Biden Administration Sued for Halting Oil, Gas Leasing on Federal Lands

The Washington Examiner "President Joe Biden is slowly assembling his Cabinet, but what’s likely to be his most fiery Senate confirmation showdown (featuring his old friend and rival Bernie Sanders) hasn’t been scheduled yet.

"Biden’s announcement that he had tapped Neera Tanden, 50, as the director-designate of the Office of Management and Budget, tasked with drafting his budget and overseeing his administration’s budget plans and policy implementation, was met with opposition from his left and right.

Tanden photo added by TD

"But even before Tanden’s candidacy is put to a vote on the floor of the Senate, she is facing some friendly fire: Democratic opposition.

"Sanders’ Senate Budget Committee has jurisdiction over Tanden’s position, and the pair have openly clashed. Tanden, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, as well as an alumna of former President Bill Clinton’s administration, was a fierce backer of Hillary Clinton’s two White House campaigns, using CAP to boost her bid.

"The newly installed chairman has yet to schedule Tanden’s confirmation hearing. While his panel is tied up with Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 rescue package and efforts to legislate a federal minimum wage hike, his decision to delay her appearance has dredged up the pair’s past public clashes when Sanders challenged Clinton for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.

“ 'I don’t know, honestly. We’re working on it,” he said last week when asked about the timeline. “It’s going on. ... Obviously, there’s a process we’re going to go through.”

"In 2016, Sanders blasted Tanden in a letter for “maligning my staff and supporters and belittling progressive ideas.”

"I worry that the corporate money CAP is receiving is inordinately and inappropriately influencing the role it is playing in the progressive movement,” Sanders wrote.

"And the animosity hasn’t abated. Sanders’ 2020 campaign spokeswoman tweeted last November that Tanden embodied “everything toxic about the corporate Democratic Party.” . . .

Who is Neera Tanden? Hillary Clinton loyalist and Joe Biden’s pick for budget chief 

. . . "But it will hardly be the first taste of power for Tanden, who is the daughter of Indian immigrant parents and often makes the list of the most powerful people in the US capital, from Elle’s 10 most powerful women in DC in 2014, to Politico’s 50 (sharing the 18th rank with two other aides of the then US presidential nominee Hillary Clinton) in 2016.

"Tanden, 50, is a Yale Law alumna who currently serves as chief executive of the think tank Center for American Progress, a public policy research and advocacy organisation based in Washington. 

"A policymaking veteran, she served as a healthcare adviser in the erstwhile Obama administration, where she played a key role in framing provisions of the Affordable Care Act or ‘Obamacare’." . . . 

Will Rude Tweets Get Neera Tanden Blocked From the Biden Administration?

Ten Reasons a Post-Presidency Impeachment of Barack Obama Should Happen

Matt Margolis "With the Senate looking to be on the verge of starting an impeachment trial for President Trump over bogus allegations that he incited the assault on the Capitol on January 6, Democrats have established the precedent that even after a president is out of office, he must be held accountable for alleged crimes committed during his presidency.

“ 'If it is a good idea to impeach and try former presidents, what about former Democratic presidents when Republicans get the majority in 2022?” asked Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) as an ominous warning to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). “Think about it and let’s do what is best for the country.”

"Cornyn’s message was clear. The Democrats, in proceeding with this impeachment, will have opened Pandora’s Box. While it’s hardly a sure thing that Republicans would have the courage to impeach former Democrat presidents once they are back in the majority (let alone a current one) the possibility now exists.

"Cary Elwes, the actor most famous for his role as Westley in The Princess Bride, scoffed at Cornyn’s hypothetical: “And what would you try to impeach former Democratic Presidents for?”

"Well, that’s the question I’m about to answer. The most obvious former Democrat president who could be and should be impeached despite already having left office is Barack Obama.
While Democrats are most likely motivated by their desire to prevent President Trump from running for president again, there are other benefits given to former presidents that would be taken away upon conviction. Given his many impeachable acts while in office, the post-presidency impeachment of Barack Obama would hopefully set an example for future presidents.

"I’ve compiled ten things Barack Obama could be impeached for once Republicans retake the majority in the House.: . . .

10. Illegally firing an inspector general to protect a sex predator...

9. His war on cops...

8. Illegal treaties...

7. The Sestak bribery scandal...

6. Rampant obstruction of justice...

5. Spying on the media...

4. The illegal war in Libya...

3. The Benghazi attack cover-up...

2. The IRS targeting scandal...

1. Obamagate...

Further, evidence that Russia actually preferred Clinton over Trump was allegedly suppressed by Obama CIA Director John Brennan.

