'Quiet Quitting'? This Is Not Good

Young people are generally inclined towards slacking anyways, but post-lockdown/pandemic, the lackadaisical sloth cohort is downright indolent. 

At the Wall Street Journal, "If Your Co-Workers Are ‘Quiet Quitting,’ Here’s What That Means":

Not taking your job too seriously has a new name: quiet quitting.

The phrase is generating millions of views on TikTok as some young professionals reject the idea of going above and beyond in their careers, labeling their lesser enthusiasm a form of “quitting.” It isn’t about getting off the company payroll, these employees say. In fact, the idea is to stay on it—but focus your time on the things you do outside of the office.

The videos range from sincere ruminations on work-life balance to snarky jokes. Some set firm boundaries against overtime in favor of family. Others advocate coasting from 9-to-5, doing just enough to get by. Many want to untether their careers from their identities.

Of course, every generation enters the workforce and quickly realizes that having a job isn’t all fun and games. Navigating contemptible bosses and the petty indignities that have always been inflicted on the ranks of working stiffs has never been easy. And many people who say, when they’re young, that they don’t care about climbing the corporate ladder end up changing their minds.

The difference now is that this group has TikTok and hashtags to emote. And these 20-somethings joined the working world during the Covid-19 pandemic, with all of its dislocating effects, including blurred boundaries between work and life. Many workers say they feel they have power to push back in the current strong labor market. Recent data from Gallup shows employee engagement is declining.

Clayton Farris, 41 years old, said that when he recently heard about the new term circulating on social media he realized he’d already been doing it by refusing to let work worries rule over him the way they used to.

“The most interesting part about it is nothing’s changed,” he said in his TikTok video. “I still work just as hard. I still get just as much accomplished. I just don’t stress and internally rip myself to shreds.”

Across generations, U.S. employee engagement is falling, according to survey data from Gallup, but Gen Z and younger millennials, born in 1989 and after, reported the lowest engagement of all during the first quarter at 31%.

Jim Harter, chief scientist for Gallup’s workplace and well-being research, said workers’ descriptions of “quiet quitting” align with a large group of survey respondents that he classifies as “not engaged”—those who will show up to work and do the minimum required but not much else. More than half of workers surveyed by Gallup who were born after 1989—54%—fall into this category.

One factor Gallup uses to measure engagement is whether people feel their work has purpose. Younger employees report that they don’t feel that way, the data show. These are the people who are more likely to work passively and look out for themselves over their employers, Dr. Harter said.

Paige West, 24, said she stopped overextending herself at a former position as a transportation analyst in Washington, D.C., less than a year into the job. Work stress had gotten so intense that, she said, her hair was falling out and she couldn’t sleep. While looking for a new role, she no longer worked beyond 40 hours each week, didn’t sign up for extra training and stopped trying to socialize with colleagues.

“I took a step back and said, ‘I’m just going to work the hours I’m supposed to work, that I’m really getting paid to work,’” she said. “Besides that, I’m not going to go extra.”

Ms. West said that she found herself more engaged during meetings once she stopped trying so hard, and she received more positive feedback. She left the job last year and is now a full-time freelance virtual assistant making about 75% of her previous salary. She adjusted by moving back to her home state of Florida.

Zaid Khan, a 24-year-old engineer in New York, posted a quiet quitting video that has racked up three million views in two weeks. In his viral TikTok, Mr. Khan explained the concept this way: “You’re quitting the idea of going above and beyond.”

“You’re no longer subscribing to the hustle-culture mentality that work has to be your life,” he said.

Mr. Khan says he and many of his peers reject the idea that productivity trumps all; they don’t see the payoff.

Some online commenters pledged to relax on social media when they had downtime at work. Others say they will follow their job descriptions to the letter, instead of asking for additional assignments.

A new crop of quiet-quitting videos is starting to pop up, denouncing the move as a cop-out, not a cure-all for burnout or discontentment at work.

People who coast have been fixtures of the office for decades, but many of today’s less-invested employees have been able to skate by thanks to remote work, said Elise Freedman, a senior client partner at consulting firm Korn Ferry.

If the economy sours, Ms. Freedman said, less-engaged workers may be more at risk of layoffs. “It’s perfectly appropriate that we expect our employees to give their all,” she said...

Workers showing up and doing the *absolute* minimum fucks up everyone else on the job. Lowering stress is fine, but if people are just skating all day for a paycheck, being personal totally checked out and completely disengaged from their required tasks, that's no good.

My son notes, on top of that, there's not enough workers on the job in the first place. Nobody wants to work anymore, or barely so. Employers can't find enough employees. Those who do want to do well have no support and end up schlupping extra hard for the same base pay. 

Fuck this youth generation. We're doomed.

The Moral Idiocy of Gun Control

It's Sultan Knish, at FrontPage Magazine, "Is it more moral to own a gun or to pay someone else to do it for you?":

I was chatting with a horrified Swedish visitor who described a visit to Nevada.

“There was this grandmother, an elderly lady, and she took out a gun from her purse,” he told me, shaking his head.

We were having this conversation in a city which had racked up 77 shootings in just one month.

Few New Yorkers legally own guns. The NYPD has issued around 40,000 handgun permits in a city of over 8 million. That’s around one handgun for every two-hundred New Yorkers.

Don’t assume that the parts of the city with the most guns are the most dangerous.

The vast majority of handgun permits are in Staten Island, which has the lowest crime rate in the city, as opposed to the Bronx, with the highest. Manhattan has few legal guns relative to its population while the white working class areas of Brooklyn have some of the most legal guns.

The Daily News, which interviewed a criminologist as part of its anti-gun crusade, found that he was "puzzled". “Some people see a mugging in the Bronx, and they want to get a gun on Staten Island,” he argued. “That’s not rational, but some people really want guns.”

Perhaps one of the reasons that there are fewer muggings in Staten Island is that more of the folks there can prevent them. Muggers, like most predators, prefer victims who don’t fight back.

Big city progressives find guns indefinably ‘icky’. It’s not only foreigners who marvel at a country where guns, even ‘big scary black ones’, are available everywhere. The propaganda of Michael Moore’s “Bowling in Columbine” and countless network news shows is that people who live surrounded by guns have created the conditions for mass shootings. And they have it coming.

But New Yorkers, like most big city dwellers, live surrounded by guns. These aren’t the guns that ride on trucks or sit in sporting goods store displays. They’re the guns flashed by a mugger under his heavy down winter coat, or shot by rival gang members exchanging fire in the 73rd precinct in Brooklyn which accounted for around 100 shootings in just one year alone.

And there are the guns worn more openly by the army of police officers, security guards, bodyguards, and others, many of whom live on Staten Island, who are hired to keep New Yorkers safe. Two years ago, Bond, an app that some have called 'Uber for Bodyguards' debuted, allowing New Yorkers to order their own security personnel. New Yorkers, who disdain guns, instead tap an app for bodyguards to escort them from their train stop to their office.

