When the state steals baseball

Yes, these cultural wars are part of an attack on traditional values.  The objective, as we learned in Cuba, is to destroy the family unit and rewrite history.  And no one can escape it, especially if you love watching sports.  

 Silvio Canto, Jr.; American Thinker  "Years ago in Cuba, my father, brother,  and I spent a lot of Sunday afternoons watching baseball games.  I have memories of the old professional Cuban winter league and players like Minnie Minoso, Camilo Pascual, Pedro Ramos and others.  However, most of my memories were actually watching the new teams that the regime created after outlawing pro teams.  It was decent baseball but all politics.  In the old professional league, the outfield fences had advertising from local merchants.  The new league used those spaces to promote slogans praising the revolution and attacking capitalism.  As my father used to say, everything with these people is pushing their agenda.  It was.

"So am I surprised that the Left is now targeting baseball?  I am, not because we've seen this movie before.  I am glad that Mike Gonzalez addressed this issue vis-a-vis the Dodgers.  This is what he wrote:   

This time, they’re coming after baseball. Baseball. Get it? The National Pastime. The inner sanctum of homespun goodness. Your last refuge from the crazy. The leftists intent on politicizing everything, changing society, and coercing changed behavior won’t leave you alone, ever, anywhere.

If you thought you could ignore this attack on your way of life, you were fooling yourself. If you thought the “culture wars” were for others, think again. The choice here is binary: You surrender or you fight this evil with all your might.    

The place this time is Los Angeles. Yes, the Dodgers, one of the most hallowed franchises in the most hallowed sport. And the medium is one of the things that you hold most dear -- your religion, your faith, your God. . . .

Defund The IRS –

  Issues & Insights

. . ."Through the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration had obtained an additional $80 billion for the IRS, more than six times its current annual budget. Funding for enforcement was to increase by 69% through fiscal 2031. Such a “generous injection of other people’s money” would mean, according to the Washington Free Beacon, that the IRS will “employ more bureaucrats than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol combined.”

"The expansion will now be delayed for at least one fiscal year.

"Of course hiring 87,000 new IRS agents, as the Biden administration hopes to, would do nothing to reduce inflation. It would, however, give the federal government greater power over a citizenry it wants so desperately to control. The FBI can arrest Americans, the intelligence communities can spy on us, but it’s the IRS that can, and does, terrify and ruin.

"We wish we could say the IRS is a harmless collection agency that operates a paper-shuffling process and provides exceptional customer service. We’re sure some, maybe even many, who work for the IRS have the same wish. But the reality is that it’s a voracious monster.

"The fear and loathing of the IRS goes beyond its leadership’s inclination to be an attack dog for politicians (think of the Democrats during the Obama years) who want to not just injure but eliminate their across-the-aisle opponents. When the ruthless Dr. Floyd Ferris sneered in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” that:

There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

Would any American be surprised if those words were lifted straight from the unofficial IRS operations manual, and not fiction that hits close to real life?. . .

Only One Republican Candidate Gets Results

 In their party's two leading candidates, Republican voters have a choice between a former president with a record of deferring to experts with mixed and sometimes dismaying results, and a state governor with a demonstrated capacity for mastering the details on issues and following through and getting results. 

Michael Barone (jewishworldreview.com)  "The Wollman Rink episode, or, rather, the unduly optimistic conclusion I drew from it, explains a lot about Donald Trump's presidency and why he may not do as well against Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) in the contest for the Republican nomination, as current poll numbers suggest.

"The story of the ice skating rink repair is now ancient history, a reference even fewer readers will find familiar than when I featured it in a column in December 2016, a month after Trump's surprise election as president.

"The Wollman Rink was first opened in 1945, but due to mismanagement by the city government, it deteriorated over the years, and by 1984, when the Trump Tower opened just a few blocks away on Fifth Avenue, it wasn't working at all, even after the city government spent $13 million over six years trying to fix it.

"Enter Trump, who offered to get the rink working, and did so, as he recounted in his 1987 memoir, "The Art of the Deal," ahead of time and $3 million under budget. Maybe as president, I speculated, he could transform government procedures and eliminate endless environmental reviews and enable the public seriously to build infrastructure again.