Matt Margolis is the author of Airborne: How The Liberal Media Weaponized The Coronavirus Against Donald Trump, and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama

Allow me to add to the list these items that the vindictive man-child Barack Obama inflicted on us:

"Obama’s IRS also attempted to silence political enemies.  Lois Lerner, an IRS official who served under Obama, threatened Tea Party nonprofits that had applied for tax-exempt status throughout the 2010 midterms and the 2012 presidential election." . . . 

2013: Obama Wants to Make the Shutdown Hurt Ordinary Americans  . . . "The managing director of the farm, Anna Eberly, said, “In all the years I have worked with the National Park Service … I have never worked with a more arrogant, arbitrary and vindictive group representing the NPS,” Eberly said." . . . "Mr. Obama’s behavior is not normal behavior but it is the behavior one would expect in a Banana Republic." . . .

President Obama wants the government shutdown to hurt, and hurt bad. He closed a World War II memorial and tried to block veterans from remembering their service to their country. Is Obama using the federal budget to spite veterans and the elderly? Hear what Trifecta thinks.

More at The Tunnel Wall Blog

Notwithstanding a severe dislike for Democrats, I'll still choose Tulsi Gabbard over Mitt Romney

Gabbard is right to call on Biden to denounce this agenda, but the current president seems likely to support it. On the campaign trail, Biden said he plans to prioritize passing a law against domestic terrorism. His blatant double standard in vocally condemning the Capitol riots while coddling the antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters who burned cities this past summer does not bode well for a balanced implementation of any terrorism law.

Gabbard: Democrats trying to turn America into 'police state'

 

"Gabbard Sounds the Alarm: Leftists Are Plotting 'KGB-Style Surveillance' of Conservatives . . . “The mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6 to try to stop Congress from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities were behaving like domestic enemies of our country. But let’s be clear, the John Brennans, Adam Schiffs, and oligarchs in Big Tech who are trying to undermine our constitutionally-protected rights and turn our country into a police state with KGB-style surveillance, are also domestic enemies, and much more powerful, and therefore dangerous, than the mob that stormed the Capitol,” Gabbard declared.

"She then played a brief clip of Brennan warning against an “unholy alliance” including “religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, and even Libertarians” that “looks very similar to insurgency movements that we’ve seen overseas.”

"Gabbard, a former presidential candidate, ended her clip by calling on President Joe Biden and all members of Congress to condemn Brennan’s remarks, which suggest a threat to Americans’ civil liberties." . . .

Tulsi Gabbard Tears John Brennan, Adam Schiff, and the Big Tech Oligarchs Apart  "Tulsi Gabbard may be mostly liberal in her views, but she’s doing a lot of things right lately. Before leaving office, she came out in support of late-term abortion bans. She’s also long been right about a lot of foreign policy misadventures. Today, she released a video hitting on an issue many Republican politicians are too cowardly (or too bought off) to push. Namely, the illiberalism of Big Tech and figures like Adam Schiff and John Brennan." . . .

Tulsi Gabbard: Brennans, Schiffs, and Big Tech Oligarchs More Dangerous than Mob that Stormed Capitol

Breitbart "Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard blasted former CIA Director John Brennan, House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), and big tech “oligarchs” seeking to censor fellow Americans after the January 6 Capitol riot.

"Gabbard shared a video statement online where she criticized them for trying to take away Americans’ constitutionally protected rights. She said in the video:

The mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6 to try to stop Congress from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities were behaving like domestic enemies of our country. But let’s be clear. The John Brennans, Adam Schiffs, and the oligarchs in big tech who are trying to undermine our constitutionally protected rights and turn our country into a police state with KGB-style surveillance are also domestic enemies, and much more powerful and therefore dangerous than the mob that stormed our Capitol.

"The video included a clip of Brennan’s remarks in a January 20 interview with MSNBC, where he said that the Biden team is “now moving in laser-like fashion” to over “what looks very similar to insurgency movements” that include libertarians:

We are now looking forward that the members of the Biden team who have been nominated or have been appointed are now moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about what looks very similar to insurgency movements that we’ve seen overseas, where they germinate in different parts of the country and they gain strength and it brings together an unholy alliance frequently of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, Nativists, even libertarians.

