surprise anyone why Z would want to continue the war?
* The thought occurs that Zielinsky in all likelihood is now the highest paid actor in history. Too bad he wasn’t nominated for an Oscar for best actor.
* Just thinking about the firings over at MSNBC the change of attitude at the Washington Post Lester Holt leaving nbc, etc etc one really must wonder if there isn’t a connection between that list and USAID no longer funding those networks.
Key Tariff Details
Agricultural Products
Soybeans: Up to 27% tariff
Corn: Approximately 65% tariff
Wheat: Around 50-60% tariff
Pork: 37-50% tariff
Beef: 25-35% tariff
Manufacturing and Technology
Aircraft: 25-35% tariff
Semiconductors: Up to 25% tariff
Automotive parts: 15-25% tariff
Certain electronic components: 10-25% tariff
Chemical and Industrial Goods
Chemicals: 5-25% tariff
Plastics: 6-10% tariff
Machinery: 10-25% tariff
Notable High-Tariff Categories
Some agricultural products have tariffs as high as 65%
High-tech manufacturing items often face 25% tariffs
Specific products targeted during trade tensions can see even higher rates.
Canada’s Tariffs on the US
Agricultural Tariffs
Dairy products: Up to 270% tariff (highest tariff category)
Poultry: 131-238% tariff
Eggs: Up to 238% tariff
Cheese: 200-300% tariff
Butter: Around 298% tariff
Manufacturing Tariffs
Automotive: 6.1% on passenger vehicles
Auto parts: 4.4-6.5%
Steel products: 25% in some categories
Aluminum: Varying rates between 0-10%
Other Significant Tariffs
Lumber: 11-24% (fluctuates based on trade agreements)
Wine and spirits: 5-15%
Certain electronics: 0-5%
Machinery: 0-9%
Notable Context
Canada uses a complex tariff-rate quota system
Many goods have zero tariffs under USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement)
Tariff rates can change based on trade negotiations
Agricultural products, especially supply-managed sectors, have the highest tariffs.
Yes, unquestionably…. Along with everybody else around them.
