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September 2022

MY SAY: TIME OFF AND NO BONES ABOUT IT

Dear e-pals.

As a “seniora” of advancing years I have decided to take off some time  from  today, September 1 until September 10 to sort out  minor but vexing health issues from teeth to toes, knees and hands and assorted creaking joints which need repairs and maintenance, all to clear the deck for the fall and social and political and spirited blogging, and to buy and install a new computer.  Have a wonderful week ….rsk

The following excerpt of a song composed in 1917 by James Weldon Johnson with lyrics by Jerry Cantrell is amusing re old bones.

James Weldon Johnson was an American writer and civil rights activist. He was married to civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson. Johnson was a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, where he started working in 1917.

The toe bone’s connected to the foot bone,
The foot bone’s connected to the ankle bone,
The ankle bone’s connected to the leg bone,
Now shake dem skeleton bones!

The leg bone’s connected to the knee bone,
The knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone,
The thigh bone’s connected to the hip bone,
Now shake dem skeleton bones!

The hip bone’s connected to the back bone
The back bone’s connected to the neck bone,
The neck bone’s connected to the head bone,
Now shake dem skeleton bones!

The finger bone’s connected to the hand bone,
The hand bone’s connected to the arm bone,
The arm bone’s connected to the shoulder bone,
Now shake dem skeleton bones!

Why would we trust the media, ‘experts,’ bureaucrats, and other Democrats when they so willingly spread misinformation? By Jack Hellner

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/09/why_would_we_trust_the_media_experts_bureaucrats_and_other_democrats_when_they_so_willingly_spread_misinformation.html

Here are some examples of misinformation used to infect the U.S with a leftist agenda: 

In 2016, Hillary and the DNC couldn’t figure out how to beat Trump based on her record and the Democrats radical, leftist policies. Therefore, they decided to pay a foreign national millions of dollars to create a fictitious dossier to destroy Trump. Then, they committed fraud by lying to the Federal Election commission that the money was for legal fees.

The media and other Democrats never cared about all the laws Hillary broke, nor the massive amounts of kickbacks paid to her family and foundation. They wanted to defeat Trump and have a Democrat President. Criminal activity was irrelevant. The Clintons have always been above the law. 

4 experts make the case that the Clinton Foundation’s fundraising was troubling

“The idea that you have foreign governments … heavily involved in financing an institution that’s this tied to the secretary of state’s family — well, that appears to be something new.”

During and before the four years Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, the Clinton Foundation run by her husband took tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments and corporations.

Many of these donors had a lot riding on Clinton’s decisions. Saudi Arabia gave the foundation up to $25 million, and Clinton signed off on a controversial $29 billion sale of fighter jets to the country. Oil companies gave the foundation around $3 million, and Clinton approved a lucrative gas pipeline in the Canadian tar sands they’d long sought.

The fictitious dossier was peddled through the complicit media and politicized, corrupt Justice Department in their efforts to destroy Trump and his associates. Some corrupt bureaucrats at the FBI then used the garbage dossier when they lied to the FISA court to get permission to illegally spy on people surrounding Trump. 

The Death Warrant for American Ingenuity By Janet Levy

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/09/the_death_warrant_for_american_ingenuity.html

Last September, scores of patent-holders demonstrated in six cities across the U.S. wearing black t-shirts that said, “Homo sapiens inventoris: Endangered Species.”  These men and women of ingenuity were protesting America’s decade of stolen dreams: the years since the passage of the America Invents Act (AIA) of 2011 and the establishment of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), which together have made it easy for big corporations to steal their ideas and profit from them with impunity.

“We’ve had piracy for all the years I’ve been an inventor, but the AIA just put it on steroids, in the context that now you can get PTAB-ed and lose your rights without any due process at all,” said Dan Brown at the Detroit rally.  A professor with more than 40 patents, including inventions used in space shuttles, Brown invented the bionic wrench, a one-size-fits-all wrench that obviates the problem of stripped bolt corners.  He says Sears stole his idea, down to the marketing pitch, and replaced his product on its shelves with a Chinese rip-off.

