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50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Florida Unemployment Rate Drops To 2.5% As Red States’ Economies Continue To Outperform Blue States

https://theleoterrell.com/florida-unemployment-rate-drops-to-2-5-as-red-states-economies-continue-to-outperform-blue-states/?utm_source=jeeng&utm_medium=email

On Friday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced that his state’s unemployment rate dropped to 2.5 percent in December, far below the national average. The news follows the pattern of Republican-led states outperforming Democrat-led states in economically recovering from the pandemic. 

“Florida continues to outpace the nation and withstand negative headwinds due to federal policy,” DeSantis said. “I look forward to building off our success with record tax relief in the upcoming legislative session.”

As explained in a press release from DeSantis’ office, Florida’s unemployment rate in December was “2.5 percent, 0.1 percentage point lower than the previous month’s rate and 1.0 percentage point lower than the national rate of 3.5 percent.”

“Florida’s statewide unemployment rate has been lower than the national rate for 25 consecutive months since December 2020,” the press release continued. “Between December 2021 and December 2022, Florida’s labor force grew by 361,000, or 3.5 percent. This was faster than the national labor force growth rate of 1.6 percent over the year.”

“Between December 2021 and December 2022, total private sector employment grew by 425,800 jobs (+5.3 percent), faster than the national private sector job growth rate of 3.3 percent over the year,” the press release added. “As of December 2022, Florida employers have added jobs for 32 consecutive months since May 2020. Florida’s private sector over-the-year job growth rate has exceeded the nation’s for 21 consecutive months since April 2021.”

Vladimir Lenin and the American Left Study history to find out what ‘progressives’ have in store for us. by Mark Lewis

https://www.frontpagemag.com/vladimir-lenin-and-the-american-left/

At the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Congress in October 2022, Xi Jinping’s report included the following statement: “Over the past decade, we have stayed committed to Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory…” Karl Marx was a scumbag (study his life), Deng Xiaoping was the thug who killed over 3,000 protesters at Tiananmen Square in June 1989, and Mao Zedong was the greatest mass murderer in human history (read more about him here). These men are the forerunners and mentors of Leftists in America today. This is the Left, folks. Study history to find out more about what these men were and believed. And thus, what their American offspring have in store for our country.

In this article, I want to home in on Vladimir Lenin, who Xi also mentioned, and who was the major instigator and theoretician of the communist revolution in Russia in 1917. I only have space to share with you a few quotes from this man whom, again, the Left idolizes. You’ll get an idea of what Lenin was and what the Left is.

1. “We must hate—hatred is the basis of communism. Children must be taught to hate their parents if they are not communists.” Hate is indeed a major characteristic of the Left; it is probably the main motivation for most of them. They have no clue what love is. Contrast Lenin’s words with the following: “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you” (Jesus, Matthew 5:44). Which system would you rather live under?

2. “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” Most decent people think lying is wrong, but not Leftists. Anything to advance the cause is morally acceptable. And American Leftists certainly follow this adage of Lenin, hoping the American people will eventually accept their lies as truth. Sadly, too many do.

3. “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” This is frightening but is one of the reasons the Left is trying to “groom” children now. Indoctrinate them, as early as possible, with Leftist propaganda. It’s right out of Lenin’s playbook.

CHINA’S USEFUL IDIOTS BY NATE HOCHMAN

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/01/chinas-useful-idiots/

A nation that is obsessed with apologizing for itself is ill-prepared to confront external threats.

The anti–“zero Covid” protesters in China may be finished with the CCP, but the CCP isn’t finished with them. After making a public show of easing some Covid restrictions, Xi Jinping and his army of Stasi-like thugs set about making an example of those involved in the regime’s monthslong embarrassment. The show of force against the protest movement was typical of dictatorships that rely, at least in part, on fear as a mechanism for maintaining power. But the efforts to delegitimize the anti-regime demonstrations had an ideological component as well. A New York Times piece on the crackdown today reported:

The party is also working to discredit the protesters by casting them as tools of malevolent foreign powers. Beijing has long dismissed dissent at home — from calls for women’s rights to pro-democracy activism to ethnic unrest — as the result of Western-backed subversion. The protests against “zero Covid” were no exception: One Chinese diplomat suggested that some of the demonstrators had been “bought by external forces.”