Most urbanites hate living in this kind of world, but they hate the alternative even more.

Gun control isn’t policy, it’s culture. And while the media often goes on about “gun culture”, there’s little thought given to “gun control culture” for the same reason that fish rarely film documentaries on what it’s like to have gills and swim underwater.

Gun control culture means paying men with guns between $50,000 to $85,000 a year in the hopes that they’ll show up in under 10 minutes and do something useful when you call 911.

That strategy didn’t work very well in Uvalde. It doesn’t work all that well most of the time.

Before Uvalde, in the recent Buffalo mass shooting, a 911 operator hung up on a store employee calling for help. The cops arrived in 5 minutes: in time to talk the shooter out of killing himself in front of the store so that taxpayers can pay for his trial and a 50-year prison term.

And that’s what a fantastic response time looks like. But by then, 10 people were dead.

Gun control culture pathologically hates guns, but also hates the men it hires to wield them. Urban lefties threw an anti-police tantrum that was so successful that their cities are frantically trying to hire more police officers to keep up with the resulting crime wave on their streets.

Police defunding is deader than the thousands of additional murder victims in the Year of BLM.

Gun control is a fantasy that somehow making guns as illegal in the rest of the country as they are in New York will put a stop to all the violence so that urban and suburban elites won’t have to choose between being victims or paying the armed men they disapprove of to protect them.

Eliminating guns isn’t actually on the table.

This is a choice between an empowered public of gun owners and an endless running battle between cops and thugs in a society where only criminals and governments have guns.

A nationwide New York or Chicago.

Most Americans don’t want to live in this kind of world. Neither does anyone else. That’s why the wealthy hipsters who poured into New York City after Giuliani cleaned it up are leaving. Those who can afford it, go to the suburbs or to wealthy enclaves in other parts of the city. While crime hasn’t entirely depopulated the city, it has put a stop to gentrification. A slow motion white flight is happening all over again even though its participants are too ashamed to admit it.

The sharp division between gun culture and gun control culture is the border of an affected distancing from life’s realities. Gun controllers aren’t necessarily physical cowards, but they are moral cowards.

The same sorts of people who think guns are ‘icky’ also don’t want to know where their meat comes from or to see the soldiers who come back from the wars. These are things that they pay other people to do because it preserves their illusions about the world and about themselves.

America is becoming a nation split between those hard workers who take responsibility for dealing with life’s realities and the managerial elites who only issue meaningless orders.

Faced with shootings, managerial elites apply rule-based abstractions to messy realities that they are incapable of grappling with. The Left is always good for easy solutions that take away agency from individuals and invest it in a central authority in order to solve the unsolvable problems of human nature. And the managerial elites are always suckers for the myth that getting everyone to follow the rules in line with some grand theory will solve everything.

The people who, as the champion of managerial elites, once claimed, “cling bitterly” to their guns, understand that life is messy and that there’s no grand fix, only a series of choices.

Gun ownership is an act of personal responsibility. By buying and owning a firearm, a man is saying that he also intends to take ownership of his personal safety and his choices. That doesn’t always end happily, but there’s far more moral self-awareness in that choice than there is in urban elites who hate guns paying the gun owners they despise to keep them safe.

The one thing we absolutely own in this world are our choices.

Gun control isn’t about stopping gun violence, but disavowing moral responsibility for preventing it, passing the buck to the cops, to society, and to some force outside our control. Gun control rallies are the virtue signaling of moral cowards seeking to blame someone else for horrors that they cannot cope with and that they do not intend to take any personal action to prevent.

Disarmament, national or personal, is not a moral stance, but the abandonment of morality.

Gun controllers have had a field day with the inaction of the Uvalde cops, but it never occurs to them that’s who they are, standing around, wringing their hands and waiting for someone to tell them what the plan is, so they don’t have to make any difficult choices in the face of a crisis.

Gun control is the moral idiocy of the irresponsible blaming those who have taken responsibility.

 

Putin Follows Through on His Word

It's Pat Buchanan, at the American Conservative, "Putin Warned Us":

When Russia’s Vladimir Putin demanded that the U.S. rule out Ukraine as a future member of the NATO alliance, the U.S. archly replied: NATO has an open-door policy. Any nation, including Ukraine, may apply for membership and be admitted. We’re not changing that.

In the Bucharest declaration of 2008, NATO had put Ukraine and Georgia, ever farther east in the Caucasus, on a path to membership in NATO and coverage under Article 5 of the treaty, which declares that an attack on any one member is an attack on all.

Unable to get a satisfactory answer to his demand, Putin invaded and settled the issue. Neither Ukraine nor Georgia will become members of NATO. Russia resolved that it would go to war to prevent that from happening, just as it did on Thursday.

Putin did exactly what he warned us he would do.

Whatever the character of the Russian president, now being hotly debated here in the USA, he has established his credibility. When Putin warns he will do something, he follows through.

Days into this Russia-Ukraine war, potentially the worst in Europe since 1945, two questions need to be answered: How did we get here? And where do we go from here?

How did we get to a place where Russia—believing its back is against a wall and the United States, by moving NATO ever closer to Russia’s borders, put it there—reached a point where it chose war with Ukraine rather than accept the fate and future it believed the West had in store for Mother Russia? ...

Keep reading. 

Rule 5 Saturday

I haven't posted Rule 5 links in a while.

Check the Other McCain, where "Rule 5" originated back in the day, "Rule 5 Sunday: Hedy Lamarr Presents The Teutonic Titwillow, Lili von Shtupp!"

Also, A View from the Beach, "Rule 5 Saturday - Getting Fit with Jennifer Nicole Lee."

And, at Woodsterman's, "Presidents Weekend ~OR~ Rule 5 Woodsterman Style."

Still more, at Pirate's Cove, "If All You See … are climate killing dogs making the seas rise and land turn to sand, you might just be a Warmist."

And on Twitter.

A Last Look at a Remarkable Presidency

At Issues & Insights, "Trump’s Top-10 Triumphs":

President Donald Trump became an ex-president on Wednesday, as Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States. We wish him nothing but the best. But before we let Trump go, we thought we’d review some of his biggest accomplishments while in office. We call them “triumphs,” because they were all big achievements executed against great odds.

More than any other president of recent memory, Trump fought hard for average working Americans. And contrary to the epithets thrown at him by his far-left detractors in the Democratic Party, his policies helped low-income and minority Americans most of all.

We believe – we hope – that Trump’s post-presidential career and reputation will resemble President Ronald Reagan’s. For those old enough to remember, Reagan also was called every vile name in the book, from “senile” to “fascist” and everything between. Yet, today, in retrospect, his presidency shines as a beacon in our nation’s history.

Given the at-times unhinged nature of the criticism directed at Trump’s presidency by the left and Republican “never-Trumpers,” Trump’s performance in just four years was nothing short of remarkable. He promulgated dozens, if not hundreds, of successful policies that other presidents talked about, but never secured.