Participants at these rallies, organized by U.S. Inventor, a non-profit fighting for inventors’ rights, had similar stories.  So do others represented by U.S. Inventor.  Among them are Molly Metz, a jump rope champion whose patented idea for a ball-and-eye pivot mechanism for speed ropes was stolen by a rogue competitor; Glenn Sanders, whose patent on Emmy award–winning wireless video recording equipment was invalidated by PTAB; and Gene Luoma, an octogenarian muscular dystrophy patient who lost his patent and millions in royalties on his Zip-It drain cleaner.

These are individuals who came up with brilliant ideas or solutions, worked on them, built prototypes, set up small businesses, and plowed ahead to sell their products.  But the new patent system under AIA is throttling them.  For them, it is destroying the culture of inventiveness, innovation, and creating original products and solutions that made America great and rocketed it into space.

To understand how that came about, a brief history of American patent law is in order.

Barr-a-Lago William Barr remains the defender of the deep state at its worst. By Lloyd Billingsley

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/31/barr-a-lago/

The FBI’s August 8 raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence has called out commentary from all quarters. Last week, former Attorney General William Barr told the Bari Weiss podcast what he thought about it. 

“Number one is that I think a lot of the attacks on the FBI are over the top because a decision like this is not made by the FBI,” Barr said. “In fact, I don’t think the FBI would push a decision that it’s best to go in and search and obtain those documents after being jerked around for a year and a half. The decision would be made at the Department of Justice, by subordinates of the AG, and ultimately signed off on by the AG. The FBI would be told to go and execute it. I think the idea that the FBI is the problem here is misplaced.” 

Barr was more disturbed by “the constant pandering to outrage” on the Right, without discussion of whether the outrage had any merit. The FBI seized Trump’s passports, leaving the impression that the former president had committed a crime and was now a flight risk. FBI agents also rummaged through the closets and dressers of Melania Trump. While Trump attorneys were forced outside, the FBI easily could have planted or destroyed information. If anyone was outraged about that conduct, it would be hard to blame them. 

Weiss brought up the “Russiagate” episode, as the host explained, “the idea that Donald Trump was a compromised agent of Moscow. That there were deep connections between Trump’s people and Russian intelligence. That the Trump campaign had colluded with the Russians, including by hacking Democratic National Committee emails.” Barr remained in his defensive stance. 

The Mysteries of Long COVID Long COVID may be one of many reasons why in a recession, labor paradoxically still remains scarce. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/31/the-mysteries-of-long-covid/

When the original strain of COVID-19 arrived in spring 2020, a pandemic soon swept the country. 

By far most survived COVID. But hundreds of thousands did not. American deaths now number well over 1 million.

Amid the tragedy, there initially was some hope that the pernicious effects of the disease would all disappear upon recovery among the nearly 99 percent who survived the initial infection. 

Vaccinations by late 2020 were promised to end the pandemic for good. But they did not. New mutant strains, while more infectious, were said to be less lethal, thus supposedly resulting in spreading natural immunity while causing fewer deaths from infection. 

But that too was not quite so. 

Instead, sometimes the original symptoms, sometimes frightening new ones, not only lingered after the acute phase, but were of increased morbidity. 

Now two-and-a-half years after the onset of the pandemic, there may be more than 20 million Americans who have had are are still suffering from what is currently known as “long COVID”—a less acute version but one ultimately as debilitating.

Some pessimistic analyses suggest well over 4 million once-active Americans are now disabled from this often-ignored pandemic and out of the workforce. 

Perhaps 10-30 percent of those originally infected with COVID-19 have some lingering symptoms six months to a year after the initial infection. And they are quite physically sick, desperate to get well, and certainly not crazy.

So far, no government Marshall plan exists to cure long COVID. 