Describing the detention of four Chinese women who were alleged to have been involved in anti-regime activities, the Times reported: “The police have asked the women about their use of overseas messaging platforms or involvement in feminist activities, such as reading groups. . . . Chinese propaganda has decried feminism as another tool of foreign influence.” As a descriptive matter, feminist movements in China probably do draw inspiration from Western ideology. Yet the irony in Beijing’s narrative is that Chairman Xi still has plenty of enablers in the West — particularly among the left-wing cultural movements tied to the kind of activism his regime decries.

This is not to say that the progressive forces that have emerged from academia in recent years — fourth-wave feminism, critical race and gender theory, and so on — are pro-CCP. When pressed, most of their advocates would likely mouth bromides about the Chinese regime’s human-rights violations and its oppression of women. The Left, for the most part, is not motivated by an admiration for China, as segments of it were toward the Soviet Union. What today’s progressives are motivated by is a distaste for the idea of America having a set of “national interests,” let alone any serious efforts to defend them.

Another Wave of Joe Biden J-O-B-S Losses By Victoria Taft

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2023/01/27/another-wave-of-joe-biden-j-o-b-s-losses-n1665451

Let me tell you about a little something important, Fat. It happens to be the “number one job facing the middle class and it happens to be a three-letter word: Jobs!  J–O–B–S!  Jobs!” So declared then-Vice President Joe Biden on behalf of his boss, Barack Obama, back in 2008, the last time the economy was shredded.

Here we are all these years later and Joe Biden, millions of dollars richer, is presiding over another disastrous economy made worse by his government overspending. He must think we all have sons funneling us cash from money laundering operations with Ukraine and China or something.

But no Negative Nellies are allowed here. The president says the economy’s just great, and how dare you say anything any different, Jack, unless you want to do a pushup contest right here and now to settle it.

This week, the Big Guy was broken out of the White House and rushed off to a curated collection of union members to tout what a great economy he has built back better. He put his foot down and whispered; he growled about how he had “no intention of letting the Republicans wreck the economy” that he and the Democrats have done such a top-notch job of destroying.

But sadly for his Happy Days Are Here Again narrative, these past few days brought another round of Big Tech and media sector layoffs. This is beginning to be a weekly occurrence as Silicon Valley’s ones and zeros are marched past the La Cimbali latte machine and the chef’s menu board, down the slide, and into the unemployment lines.

Will anyone tell Joe?

The Caesars of the Information Age Donald Trump has been unbanned, but Silicon Valley censorship is still a menace to humanity. Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/01/26/the-caesars-of-the-information-age/

I thought I would feel some relief when the social-media giants came to their senses and let Donald Trump back on their platforms. Yet now that it’s happened, now that Meta has decreed that Trump has served his time in the virtual wilderness and may once again post on Facebook and Instagram, I just feel unnerved. Unnerved by the extraordinary power these people wield over who may and who may not engage with the billions of souls who gather online. Unnerved by their supranational authority to grant or rescind a licence to speak in the global town square. Unnerved by the historically unprecedented dominion this small clique of the woke rich enjoys over the liberty to utter.

The unbanning of Trump feels less like a victory for freedom of speech than a triumph of Silicon Valley Caesarism. It sends the message that it is for these Emperors of the Information Age to decide who may enter the modern arena of discussion, who may have to be expelled, how long they should be expelled for, and under what conditions they may be permitted to return once their punishment is complete.

Indeed, even though Meta’s statement on readmitting Trump to Facebook and Instagram is justified in the language of freedom of speech – ‘The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying’, it says, with staggering gall, given it spent the past two years preventing the public from hearing what Trump was saying – it also says it will keep a tight leash on Trump. If he violates any of Meta’s protocols, he’ll be suspended again, they warn, for anywhere between one month and two years. So the politician may speak to the people, so long as he says nothing to offend the arrogant hip capitalists who control 21st-century public discussion. Their message is crystal clear: ‘We’re still in control, and we always will be.’