He reached so many we can’t highlight all of them. But here are 10 that we believe stand out — and that future presidents (are you listening, Joe Biden?) would be foolish to reverse or overturn:

1. Slashed taxes on individuals and businesses. As an earlier administration said, “It’s the economy, stupid.” As much as anything, Trump’s growth-boosting $1.9 trillion in tax cuts and doubling of the child tax credit led to the bottom-up growth of our economy, as unemployment rates plunged for African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanics and women, and poverty rates plummeted to an all-time low in 2019, before COVID-19 struck. The bottom 20% of incomes posted a 16%-plus rise, the largest ever for those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.Yes, Wall Street and Silicon Valley moguls made out well as stocks boomed. But so did average Americans, especially the middle class. More than half of all Americans now own stock, a fact that’s lost on those who curse the stock market and “tax cuts for the rich.” By the way, the top income earners were the only group to pay more to Uncle Sam under the Trump tax cuts. And income inequality under Trump fell, after rising during Obama’s eight years in office.

2. Forged peace in the Mideast. The big media have tried to pretend that Trump’s unorthodox but astoundingly successful peace deals don’t exist. But it’s no accident that Trump has already been nominated — twice — for the Nobel Peace Prize. He deserves it. This year, thanks almost entirely to Trump’s efforts under the “Abraham Accords,” Israel has normalized diplomatic ties with four Arab League members: Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Morocco. Jordan and Egypt already have ties. Terrorist sponsor Iran, meanwhile, has never been more isolated and on the defensive than it is now, thanks to Trump’s pulling out of President Barack Obama’s phony “nuclear deal” with Tehran’s mullahs. And while the terrorist group ISIS still exists, it has effectively been neutered, a shell of its former self, pushed out of nearly all its strongholds in Syria and Iraq.

3. Created Operation Warp Speed. The Chinese virus hit the U.S. hard. It’s now clear that China’s communist regime downplayed the deadly virus outbreak early, leading to the rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus that official data show has killed 400,000 Americans. Trump was ridiculed and berated for daring to think he could push the creation of a new, effective vaccine within the remaining months of his term. Yet, as Bloomberg noted on Wednesday, “Vaccinations in the U.S. began Dec. 14 with health care workers, and so far 16.3 million shots have been given, according to a state-by-state tally … In the last week, an average of 806,716 doses per day were administered.” The vaccine critics were dead wrong, and Trump’s push may well end up saving hundreds of thousands of lives in coming years.

4. Deregulated the nation’s economy. It’s not sexy. But Trump promised to cut two regulations for every new one proposed. He beat even that estimate, cutting eight regulations for every one added. If you think that doesn’t matter, consider this: Regulations currently cost the economy nearly $2 trillion a year, or about $14,000 a year for every U.S. household. Trump’s rule-cutting saved the average American household an average of $3,100 a year.

5. Got rid of Obamacare’s “individual mandate”. By far the most odious element of Obama’s first step toward socialized medicine was its requirement that all Americans must buy health insurance. For the first time ever, the U.S. government forced its citizens to purchase something, whether they wanted it or not. This part of the 2010 bill was clearly unconstitutional, as a federal appeals court ruled late last year. Americans are, for now, safe from being forced to buy insurance policies they don’t want. At least, that is, until the new Democratic administration begins its push for Medicare for All, or some other nationalized health care scheme.

6. Restored Supreme Court balance. By naming three new justices, Trump assured Americans that the court’s days of rulings based on politics and ideology, not the Constitution, are over. At least for the foreseeable future. Trump’s three Supreme Court nominees, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, are all strong constitutionalists who have sterling reputations for fairness and non-political legal decision making. “A judge must apply the law as written. Judges are not policymakers,” Barrett said during her nomination hearings in the Senate, a fitting description for all Trump’s choices. That includes the more than 230 judges he appointed to the federal bench.

7. Forced NATO to reform. Trump pushed NATO members to live up to their commitments to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense, part of a 2014 deal that came after years of NATO countries shirking their duty to pull their own weight in the military alliance. In Trump’s first year in office, just four of the 30 NATO members met the 2% floor. Today, 10 do, and more will increase spending by $400 billion by 2024. By demanding NATO to keep its promises, Trump likely saved the West’s main military alliance.

8. Encouraged U.S. energy independence. By encouraging fracking and approving the Keystone XL pipeline, Trump set off an energy boom. And he did something that no one thought possible just four years ago: He made the U.S. energy independent for the first time in 70 years, meaning we would no longer be held hostage to unstable petro-powers and the vagaries of foreign energy supplies. Fracking enabled the U.S. to boost its output of natural gas, with many major utilities now using the cheap, clean source of energy instead of coal and other major sources of carbon dioxide emissions. The result: the U.S. is one of the only major countries whose CO2 emissions are plunging, with output now at the lowest levels since 1985.

9. Reformed immigration and built the border wall. Despite being called a “racist” and “fascist” and “anti-immigrant,” Trump has now built more than 450 miles of wall to restore control of our nation’s borders against illegal entrants into the U.S., including gang members, smugglers and drug dealers. As journalist Deroy Murdock recently noted, “federal apprehensions and encounters on the U.S.-Mexico border have plunged from 977,509 in fiscal year 2019 to 458,088 in fiscal year 2020 — down 53.1%.” A blow to Mexico? Not according to a recent Reuters headline: “Mexico’s Lopez Obrador says Trump helped Mexico.“

10. Withdrew from the Paris Climate Deal. The U.S. is the only major country actually living up to the Paris Climate Accords’ steep cuts in CO2 emissions. But the deal is still a bad one, since it commits the U.S. and other major industrial nations to shrink their economies over the long run to meet arbitrary CO2 limits in the future. Meanwhile, fast-growing countries such as China and India have few binding requirements on their emissions. The result: Those two countries, with more than a third of the world’s population, continue to spew CO2. This year China’s coal use surged above 2015 levels, “undercutting climate pledges,” according to a news report out this week. Biden’s plan to rejoin the Paris deal will only bolster China and hamstring the U.S. going forward. It’s a climate-based “America last” policy...

Still more.

 

Christmas Women

At Drunken Stepfather, "STEPLINKS OF THE DAY."

Also, at the Other McCain, "Super Hot: Christmas Naked Rule 5!"

Sunday Rule 5

At Drunken Stepfather, "STEPLINKS OF THE DAY."

And some young Asian titties:

Gotta love big titty Asians pic.twitter.com/YmeIWq4SsL

— TRY NOT TO GET A BONER (@dontgetboner) December 5, 2020

The Election Week Travails of a Die-Hard Massachusetts Trump Supporter

This could be the story of untold millions of Americans. You gotta love it. And especially the elite media-prog condescension. 