The Rape of the American Mind The Left will never let truth interfere with their lust to have their way with America. Will Alexander

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/09/rape-american-mind-will-alexander/

“In the same decade that JFK, RFK, and MLK were assassinated; when America was bogged down in Vietnam; and one month before the grisly Manson murders – three men landing on the moon shouted to the world that, above it all, the American spirit still soared.”

Last week my better half and I, Tess, went to a Southern California thrift store to hunt for treasures that others had all but trashed.  Tess found a couple of delicate plates that a young clerk was about to wrap with an old yellowed-out newspaper that she had just torn at the fold.

“Wait a sec,” I said before the nonchalant clerk took another rip.  “That’s a pretty old newspaper.  Mind if I take it off your hands?”

“Sure,” she shrugged, quickly handing it to me then reaching for more paper to wrap the plates.

The dingy, old broadsheet turned out to be the torn top portion of the Los Angeles Times, July 21, 1969, published one day after Neil Armstrong became the first man on Earth to step foot on the moon.  

An estimated 650 million people around the world, including 93 percent of Americans, watched as Armstrong descended the ladder of spacecraft “Eagle” to plant his left boot onto the powdery lunar surface.  

Like many newspapers, the LA Times’ “Extra” edition packed it’s A-Section with headlines aimed at capturing every possible angle of the history-making.  

The story “Millions Over World Cheer Moon Landing” began: “Crowds screamed joyously in Trafalgar Square, people danced in Chile, a Russian yelled, ‘Hooray.’  Almost everyone on earth was somehow touched by man’s arrival on the moon.”

The Globalists’ COVID Narrative Collapses The rats are jumping ship – and trying to blame Trump. Glazov Gang

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/09/glazov-gang-globalists-covid-narrative-collapses-glazov-gang/

This new Glazov Gang episode features Leo Hohmann, a veteran investigative reporter and author whose book Stealth Invasion spent the majority of 2017 among Amazon.com’s top 10 books on immigration. Visit him at LeoHohmann.com.

Leo discusses: The Globalists’ COVID Narrative Collapses, analyzing how the rats are jumping ship – and trying to blame Trump.

Don’t miss it!

Our Ship of State is Becoming a Ship of Fools And our reckoning fast approaches. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/09/our-ship-state-becoming-ship-fools-bruce-thornton/

The Ship of Fools allegory first appears in Plato’s Republic, where Plato uses it to show how  a weak and badly trained captain creates chaos among the crew, who bicker over which of them should steer the ship, even though they have little of the knowledge and skills necessary for doing so. They end up mutinying against the captain and spending their time plundering the ship’s stores and eating and drinking, even as they sail towards disaster.

Plato, of course, was targeting the Athenian democracy, and its presumption that ordinary citizens have the capacity to govern, even though they lack the philosophical knowledge that shows what is good for people and the city they inhabit––not power, conquest, wealthy, or the pleasures of the body, but the virtue that comes from philosophical study. In other words, a technocratic oligarchy that Plato called “guardians” in his imagined perfect government.

For over a century the West has been evolving into such a government, whether it be socialism, communism, or the progressivism that has increasingly dominated our technocratic “managerial elite” and the numerous executive agencies staffed by credentialed “experts” who know better than the people what’s best for them.

This tyranny of the minority “managerial elite” has been more dangerous than the tyranny of the majority, assaulting our Constitutional structure that managed to avoid those extremes through divided and balanced government, along with the unalienable rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Man Falsely Credited With Ending the Cold War Dies Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/09/man-falsely-credited-ending-cold-war-dies-robert-spencer/

Reuters was up front about it, headlining their obituary this way: “Last Soviet leader Gorbachev, who ended Cold War and won Nobel prize, dies aged 91.” CNN lamented that “Mikhail Gorbachev’s tragedy is that he outlived the thaw in the Cold War between Moscow and the US, after doing more than anyone to engineer it.” The same alleged news network headlined another story on their fallen hero: “Mikhail Gorbachev, former Soviet president who took down the Iron Curtain, dies.” The BBC was just a trifle more circumspect, going with the headline: “Mikhail Gorbachev: The Soviet leader who helped end the Cold War.” Gorbachev did indeed help end the Cold War, but chiefly by doing something that Reuters, CNN and the Beeb don’t deign to mention: Gorbachev helped end the Cold War by losing it.