Trump was banished from social media in January 2021. Following the Capitol Hill riot of 6 January, virtually all of Silicon Valley decreed that he should be unpersoned, blacklisted, silenced. He was kicked off Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Spotify and Twitch. YouTube, Reddit and TikTok brought in stiff restrictions on the expression of pro-Trump sentiment. Google and Apple removed the Parler app from their stores, so that the virtual masses wouldn’t be able to access the one platform that was still allowing Trump to speak.

America’s Future is Bleak When Only 27% of the Younger Generations are Proud to be American By Steve McCann

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/01/americas_future_is_bleak_when_only_27_of_the_younger_generations_are_proud_to_be_american.html

I first encountered unabashed pride in being American when I came to the United States in 1951.  I sailed across the Atlantic alone.  Perhaps someone along the way told me tht I was going to the United States; however, as a seven or eight-year-old I knew nothing about the nation that had granted me refuge.  Upon disembarking in New York what stood out was not the awe-inspiring and intimidating skyscrapers seemingly reaching to the heavens, or for the first time in my life seeing a city not lying in ruins from the ravages of war, but that there was a palpable atmosphere of confidence, optimism, self-reliance and above all pride among the people in this new and mystifying country.

I soon learned that this mindset permeated the entirety of this vast nation and had since its founding, thus, enabling it to evolve into the most successful nation-state in the annals of mankind.  While no nation can ever create an ideal society, due to certain immutable characteristics of the human race, no country has come closer to doing so.  It is the only nation in history committed to right societal wrongs, to live by the underlying tenets of Judeo-Christianity and govern itself by means of a written Constitution that reflects those values.

As recently as 2004, 91% of Americans were extremely or very proud to be American and the United States ranked first in the world in national pride.  However, in less than twenty years there has been a stunning reversal that portends a dire future for the United States as a precipitous erosion in national pride has undermined societal confidence, self-reliance, optimism, and cohesion. 

A recent poll revealed that a record low of just 68% of the citizenry are extremely or very proud to be American.  However, underlying that overall dismal outcome is the reality that among the two youngest generations only 38% of Millennials and 16% of Gen Z are proud to be American despite being the beneficiaries of living in a unfathomably prosperous nation that has not known any profound national adversity since the Great Depression. 

What we are seeing play out is the reality of demographic change in America as the younger mal-educated generations account for over half of the populace and are increasingly becoming culturally and politically influential.  Within these generations an overwhelming majority have been indoctrinated by socialist/Marxist ideologues to believe that a capitalist United States as founded is irredeemable and must be transformed.

The Real Differences Between the Biden and Trump Troves One of these things is not like the other. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/25/the-real-differences-between-the-biden-and-trump-troves/

Donald Trump for now certainly seems to have had more documents labeled classified at Mar-a-Lago in Florida than did Joe Biden at his various homes in Delaware. 

Yet otherwise, the comparisons between the two cases, contrary to popular punditry, hardly favor Biden. 

First, a stranger would face a far greater challenge entering a post-presidential Mar-a-Lago than a pre-presidential Joe Biden’s home, office, or garage—or who knows where?  

Secret service agents and private security were stationed at Mar-a-Lago. Prior to the 2020 presidential election they were not at citizen Biden’s various troves for most of 2017-2020 much less prior to 2009. 

Second, we seem to forget that for much of the developing controversy, Joe Biden’s own team was investigating Joe Biden. 

On the other hand, the Biden Administration’s Justice Department and the FBI were not just investigating Trump as an outside party, but as a former president—and possible 2024 presidential candidate and opponent of Biden himself. 

Remember, the narrative of the first Democratic impeachment of Donald Trump was the allegation that Trump had used his powers of the presidency to investigate Joe Biden and his family, a likely 2020 challenger to Trump’s reelection bid. 

Third, no one in a position of government authority had passed judgment on Joe Biden’s alleged security violations. 

That was not the case of the still alleged violations of Donald Trump. 

Has Globalism Met Its Waterloo? An eight-point plan to assure its demise. by Scott S. Powell

https://www.frontpagemag.com/has-globalism-met-its-waterloo/

Wouldn’t it be great to make 2023 a turning point in the United States, after two years of spiraling degeneration and confusion under a Biden administration that has delivered a myriad of policies that have done much more harm than good for the American people? We have gone awry in large part because of the deceit and encroachment of the Deep State and globalists whose influence has weakened and neutered the Constitution and its legal protections of citizens’ rights and national sovereignty.