See, "For a Trump Fan, a Week When Victory Ebbed Away":

A sad but unsympathetic man mourns the loss of Trump in a sad but unsympathetic (and perfect) feature by ⁦@EllenBarryNYT⁩ https://t.co/xMF6UMFyRT

— Kara Swisher (@karaswisher) November 8, 2020

Thursday, Nov. 5

By Thursday morning, the Roccos had given up on Fox. “There’s definitely people at Fox who don’t like Trump,” Mr. Rocco said. “The commentators, they are normally aggressive. I think they got a leash put on them somehow, some way.”

He took the position that the vote count should have ended on Nov. 3. He reassured his wife that the decision would finally lie in the hands of the Supreme Court.

“They’re doing anything they can to stop him from becoming president,” he said. “It’s not over yet. He’s going to win. It’s just a matter of who has the balls to close down first.”

But an alternative path was beginning to take shape in his mind, in case Mr. Biden prevailed.

Maybe the Republicans could impeach Mr. Biden. Maybe a Republican Senate could tie his hands for four years. Maybe, after a long-planned Caribbean vacation, Mr. Rocco would fly out to Arizona and join the protesters. Maybe he would post new yard signs.

“Like I told you, I hate to lose,” he said. “If he loses, I’ll feel like I’ve lost.”

When Mr. Trump delivered remarks at the White House, Mr. Rocco was struck by his appearance. The president looked drained and serious, no longer a happy warrior. The message the president conveyed was grave: that American democracy is a farce.

“He’s been telling us about that for months, and I think it’s actually happening now,” he said. “How are we ever going to be able to vote for a president again, now that we know that fraud has been going on?”

Friday, Nov. 6

The news on Friday morning was no surprise. Officials in states that had not been called had spent much of the night meticulously counting ballots, in the presence of observers from both parties.

Mr. Biden was a hair’s breadth from the presidency, on course to win at least 270 electoral votes.

“Every time I went to bed, it was the same,” Mr. Rocco said. “I go to bed, he was winning, I wake up, he was losing.”

Ms. Rocco sounded resigned. “I think that basically it’s pretty much done,” she said. “But they cheated. But it’s done.”

The people she had spent the summer with, the Trump activists, she could see them packing it in, returning to normal life.

“They’re just going to want to move on,” she said. “My aunt’s already saying, ‘Stop being a crybaby.’”

Mr. Rocco was not ready to give up, though. The president would not concede, he was sure of that. “I’d be pissed at him if he did because I would never do that,” he said. “He’s not that type of person. He doesn’t give up easily. I see a lot of myself in him.”

Casting his mind into the future, past this election, he could imagine any number of outcomes.

He could imagine the United States splitting into two countries, one governed by Mr. Trump and one not. He could imagine suspending elections so Mr. Trump and his family could rule without interruption for 20 years.

“I guarantee you, Trump supporters would not care,” he said. “I guarantee you, if you got 69 million Trump supporters, and you said, ‘Would you be good with Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump as president?’ a lot of people would be 100 percent behind that.”

He was gathering his things — he had a shift at the salon — and his tone was calm. He is only 26. There is plenty of time. He was waiting for cues from his leader.

“In Trump we trust, and as far as everything else, it’s all going to fall into place,” he said. “It’s not happening today, and it’s not happening tomorrow.”

Unmasked

At WSJ, "The Flynn Unmaskers Unmasked":

The Flynn Unmaskers Unmasked: Now we know who knew about the Russian calls, including Joe Biden. https://t.co/KVJhdV4Nra

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) May 13, 2020

When news stories appeared in early 2017 about Michael Flynn’s conversation with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., these columns wondered how Mr. Flynn’s call was so widely known. The names of private U.S. citizens caught on tape by U.S. intelligence are supposed to be “masked” so their privacy is protected.

Well, now we know. GOP Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson on Wednesday released a declassified list of Obama Administration officials who in their waning days in power “unmasked” the conversations of Mr. Flynn, who was set to become President Trump’s National Security Adviser. It seems everyone but the night janitor wanted to know who Mr. Flynn was talking to.

A stunning 39 separate officials snooped on Mr. Flynn’s conversations with foreign actors, lodging nearly 50 unmasking demands between Nov. 30, 2016 and Jan. 12, 2017. Our sources say the nearly dozen redacted names on the list are likely intelligence types—who might have a legitimate interest in knowing who their foreign targets were speaking to in the U.S. But most of the rest are partisan officials who had no business spying on their successors.

The list includes then White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, then Vice President Joe Biden, and then Secretary of Treasury Jacob Lew. Ambassador to the U.N. and Obama confidante Samantha Power made no fewer than seven requests, though she told Congress she had no recollection of unmasking Mr. Flynn.

Mr. Flynn was unmasked by at least four U.S. ambassadors, six Treasury officials, and people connected to the Energy and Justice departments and NATO, among others. Then FBI Director James Comey, then CIA Director John Brennan and then Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also made the list. This means they had access to the transcripts of any phone conversations Mr. Flynn had with foreign sources as he prepared to take power.

The media cordon sanitaire that protects Democrats will say this is no big deal because unmasking is routine and legal. But if the masking rule means nothing in practice, why pretend it exists?

The Flynn unmasking is important because it occurred amid a media frenzy over supposed Trump campaign collusion with Russia. Leaks to the Washington Post about the conversations between the Russian ambassador and both Mr. Flynn and soon-to-be Attorney General Jeff Sessions were played up as central to the collusion scandal. They caused Mr. Sessions to recuse himself from the Russia probe and Mr. Flynn to be fired. While unmasking isn’t illegal, leaking intelligence is.

There are other dots to connect. Documents released last week show that former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates first learned about the Flynn wiretapping from no less than President Barack Obama in a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting. At least one of the unmaskers must have told Mr. Obama.

The dates of the unmaskings raise further questions. The FBI’s interest in Mr. Flynn was supposedly triggered by conversations starting Dec. 29, 2016. Yet Mr. Flynn was first unmasked a month earlier—shortly after Mr. Trump named him security adviser.

The McDonough unmasking takes place on Jan. 5, 2017—the day of the Oval Office meeting at which Mr. Flynn was discussed. Mr. Biden’s unmasking request was made on Jan. 12, 2017—the day the Washington Post reported on the Flynn-Russia conversation. Mr. Biden has some explaining to do.

All of this is fodder for U.S. Attorney John Durham as he tries to unmask the origins of the Russia collusion political ambush...

Xi Jinping Jonesin' for Maoism

This is interesting.