Gabbard concluded with an appeal to President Joe Biden:

Now President Biden, I call upon you and all members of Congress from both parties to denounce these efforts by the likes of Brennan and others to take away our civil liberties that are endowed to us by our creator and guaranteed in our constitution. If you don’t stand up to these people now, then our country will be in great peril." . . .

 

Everyone who wishes America well must always hope that an incoming president of the United States is successful.

 Conrad Black    "Some have been more vociferous in their criticism of Joe Biden than I have, but few have been more consistent. I’ve never forgiven him for what he did to my friend Robert Bork in 1987, a great man who would have been an outstanding Supreme Court justice. Biden as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee appeared to be ready to support the former solicitor general until Teddy Kennedy gave his infamous address, including his defamatory accusation that Robert Bork’s America would reduce American women to back-alley abortions, among other conjured degradations. 

"It is hard to take seriously an incoming president when one of his previous campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination folded before he reached the plateau of two percent support because he was caught red-handed cribbing from an absurd campaign platitude authored by one of 20th-century Britain’s least successful opposition leaders, Neil Kinnock.

"It is disconcerting that any president-elect manufactures his academic career and invents episodes of arrest in South Africa, especially in the context of attempting to visit Nelson Mandela 600 miles from where his brief alleged detention took place. In 50 years of public life, he has faced in all four directions on every issue and is not strongly identified with any particular major achievement. No one qualified to do so has contradicted former defense secretary and CIA director Robert Gates, who served presidents of both parties in high office, when he remarked, after writing that Joe Biden, although a pleasant and generous-hearted man, had been mistaken on every foreign and strategic policy subject of the last 30 years. 

"I respect everyone’s religious views from committed atheism to fervent practice, and almost all sides of the abortion issue, apart from opinions that are insane or sociopathic, but as a devoted but tolerant Roman Catholic I find it annoying that Joe Biden has portrayed himself as a pious co-religionist, even as he approved the prosecution of the Little Sisters of the Poor for declining to pay for the abortions and other birth control requirements of those in their charge or employment." . . .

In sports, transgenders rule, girls drool

Hurting the girls by helping the boys?

 Stephen Ryan  "The directive, titled "Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation," spells disaster for women's shelters, sports and health care in the name of transgender equality.

For instance: Institutions that receive Title IX funding must allow biological males who identify as female to compete in women's athletics. "Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to ... school sports," the order states.

Educating our sons and daughters about the new gender realities

"Any school that receives federal funding—including nearly every public high school—must either allow biological boys who self-identify as girls onto girls' sports teams or face administrative action from the Education Department." —Abigail Shrier, "Joe Biden's First Day Began the End of Girls' Sports"

 . . . "Just think of the fun!  All your sons have to do is "self-identify" as a girl.  It seems as if that is the only qualifier.  No surgery, no make-up or clothing, and no giving up on dating girls (as long as your son identifies as a lesbian).  There's also not a time requirement.  That is, your sons won't be stuck self-identifying as girls forever.  They can do it for a semester or two and then fluidly go back to identifying as boys."

 

Biden's False Catholicism

Except the Left is dogmatic and wrong, while the Church is dogmatic and right.  And nothing less than the truth -- stated unequivocally, dogmatically -- will be strong enough to purify an atmosphere so toxic with lies as the one Biden and Pelosi have been inhaling and exhaling most of their lives.  It’s too late for dialogue. 

T.R. Clancy  . . .  "If the USCCB’s statement is both unprecedented and critical, it might be because Biden is only the second Catholic elected president, and his Catholic predecessor, even giving full demerits for JFK’s midnight skinny-dipping with Fiddle and Faddle, was not making frequent, public, and cranky assurances to voters that, once elected, he intended to pursue the most hostile anti-Catholic agenda in American history.  Just as Biden dared black voters not to support him at the risk of their racial identity, Biden dared Catholic voters not to elect him despite his obvious qualifications of personal religiosity and chumminess with the Pope.  At the same time his campaign was protecting Biden from chancing specifics about his policy positions, there was a steady stream of video shots of Biden wryly crossing himself, and irreligious news outlets publishing smarmy profiles taking reverent note of the ever-present rosary in Biden’s pocket and his weekly attendance at Mass.  At the first White House briefing on the evening of the inauguration, press secretary Jen Psaki batted away a legitimate question about Biden’s promise to restore federal funding for abortion with, “’I will take the opportunity to remind all of you that he is a devout Catholic.’” 