"No such luck. Even as the head of the executive branch, and for the first two years with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, Trump did not come close to making the deep reforms needed to make American infrastructure great again. It seems that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), with a razor-thin majority in the House and facing a Democratic Senate and president, may have gotten more than Trump ever did.

"Why was I mistaken? I failed to draw the appropriate lesson from Trump's own account. He admitted he knew nothing about skating rinks and that he needed experts who did. He decided he could find them most easily in Canada, a technologically advanced country with thousands of working ice-skating rinks. Months later, New Yorkers were once again ice-skating in Central Park.

"As president, he seems to have operated similarly, not bothering to master issues himself but hiring purported experts and relying on them to get things done. But too often, the skating rink didn't get repaired, or the expert failed to show the respect the president craved.

"And what Common Good's Philip Howard called the "decade-long review and permitting procedures (that) more than double the effective cost of new infrastructure projects" stayed in place. A missed opportunity for the nation.

"Rather than lay the groundwork for fundamental reform, Trump's typical response was to denounce his appointees, the highly talented and utterly incompetent alike, and seek out yet other purported experts.

Sometimes, the results were good. Operation Warp Speed, a suspension of usual procedures with a huge outlay, produced COVID vaccines that, though not preventing infection, significantly reduced death rates.

"But not always. Trump largely turned over COVID policies to credentialed experts such as Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, who pushed him toward advocating restrictive policies. Fauci, who had funded research in the Wuhan lab, worked secretly to quash the lab leak theory and to smear as incompetent scientists who favored less stringent restrictions. A president more inclined to ferret out details on critical problems might have prevented such misconduct." . . .

Cracks in Biden's wokester Pentagon? Military backs off from promoting gay culture -

In a tweet last July [2020], then-candidate Biden said: “Banning the Confederate flag from military installations was long overdue. Banning the LGBTQ Pride flag — the very symbol of diversity and inclusion — is undeniably wrong. The Pentagon should ensure it is authorized, or as President, I will.” 

 Monica Showalter; American Thinker   "In the wake of the Bud Light boycott, something interesting is happening in the military, too.

According to Politico:

The Pentagon will no longer allow shows involving drag performers to be hosted at military facilities, a spokesperson said Thursday, enforcing a longstanding policy amid intensifying pressure from Republican lawmakers to cancel the practice.

Drag shows on military bases have been a contentious issue in recent months as part of a larger push by some Republican lawmakers who say personnel policies including diversity training and racial-justice education distract from warfighting and harm recruiting efforts.

"There's also this, reported on Fox News:

The U.S. Navy has taken down posts celebrating LGBTQ+ Pride month on social media, including rainbow banners that read, "Pride."

Pride posts made on the Navy's Instagram and Twitter accounts on Thursday, June 1, are no longer there as of Friday, June 2. The posts showed outlines of Navy vessels and aircraft with streaming rainbow trails and the word "Pride" stylized in different colors. They were removed without explanation.

A meme account on Twitter called "End Wokeness" called attention to how the Navy also took down an LGBTQ+ Pride banner on its account. Some users left comments suggesting the posts were taken down in response to backlash over military support for Pride.

"The tweet is here:

‘Pride’ Month is not license to resort to name-calling the faithful - American Thinker

. . ."I was shocked to read those words: “. . . which is stacked with openly homophobic members.” How do they know they’re “homophobic” and not simply religious Jews and people? 

"Shame on the Associated Press for resorting to name-calling, e.g., “homophobic members.” Would they call people who are religious and disapprove of adultery, “adulteryphobic?” Or would they call those who oppose pedophilia “pedophobic?” There are other sexual acts or relations that could also be named that are mutually considered sinful and forbidden by Islam, Orthodox Judaism, and Christianity."

Joe Biden Is Starting To Scare Everyone

  MSN

The world’s leaders think that this is a time in their relationship with America when the United States is so poorly led that they will be able to extract extraordinary concessions from the West—at unbelievably bargain rates. 

. . ."The forty-sixth president was seemingly enjoying a sunny, breezy day at the Air Force Academy in Colorado. Wearing the blue Air Force hat, staring blankly at the graduates as they came up to receive their diploma, President Joe Biden looked as though he was overcome by a random though, he pivoted on stage, and went to jog to the other side of the stage, and before he could reach his destination, the forty-sixth president was down on the floor.