From Elizabeth Economy, at Foreign Affairs, "China’s Neo-Maoist Moment: How Xi Jinping Is Using China’s Past to Accomplish What His Predecessors Could Not":

Read @LizEconomy on Xi Jinping’s transformative agenda in China—and the Maoist tactics he has used to advance it.https://t.co/mYUHn6Z83M

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) October 5, 2019

Few countries commemorate historical milestones with the zeal of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and 2019 offers a bonanza of celebratory opportunities: 40 years since Deng Xiaoping launched the economic reforms that opened China to the rest of the world; 40 years since China and the United States established diplomatic relations; and, on October 1, 70 years since the founding of the PRC. These events provide the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) opportunities to laud past achievements, legitimize the course it has set for the country, and rally support for challenges yet to come. And as Chinese President Xi Jinping surveys the country’s progress, he can point to any number of extraordinary economic, social, and geopolitical achievements.

Outside observers tend to credit the Deng-era reforms for China’s meteoric rise. But Xi and the rest of the Chinese leadership are more focused on the earliest years of the PRC—when Mao Zedong sat at the helm of the Communist Party. Like Mao, Xi has prioritized strengthening the party, inculcating collective socialist values, and rooting out nonbelievers. Like Mao, who invoked “domestic and foreign reactionaries” to build nationalist sentiment and solidify the party’s legitimacy, Xi has adopted a consistent refrain of unspecified but “ubiquitous” internal and external threats. And like Mao, Xi has encouraged the creation of a cult of personality around himself.

Yet Xi has revived the methods and symbols of Maoism not in service of a return to the past but in order to advance his own transformative agenda, one that seeks to ensure that all political, social, and economic activity within, and increasingly outside of, China serves the interests of the CCP. He is creating a model that reasserts the power of the Communist Party; progressively erases the distinction between public and private in both the political and economic spheres; and seeks to integrate foreign actors, including private businesses, more deeply into a system of CCP values and institutions. Xi also aspires to accomplish what Mao and his successors could not: to render irrelevant the political and physical boundaries separating Taiwan and Hong Kong from the mainland, and to offer China as a legitimate model for other countries disinclined toward liberal democracy.

PARTY LIKE IT’S 1949

Party ideology increasingly pervades everyday life in China, narrowing the space for the expression of alternative views. The government heavily censors the Internet; limits foreign television content; and has called for schools to be “strongholds of Party leadership,” punishing professors for using unapproved texts or “defaming the rule of the Communist Party.” At the same time, Xi’s contribution to CCP theory, known as Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, is pumped relentlessly through the system: more than 100 institutes devoted to Xi Jinping Thought have sprung up over the past few years; a phone app, Study Strong Country, offers mandatory quizzes for party members on Xi’s thoughts and activities; and even college entrance exams now feature political questions tied to the leader’s campaigns and sayings—a practice, journalist Zheping Huang notes, that was popular during Mao’s tenure.

The CCP also seeks to shape the daily choices of its citizens, influencing their behavior to better reflect the interests of the party. One element of this enterprise is the social credit system, an ambitious experiment in social engineering designed to evaluate the trustworthiness of Chinese citizens and condition their behavior through punishments and rewards. Underway in more than 40 pilot programs throughout the country, the social credit system is slated to be rolled out nationally in 2020. As the China scholar Rogier Creemers has observed, this system is about “doing things that are right and incentivizing things that are right. But right is not something that people get to sort out for themselves. It doesn’t call upon individual moral autonomy, rather it calls upon obeisance to, and compliance with, a certain state-defined version of the good.”

In one pilot program in eastern China, for example, people receive points for donating bone marrow or performing other good deeds, but lose points for late payment of bills or traffic tickets. Other programs penalize citizens for participating in protests. While much of this tracking and accounting is done with technology, the CCP has also revived Mao-era tactics: paying elderly residents to report on the behavior of their neighbors, publicly celebrating model citizens while shaming those who fall short. As one government document noted, the objective of the social credit system is to “allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.” It is a motto that can be taken literally: in 2017, more than six million Chinese were barred from air travel as a result of social credit misdeeds...

A nightmare, and this is the country with designs for regional, if not global, hegemony.

See previously, "China's Military Power."

Christina Hendricks

I think the Other McCain used to love Christina Hendricks for Rule 5 blogging, heh.

At Celeb Jihad, "CHRISTINA HENDRICKS’ NUDE TITS ARE OUT OF CONTROL."

Camila Cabello

At the Other McCain, "Rule 5 Monday: Camila Cabello."

And at Celebs Unmasked, "CAMILA CABELLO NUDE *LEAKED* PHOTOS":

Everyone’s dirty minds are on the Camila Cabello nude photos and for good reason. The Cuban-American singer departed from her girl group Fifth Harmony in December of 2016 and ever since then she has been in the spotlight. Yes, she’s got sexy vocals, but it’s her EVEN SEXIER body that has put this girl on the map.

“I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.” pic.twitter.com/tYkmO1yxwN

— camila (@Camila_Cabello) June 22, 2019

'Semi-Charmed Life'

From yesterday morning's drive-time, at 93.1 Jack FM Los Angeles, Third Eye Blind:

Let's Dance
David Bowie
6:51am

Fat Bottomed Girls
Queen
6:47am

Semi-Charmed Life
Third Eye Blind
6:42am

You Shook Me All Night Long
AC/DC
6:39am

Tainted Love
Soft Cell
6:35am

Come Out And Play
Offspring
6:24am

Something Just Like This
Coldplay / The Chainsmokers
6:20am

Limelight
Rush
6:15am

99 Luftballoons
Nena
6:12am

What's My Age Again
Blink 182
6:09am

Everybody Wants To Rule The World
Tears For Fears
6:05am

American Girl
Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers
5:54am

'Beast of Burden'

From Tuesday morning's drive-time, at 93.1 Jack FM Los Angeles, the Rolling Stones, "Beast of Burden."

Dancing With Myself
Billy Idol
6:49am

Beast Of Burden
Rolling Stones
6:45am

By the way
Red Hot Chili Peppers
6:41am

Hungry Like The Wolf
Duran Duran
6:38am

Wanted Dead Or Alive
Bon Jovi
6:33am

What I Got
Sublime
6:23am

You Make Lovin' Fun
Fleetwood Mac
6:19am

It's The End of the World As We Know It
R.E.M.
6:15am

Feel Good Inc.
Gorillaz
6:12am

Crazy Train
Ozzy Osbourne
6:07am

Everybody Wants To Rule The World
Tears For Fears
6:03am

Better Man
Pearl Jam
5:53am

Anything Anything
Dramarama
5:50am

Somebody To Love
Queen
5:46am

Myla Dalbesio in the Middle of the Sea (VIDEO)

Hopefully, Sports Illustrated will keep the Rule 5 (babe-blogging) flame alive.

Jennifer Love Hewitt Rule 5

I haven't posted on the lovely Ms. Jennifer in ages.

Seen on Twitter:

Jennifer Love Hewitt pic.twitter.com/zj2vjwV52k

— Celebrities (@CeIebritease) June 5, 2018

Leftists Don't Care About Normal Americans

This is good, from Tom Trinko, at American Thinker, "What Leftists Stand For":

Historically, both sides of the political spectrum in America have supported the rule of law and the Constitution.  Additionally, other than the Democrats' longstanding racist oppression of black people, the positions held by both sides were generally differences that people of goodwill could hold.  For example, good people can disagree on just what the tax rates should be.