Among the most visible and influential globalist organizations is the World Economic Forum (WEF), which coincidentally just completed its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Reviewing the Biden administration’s policies and forward-looking priorities, it’s self-evident that there is a close correlation with the WEF agenda. For instance, consider: 

The Biden open border policy—resulting in an unprecedented number of illegal aliens, drugs, and human trafficking crossing our southern border—burdens taxpayers and weakens national sovereignty.
 Fear-mongering over CO2 emissions and the alleged related climate apocalypse has diminished America’s competitive advantage in oil and gas production while driving a greater reliance on more expensive and less reliable alternatives, such as wind and solar power, resulting in the loss of U.S. energy independence.
The violation of American citizens’ First Amendment Rights by U.S. government agencies’ overriding influence and manipulation of media and social media to control the public narrative, affect elections, and suppress and cancel contradicting views.
The usurpation of parental authority over their children by government authorities.
The push to surrender control of U.S. healthcare policy to the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO).
The plan to regulate digital assets and develop central bank digital currencies (CBDC) was established by Biden’s Executive Order 14067.

American citizens need to hold the majority party of the 118th Congress accountable for bringing about correctives to all of these. But it is also time for Americans to take action against the Globalist agenda at the local and the federal level.

Treason in America – Again by Lawrence Kadish

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19346/treason-in-america

Benedict Arnold, move over.

Loathed as one of America’s most despised traitors, we are reminded that Arnold once was the hero of Saratoga during the Revolutionary War, only to become a turncoat prepared to hand over West Point to the British.

During the last century there was Aldrich Ames, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer turned KGB double agent. Now serving a life sentence without parole, he did enormous damage to our national security while sending many American intelligence assets to their deaths in the Soviet Union. You want an example of how one American can do incalculable damage to his country? Read the Ames file.

But wait. There is now a 21st Century indictment that, if proven in a court of law, is absolutely mind-numbing.

The FBI’s former top spy-hunter based in New York, Charles McGonigal, has been charged with violating U.S. sanctions and other criminal counts stemming from alleged ties to Russian oligarch billionaire Oleg Deripaska, a confident of Vladimir Putin.

The indictment also says McGonigal is accused of trying to get Deripaska removed from a U.S. sanctions list.

A second indictment accuses the G-man of hiding payments totaling $225,000 that he allegedly received from an individual considered an asset by an Albanian intelligence agency.

Turns Out the Atlanta Terrorists Are Children of Privilege By Chris Queen

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/chris-queen/2023/01/25/turns-out-the-atlanta-terrorists-are-children-of-privilege-n1664631

We’ve already learned that the vast majority of the Antifa insurrectionists who terrorized Atlanta over the weekend — and have occupied the future site of a public safety training facility for months — hailed from nowhere near Atlanta, but the more we learn about the Antifa criminals who attacked cops and did damage all over downtown Atlanta, we realize that these aren’t oppressed minorities rising up against the system.

It turns out the Atlanta terrorists are largely children of immense privilege.

Take, for example, the rather evil-looking Francis Carroll (whose name WSB misspelled below), the guy who allegedly lit a police cruiser on fire Saturday night.

Carroll hails from Kennebunkport, Maine — yep, the same Kennebunkport that is home to the Bush family compound. And we all know that towns with compounds are always fancy. He’s the scion of a multimillion-dollar family that owns a yacht, and he lived in his parents’ mansion before coming to Atlanta to wreak havoc.

Over at the New York Post, Andy Ngo notes that Carroll “was among six people arrested and charged with domestic terrorism, aggravated assault and other crimes on Dec. 13 following a string of property attacks around the area, a carjacking and assaults on officers. They were all bailed out by activists who crowdfunded their legal defense using Twitter.”

And then there’s Serena Hertal. The Idaho native is a graduate of $82,000-a-year Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif. How has she made use of that high-dollar education? By facing charges of domestic terrorism, aggravated assault, and criminal trespass in Atlanta.

How about Ivan James Ferguson? The 23-year-old Nevada native is a clarinetist who performed with orchestras up and down the West Coast before throwing it all away to interfere with the safety of a city two thousand miles away. Ferguson studied at the swanky San Francisco Conservatory of Music, which should serve him well in jail.