The Leftist intelligentsia that runs the propaganda organs known as CNN, the BBC and Reuters, along with the rest of the establishment media, will never admit it, but the man who actually ended the Cold War was Ronald Reagan. As Rating America’s Presidents explains, Reagan became president in the era of détente, when it was generally agreed that the best way to deal with the Soviet Union and global Communism in general was to play down differences, turn a blind eye to the human rights abuses endemic to socialist states, seek accords that would ease tensions, prevent the use of nuclear weapons, and allow the two sides to continue in much the same way indefinitely. The détente era reached its apex on June 18, 1979, when Jimmy Carter and Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev signed the SALT II Treaty, and then, as the world watched agog, Carter embraced and kissed the Communist despot.

President Reagan set a different tone. He was a public critic of détente as disadvantageous to American interests. On June 8, 1982, in a speech before the British House of Commons, he contradicted the conventional wisdom that the Soviet Union was here to stay and boldly predicted its demise. Reagan said, “The march of freedom and democracy…will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history, as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people.”

Hamas in Turkey: Money Laundering, Turkish Passports, Government Collusion and Terror Bank Accounts by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18844/hamas-turkey-money-laundering

Beside Erdoğan’s regular antisemitic outbursts, other alarming issues — such as Hamas’ secret investment portfolio in Turkey and Turkey’s granting passports to Hamas terrorists — need to be addressed by Turkish government authorities.
See the US Treasury’s list of specially designated nationals whose businesses operate in Turkey and elsewhere.
“It seems that Hamas has chosen to manage its secret investment portfolio in Turkey because of the weak financial system in Turkey, which enables Hamas to hide its money laundering activity and tax violations from the regulatory bodies. Trend Gyo, controlled by Hamas, has five subsidiaries in Turkey. Senior officials in the investment portfolio hold dual, high-ranking positions in all five companies.” — Double Cheque, February 2, 2018.
As Turkey-Israel relations appear to be entering a so-called “new phase”, the government of Turkey needs to publicly explain the following: When Hamas began operating in Turkey, what its political, financial, military, and diplomatic activities have been there, how many Hamas terrorists have lived in Turkey, and why Turkey has enabled them. Why did Turkey give them Turkish citizenship? And if they really deported a few of them, what has changed? Does Turkey see Hamas as a terrorist organization now? How many Hamas terrorists remain in Turkey as of today? And why?
[A] senior Turkish official and other sources told Middle East Eye that Turkey had not expelled any Hamas members and was not planning to expel the Muslim Brotherhood presence in the country, either. As Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, it is probably not a reach to assume that Turkey has no plans to ask Hamas to leave any time soon.
Until the Turkish government officials honestly and transparently answer these questions and take concrete steps to end Hamas’ presence in Turkey, its “rapprochement” with Israel should be understood only as an unauthentic attempt to benefit Erdoğan’s regime and harm Israel.

“Tayyip [Erdoğan] is a Jew who pretends to be a Muslim,” wrote Yüksel Üstün, on his Facebook account in 2020. In November 2021, a criminal court sentenced Üstün with a fine of 7,000 Turkish liras ($385) for “insulting the president.” In the complaint, filed by Hüseyin Aydın, an attorney for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the expression “Jew” (when applied to Erdoğan) was deemed “humiliating, damaging to honor and dignity.”

The Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office of the city in which Üstün resides filed the lawsuit against Üstün after the Ministry of Justice gave permission to prosecute him. The indictment argued that the suspect committed the alleged crime in his post by “offending the honor, dignity and respectability of the president”. The court initially sentenced the defendant to 10 months and 20 days in prison. The judge later commuted the sentence to a judicial fine. The defendant nearly went to prison for calling Erdoğan “a Jew.”