Since Roe v. Wade, that has changed, and the change has accelerated rapidly in the last eight years.  The left in America has openly embraced evil, rejected the rule of law, and denied that Americans they disagree with have constitutional rights.

That's why 2016 was a Flight 93 election: the political fight in America is no longer among people of good will, but between evil fascists and the American people.  Most of the people who vote for the Democrats have no idea what the left actually stands for due to the actions of the media, who hide the truth.

Here are some of the evils perpetrated or supported by large numbers of leftists so you can convince those Democrat voters to switch sides:

1. They support the right of the British government to use force to prevent parents from taking their child to see doctors who might be able to save their child's life if the British courts decide that it's in the best interest of the child to die.
2. They support killing the unborn who can feel pain by literally cutting them to pieces, but they demand prison time for someone who mistreats animals.
3. They want to kill unborn babies with Down syndrome.
4. They want to kill the elderly, who are no longer a benefit to society in the minds of leftists.
5. They deny the settled science that human life begins at conception.
6. They spend their money on themselves by having fewer children and condemn those who have more kids even when they pay for them.
7. They don't care that black women are three times as likely to abort as white women.
8. They don't care that cheap illegal labor hurts black people by denying them jobs.
9. They don't care that their fake climate crisis will drive up energy costs and hurt the poor, who are disproportionately people of color.
10. They declare that giving inner-city black parents the choice of sending their kids to a school where they will get a good education is "racist."
11. They don't care that thousands of blacks are shot each year in Democratic-run cities.
12. They deny witness reports by black crime victims that show that blacks are more likely to commit crimes, though most blacks are law-abiding, and demand that blacks be incarcerated at the same rate as all other groups, ensuring that blacks continue to suffer from black-on-black crime.
13. They want to take money from people who never owned slaves and give it to people who never were slaves.
14. They refuse to accept any election result that doesn't favor them.
15. They approve of Hillary colluding with Russia to get fake news on Trump and use that fake news during the election campaign.
16. They believe that illegals should be counted along with Americans when apportioning House seats.
17. They can't win elections, so they import immigrants and illegal aliens who will vote for them.
18. They want to give convicted child-molesters, murderers, rapists, and major drug-dealers the right to vote.
19. They work hard to keep the folks in the military from voting.
20. They support policies that increase people's dependence on government in order to get more votes, even though that subjects 21. people to miserable lives.
21. They believe they should be able to use the full power of the government to spy on their political opponents.
22. They believe that the judiciary can make up laws, and they reject the idea of separation of powers by endorsing "resistance" by the judiciary.
23. They believe that our rights flow from the government and that the government can change our rights as it sees fit.
24. They support discriminating against Asian-Americans based on their race.
25. They support discriminating against whites based on their race so long as leftist kids aren't discriminated against.
26. They reject equality of opportunity and embrace equality of result.
27. They think it's fine for politicians to decide not to enforce laws they don't like so long as leftists don't like those laws, but they would throw a fit if Texas ignored the Supreme Court ruling, not a law, that makes abortion legal.
28. They believe that the if the president is a leftist, he can ignore the Constitution, but if he's conservative, he can be prevented from doing anything leftist judges don't personally like.
29. They believe that the Constitution is whatever they want it to be, and they directly reject the idea that it should be interpreted in light of the intent of those who wrote and ratified it.
30. They believe that the press should be a propaganda machine that ignores stories that are bad for leftists and makes up fake news to endorse leftist views.

There's still lots more, at the link.

Lissy Cunningham in White

Here she is from 2015, "Rule 5 Sunday."

And on Twitter in September:

Some a little more innocent but #peachy 🤣🍑💋#blonde #model pic.twitter.com/AjBWF1dBp4

— Lissy (@LissyC5) September 29, 2017

Thanks to the Reader Who Bought the Calphalon Classic Nonstick Omelet Fry Pan

We use Calphalon at our house. I love their cookware! Thanks for your support.

At Amazon, Calphalon 1932339 Classic Nonstick Omelet Fry Pan with Cover, 10 Inch, Grey.

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And, Zober Premium Quality Space Saving Velvet Hangers Strong and Durable Hold Up To 10 Lbs - 360 Degree Chrome Swivel Hook - Ultra Thin Non Slip Suit Hangers - 50 pack (Ivory).

More, Storex Interlocking Book Bins, 4 3/4 x 12 5/8 x 7, 5 Color Set, Plastic (70105U06C).

Plus, Fire Gone 2 Pack with Brackets - 16 oz.

BONUS: Terry Goodkind, Wizard's First Rule (Sword of Truth, Book 1).

Linda Kimball, 'Exposing America's Enemies: The Social Justice Seeking Communist Left'

At his post this morning, Robert Stacy McCain linked Linda Kimball's piece on "Cultural Marxism" at American Thinker. It's an old piece, which I've read before, but I googled some of the articles linked there. One of these is, "Exposing America's Enemies: The 'Social Justice Seeking' Communist Left," originally posted at the American Daily, but now dead.

I'm posting here some excerpts I've found at various other cites. Ms. Kimball apparently aroused some strong passions on this issue, at Democrat Underground, for example, and this was back in 2006.

Free Republic also posted it at the time:

On one hand, Americans were outraged and appalled by the May 1 immigrant demonstrations that clogged streets and virtually closed down some cities. Law-abiding citizens saw lawbreakers who not only seemed to feel justified in their criminal behavior, but also believed they ought to be rewarded for it.

On the other hand, Americans are more infuriated and disgusted with their duly elected government officials in both legislative and administrative branches for not enforcing the law and protecting the rights of citizens. President Bush and the weak-kneed GOP have deservedly come under fire. If our sovereign nation is to survive, however, it is of paramount importance that the harsh light of truth be focused upon the subversive element responsible for creating an atmosphere conducive to lawlessness and tyrannical militants brazenly declaring their intentions to ''conquer'' the Southwest and to throw Americans out of their homes and off of their land.

The subversive element--a motley collection of Marxists, Stalinists, Trotskyists, Maoists, anarchists, and malcontents--organized themselves in the 1960’s and became known as the New Left. For over forty years the New Left has been waging a Gramscian ''quiet'' revolution for the overthrow of the America of our founders. Today these subversives call themselves liberals, progressives, and Democrats. Even though there yet remain good, decent Democrats such as Zell Miller, the majority, as David Horowitz attested to, are social-justice seeking communists: “The Democratic Party is very close to being the (Communist-controlled Progressive) party of Henry Wallace…The vast bulk of the American left is a Communist left and they’ve introduced some fascist ideas like “identity politics,” which is straight out of Mussolini.” (How Marxism Dominates the Left, Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com, June 1, 2005)

America’s Communist Left operates in a vast interconnected matrix of revolutionary groups disguised as respectable civil rights and legal organizations. These front groups have consistently worked towards the transformation of America through subversion of America’s Rule of Law, Constitution, judiciary, and all institutions necessary to the longevity and health of our nation and civilization. These groups attack all national security measures, subvert immigration laws and procedures, lobby on behalf of terrorist and enemy combatants, and engage in propagandistic apologetics for the most brutal dictatorships in the world even as they constantly vilify and demean America and Americans. As they do these things to destroy America and shame Americans, they hypocritically portray themselves as defenders of democracy and humanity.