"But that’s the point: has anyone taken the opportunity to remind Joe Biden about being a devout Catholic?  Archbishop Gomez’s statement may have been his attempt to do that." . . .  

"We should be getting used to these offbeat qualifications and standards by now. If not, C’mon man. You ain’t American."

C'mon, Joe  "Brave commentators or run-of-the-mill voters who challenge Joe Biden with a politically awkward question may find themselves answered with a familiar refrain, “c’mon man.”  That sarcastic nip hides the mental fog often evident in his expression and is used as a safeword for his spokespeople to put an end to further inquiry.  It is often followed by a quick retreat, a tug by a concerned spouse, or some other preplanned exit strategy.  

"Biden’s remarks can be imprudent if unscripted and he offers only a marginally better performance squinting in front of a teleprompter.  It bodes ill for America that this shortcoming is not commonly found among the rivals he must now face as praetorian of the free world." . . .

Image by Will O'Toole of O'Toons Cartoons.

Chinese fighter jets buzz Taiwan for second day as tensions rise days into Biden term

 Yahoo News

A total of 20 Chinese fighter jets have entered Taiwan’s air defence
 identification zone in the past two days -

"China ramped up its pressure on democratic Taiwan over the weekend, with an unusually large number of fighter jets approaching the island in a "test" for the new administration of US President Joe Biden.

"On Sunday, 12 Chinese fighter jets entered Taiwan’s air defence identification zone, along with a reconnaissance aircraft and two anti-submarine aircraft, Taiwan’s defence ministry said.

"A day earlier, China sent eight bomber planes capable of carrying nuclear weapons and four fighter jets to the same area to the southwest of the island, as well as one reconnaissance aircraft.

"On both occasions, Taiwan sent up aircraft, issued radio warnings to the Chinese aircraft, and deployed air defence missile systems to monitor their activity.

"Beijing claims self-governing Taiwan as part of its territory, and has been angered by a show of increased US support for Taiwan during Donald Trump’s administration." . . .

As Recall Effort Picks up Steam, Newsom Reportedly to Lift Stay-at-home Order in State

 Townhall

"The campaign to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom is inching closer to meeting the required number of signatures needed to qualify for a statewide ballot." . . . 

According to Fox News, this is the sixth time Newsom has faced a recall effort in the last two years, but the governor’s controversial response to the coronavirus pandemic in the state—and his hypocrisy—have given the latest attempt more traction. In November, Newsom was photographed breaking many of his own COVID-19 restrictions during a dinner party at the French Laundry. . . .

The left wants to wipe the right from the political map as quickly and effectively as possible.

 

The Conservative Purge Isn’t Over, It’s Just Getting Cranked Up  . . . "Playing the role this week of Michael Corleone, who in the first of “The Godfather” installments eliminated his families’ enemies, is the Democratic Party. Congressional Democrats are going forward, with the blessing of the new president, whose plea for unity is clearly a sham, with a domestic terrorism bill in both chambers of Congress." . . .

Former 'NYT' Reporter Pummels the Paper: The Fish Wrapper's a Place Where You're Fired for Publishing Conservatives

Megyn Kelley fights back: . . .“My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name.' ” . . .

Tony Branco

Vanity Fair Asks Cult Expert How to ’Deprogram’ Trump Followers  . . . "Presenting his “solution,” Hassan suggests the use of “massive education,” without clarifying just who determines what is appropriate for such a program and how it will take place.

“ 'The solution, in my opinion, to this incredibly intense polarization that we’re experiencing, is a massive education about [the difference between] ethical influence and unethical influence,” he states, before pondering which form of “hypnosis” is ethical"...

Mike Lindell: No Regrets, Media Attacked Me for Doing 'Good for Country'

Newsmax  "MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell said on Sunday that he has no regrets about supporting former President Donald Trump and his claims of widespread voter fraud in the election, even though his company’s products have been dropped by major retailers as a result of this backing.

"Lindell said that the media has attacked him ever since he threw his support behind Trump as he ran for president in 2016 and now they are attacking him, “because I’m trying to do something good for the country.” 

"Speaking to host John Catsimatidis on "The Cats Roundtable" radio show on 970 AM in New York, Lindell said that “I don’t have any regrets. Not one. Trump is the best president we ever had. He kept his promises. He did so much for this country and so much for people in business and I have no regrets.. I would do it all again, only I would do it double.”

"When the MyPillow CEO was asked if he thought Trump would come back to run for president again in 2024, he insisted that  the inauguration of President Joe Biden “is a farce.' " . . .