The purpose of this article is to expose, at least in part, some of the principal communist groups responsible for undermining and weakening America and who likewise serve as a power source, not only for the militant Marxist organizers of the recent demonstrations, but for Islamic jihadists as well.

The Quiet Revolution

In 1984, “The Power to Lead” was published. In it, author James McGregor Burns admitted: “The Framers of the US Constitution have simply been too shrewd for us. They have outwitted us. They designed separate institutions that cannot be unified by mechanical linkages, frail bridges, tinkering. If we are to ‘turn the Founders upside down’…we must directly confront the constitutional structure they erected.” (A Chronological History: The New World Order by D.L. Cuddy PhD)

Turning the ''Founders upside down'' and directly confronting the ''constitutional structure'' are what the American Civil Liberties Union, National Lawyers Guild, and The Center for Constitutional Rights are committed to doing. Together, these three communist front groups comprise the “legal left,” and they slash and rip at the fabric of the constitutional framework.

The ACLU was established in 1920 by Roger Baldwin, a Stalinist who candidly admitted: “I am for socialism, disarmament, and ultimately, for abolishing the state itself.” On the Communist Party USA website, the ACLU can be found at this link: go here. http://www.cpusa.org/link/category/22/

When not working with and defending terrorists like Sami al-Arian, the ACLU terrorizes towns into removing Ten Commandments monuments and crosses and persecutes and intimidates Boy Scouts and law abiding Christians. The ACLU’s Immigrant Task Force and Immigrant Rights Project are a dual driving force in the Open Borders Lobby. Among current projects: dissolving America’s borders, erasing all evidence of Christianity and God, and requiring the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to provide free legal counsel to illegals while simultaneously demanding that illegals be provided with full welfare benefits.

The ACLU and its partner groups receive funding from a large assortment of subversive leftist funders. Among them: Arca Foundation, Ford Foundation, George Soros Open Society Institute, Rockefeller Foundation, Woods Fund of Chicago (Source: www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org)

The National Lawyers Guild was founded in 1936 by the Communist Party USA. The NLG is an active affiliate of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, which served as a Soviet front group during the Cold War. The NLG defines its mission as an effort to: “unite lawyers, law students, legal workers, and jailhouse lawyers of America (to) function as an effective political and social force…to the end that human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests.” In other words, its mission is to ''deKulakize'' America in the name of social justice.

In 1999, NLG member Chip Berlet described a Guild ''communist debate'' session: “The cacophony at some meetings (arises from) debates featuring…Leninist, Trotskyite, Stalinists…Maoist…Marxist, anarchists, libertarians and progressive independents…with multiple identities as lawyers, legal workers, labor organizers, tribal sovereignty activists, civil liberties and civil rights advocates, environmentalists, feminists, gay men and lesbians, and people of color.” Chip Berlet is an activist with Morris Dees Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), another communist front group and Open Borders member.

Not coincidentally, it was the SPLC that ''redistributed''--in the name of social justice--an Arizona ranchers’ property to some illegal aliens. This incident was detailed in an article entitled: “Two Illegal Immigrants Win Arizona Ranch in Court,” (New York Times, 8/19/05). Dees was quoted as saying, “…it’s poetic justice that these undocumented workers own this land”

Like the ACLU, the NLG is a key member of the Open Borders Lobby. Its National Immigration Project consists of a network of lawyers, law students, and legal workers committed to “full democratic rights for all non-citizens”--in the name of social justice. The NLG receives funding from, among others, the George Soros Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation. (Source: www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org)

The last of the trio is the Center for Constitutional Rights. It was founded in 1966 by pro-Castro attorneys Morton Stavis, Ben Smith, Arthur Kinoy, and William Kuntsler. The CCR prides itself on using “litigation proactively to advance the law in a positive direction to guarantee the rights of those with the fewest protections.” This is communist code for: “We subvert America’s laws.” Among those deemed by the CCR to be in need of protection are terrorist organizations, enemy combatants, and illegal immigrants.

The CCR receives funding from the Ford Foundation and George Soros Open Society Institute. (Source: www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org )

Two principal front groups, both of whom disguise their treachery as ‘civil rights,” are United for Peace and Justice and Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride.

The UFPJ is a rabidly anti-American, anti-war coalition co-chaired by committed communist Leslie Cagan. Cagan, who worships upon Fidel Castro’s altar, was an original founder of the Committees of Correspondence, a splinter group of the Communist Party USA. The UFPJ was created Oct. 25, 2002 in the Washington D.C. offices of People for the American Way, which played a key role in forming UFPJ. UFPJ is a sponsoring organization of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride. UFPJ’s social justice agenda extends well beyond anti-war activism as it is also a pro-abortion, pro-open borders advocate that condemns nearly every aspect of American culture and our government’s foreign policy. (Source: www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org)

The Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride (IWFR), another key player in the Open Borders Lobby, is supported by the ACLU and Communist Party USA. Additionally, it has the backing of Dennis Kucinich, Howard Dean, and Joe Lieberman. Among other groups listed as members of the IWFRC’s national sponsoring committee are ACORN, National Council of La Raza, National Immigration Forum, and United for Peace and Justice.

At the link below are literally hundreds of sponsors of IWFR, such as: Democratic senators, representatives, county board supervisors, governors, town council members, radical organizations, liberalized Christian and non-Christian churches, and political parties (including CPUSA and Democratic Socialists of America: go here).

Many thousands of Americans have been taken in by a myth. The myth states that communism died when the Soviet Union imploded. It further says that in these ''enlightened progressive times,'' only superstition-believing McCarthyite rednecks still believe in the communist boogieman. The myth, of course, was created by New Left communists to whom seduction, deception, and psychological manipulation are the ''rules of the game.'' Gramsci’s transformational revolution is very much alive. It’s spreading the cancer of godless communism--the ideology from Hell--throughout the length and breadth of our culture, and corrupting and decaying everything it touches.

President Ronald Reagan cautioned that: “…without God, there is no virtue because there’s no prompting of the conscience. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”

Americans---awaken and remember!

And here's more, from "Exposing America's Enemies, Part 2: Communist Progressive Democrats":

Social Justice is Communism

Judging from the adolescent name-calling and howls of protest which my previous article elicited from Progressive groups such as the Democratic Underground, it is obvious that the enraged howlers have no idea of what it really means for one to be a seeker of social justice. Either that or they really do know but are deceivers of the first magnitude.

Be that as it may, some clarification and definition of the terms social justice and communism is in order before proceeding on to the issue of Progressive Democrats.

To most Americans, communism means the Kremlin, gulags, killing fields, and Mao's brutal Red Guard. These things though were not the essence of communism. They were the visible manifestations of inhumane power and its consequences, all of which resulted when social justice seekers acquired total control to remake society and man.

The essence of communism is social justice, or justice in the social sphere. This is code for the elimination of poverty, of suffering, and of all differences between humans that erect walls between people. Fundamentally, social justice is a process of elimination that results in sameness (egalitarianism). When social justice seekers speak of the need for equality, what they're really calling for is sameness.

However, the attributes which make people different from each other and which social justice seekers are determined to eliminate, are the product of human nature and of freely made choices. For instance, some people are ambitious and hard-working while others are indolent and lazy and may willfully choose to live out of the pockets of the former.

It's the positive aspects of human nature that make a society dynamic. Dynamism is the animating force behind America's greatness -- her productivity, excellence, creativity, free markets, etc. In eliminating human differences, social justice seekers kill all of this, and as they did in the former Soviet Union, leave behind a smoking ruin haunted by despairing cookie-cutter claymation beings.

In speaking of the social justice process of elimination, Balint Vazsonyi remarked, prophets of socialjustice communists, whether by that name or any other name, focus on who should have less. Because they have nothing to give, they can only take away. First, they take away opportunity. Next, they take away possessions. In the end, they have to take away life itself. (America's 30 Years War, Balint Vazsonyi, p. 59)

The America of our Founders simply cannot coexist with the Search for Social Justice. For instance, as designed by our Founders, the Rule of Law exists to guarantee that unequal (different) people can have individual liberty, rights and possessions—including land ownership, which social justice seekers view as the original sin. Social justice demands that those who possess more of anything have it taken away from those who earned it and redistributed to those who did nothing to earn it.

Social Justice Seeking Democratic Progressive Caucus

The Democratic Progressive Caucus (DPC) is an organization comprised of about sixty Members of Congress. It was founded in 1991 by Rep. Bernie Sanders, former socialist mayor of Burlington, VT, and member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The DSA describes itself as the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International. (www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org)

The DPC advances its communist agenda behind innocuous sounding phrases such as social and economic justice. The three core principles of The Progressive Promise are:

1. Fighting for economic justice and security for all. (Code for: We’re going to ‘eliminate poverty and suffering’ by taking away all of your possessions and redistributing them.)

2. Protecting and preserving our civil rights and civil liberties. (Code for: We’re going to ‘eliminate’ all differences and pound everyone down to the lowest common denominator).

3. Promoting global peace and security. (Code for: We—your Superiors—will finally feel secure and at peace once agendas 1-2 have been carried out to completion.) (Source: http://www.bernie.house.gov/document_display_text.asp?FileToConvert=/pc/index.asp)

In “Pelosi Leader of Progressive Caucus,” it was revealed: “Until 1999, the website of the Progressive Caucus was hosted by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Following an expose of the link between the two organizations in World Net Daily, the Progressive Caucus established its own website.” (WorldNetDaily.com, Nov 11, 2002)

On the website of the DSA it boldly declares: “We are socialists…Democracy and socialism go hand in hand…wherever…democracy has taken root, the vision of socialism has taken root as well.” ( www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org ) The DSA increases its influence and power by networking with the Democratic Party to advance social justice programs and policies such as affirmative action and Stalinist hate crime laws. “Like our friends and allies in the feminist, labor, civil rights, religious, and community movements, many of us have been active in the Democratic Party.” (ibid)

Following are brief descriptions of some of the social justice seeking subversives in the Democratic Progressive Caucus whose words and actions embrace the tenets of communism:

1. Barbara Lee (D-CA): “former agent of the Black Panther leader and convicted killer, Huey Newton. Lee conspired with fellow communist, Cong. Ron Dellums, who used his authority to impede US foreign policy with regard to the Communist dictatorship of Grenada.” ( www.DiscoverTheNetWork.org ) “anti-American Communist who supports America’s enemies and has actively collaborated with them.” (Radical Road Map, James H. Hansen, p.189)

2. Jim McDermott (D-WA): “In 2002, McDermott and fellow Progressive Caucus member Rep. David Bonoir (D-Mich) and Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA) traveled to Baghdad, where they publicly embraced Saddam Hussein and created propaganda on his behalf.” ( www.DiscoverTheNetWork.org )

3. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill), who has accepted an award from the DSA once told one of its writers: “The American people are not ideological; therefore, the way to go is to attack private power.” (ibid)

4. John Conyers (D-MI): “In 1981 Conyers co-hosted a delegation from the Soviet front World Peace Council, giving that group a forum in Congress. Conyers endorsed a Communist-led antiwar demonstration in Washington in 1983 and…spoke at another Washington demonstration led by ANSWER in 2003.” (Radical Road Map’s, James H. Hansen, p 189)

5. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) “has taken part in…CAIR (a radical group with ties to Mideast terrorist organizations) events…including a Ramadan iftar…hosted (on Capitol Hill) by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Loretta Sanchez (D-CA), and Barbara Lee (D-CA).” (Kucinich Headlines Muslim Fundraiser, WorldNetDaily.com, Nov. 30, 2003)

The Constitution requires that members of Congress “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation to support this constitution.” The Oath of Office sworn to by US Senators reads:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the U.S…that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

Very simply, if Democratic Progressive Caucus members truthfully believed in the Christian-Judeo God and likewise in our Constitution--the document conceived of by our Founders and not the Lefts living document nonsense—they wouldn’t be social justice seeking communists. Rather, they would be Conservative Constitutionalists. That they are social justice seekers tells us that when they took their oath before God, they lied. Quite simply—they lied.

In Noah Webster’s 1828 edition of the American Dictionary of the English Language we find the correct term to apply to treacherous Democratic Progressives. That word is “traitor,” and the following definition is the one most likely referred to by our Founders. “Traitor: One who violates allegiance and betrays his country; one guilty of treason…who, in breach of trust, delivers his country to its enemy…who aids an enemy in conquering his country.”

Through use of Stalinist psycho-politics, America’s Communist Left imprisoned the consciences of Americans within psychic strait-jackets of political correctness. As long as we allow ourselves to be chained by political correctness, we will not be able to identify and speak openly about our enemies--those without, and those within. In the absence of freedom of conscience and of clear and honest speaking, we can neither formulate strategies for our safety nor deal appropriately with the treacherous deceivers operating amongst us who are colluding with our enemies and plotting to destroy our nation from within. The first order of business then, is for all Americans to break out of the psychic strait jackets of political correctness, thus allowing Truth to expose the treachery and treason at work in our nation.

Truth will set us free: “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:32.