"More troublingly, Biden couldn’t stand up again. He needed the help of two Secret Service agents and an Air Force officer. 

"As cameras zoomed in to get a better angle on the fallen president—who was clearly confused and panicked as he could not stand up quickly from the fall—many of the Air Force graduates leaving the stage with their diplomas in hand were smirking.

"America’s great-grandfather had fallen. He was spastically trying to stand. ". . .

. . ."Sorry to say this, but Biden is literally weak. I also happen to think he's mentally diminished, too. And it’s pathetic. A diverse, rich nation, with more than 320 million people and Biden is the best we could do to lead us? 

"The rest of the world doesn’t feel sympathy as they watch Biden collapse—again—in public and his security detail rush to “protect his dignity” as the camera rolls. 

"Far from it. 

"The rest of the world, friends and enemies alike, see opportunity every time the forty-sixth president falls going up the stairs of Air Force One, or crashing to the ground while sitting on his unmoving bike, at an intersection in Rehoboth Beach, Del., or getting into a fight with a perfectly flat stage at the Air Force Academy graduation and losing that fight bigly. The world’s leaders think that this is a time in their relationship with America when the United States is so poorly led that they will be able to extract extraordinary concessions from the West—at unbelievably bargain rates. ". . .

Many Of Our Elected Officials Are Unfit To Serve — Medical Problems Are Sometimes The Cause

“Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself,” quipped Mark Twain. 

EARL OF TAINT

 Issues & Insights  . . ."That’s in the same category as the concern of Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., that stationing 8,000 U.S. military personnel on Guam would cause the small island to “become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize.”

Currently serving Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, once proclaimed that the U.S. Constitution is 400 years old. And as a member of the House Science Committee, during a visit to the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Lab, she asked a NASA scientist whether the Mars Pathfinder probe had photographed the flag that astronaut Neil Armstrong left behind in 1969. Armstrong had, of course, left the flag on the moon, not on Mars. No manned spacecraft has visited Mars.". . .

"A mental status exam by an expert offers an assessment of cognitive abilities, memory and quality of thought processes. It includes assessments of alertness, speech, behavior, awareness of environment, mood, affect, rationality of thought processes, appropriateness of thought content (presence of delusions, hallucinations, or phobias), memory, ability to perform simple calculations, judgment (“If you found a letter on the ground in front of a mailbox, what would you do with it?”), and higher reasoning, such as the ability to interpret proverbs abstractly (“A stitch in time saves nine.”).

"An intelligence test measures various parameters that are thought to correlate with academic or financial achievement. Every politician need not be a genius, but I’d like the ones who represent me to be smarter than the average person on the street.

"The journalist and satirist H.L. Mencken observed, “Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels; two-thirds, more or less, idiots; and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons.”

"Testing might help us to weed out a few idiots. Getting rid of the scoundrels and poltroons will have to wait."

Democrat falls; media leaps to the rescue

 

Biden's fall was but one of several indications there that he is now unfit for the responsibilities he carries - American Thinker

For the sake of his well-being, his wife "Dr." Jill Biden and family must stage an intervention and get him to retire to a less stressful and hazardous lifestyle. . . .

 . . ."As David Zukerman reminds us, the legacy media have a double-standard for presidential falls and will never give Biden the treatment they gave Gerald Ford and Donald Trump for missteps.". . .

How the Media Reacted to Biden Falling Versus Trump Not Falling (freebeacon.com)  Have you heard this one? A Republican president and a Democratic president walked off stage after commencement speeches at military colleges three years apart. The media coverage was a joke.

"Then: In 2020, then-President Donald Trump slowly descended a ramp at West Point in New York after taking a weird sip of water, and mainstream media pretended it was a national crisis.

New York Times: "Trump’s Halting Walk Down Ramp Raises New Health Questions"

"President Trump faced new questions about his health on Sunday, after videos emerged of him gingerly walking down a ramp at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and having trouble bringing a glass of water to his mouth during a speech there.". . .

 Reuters: "Biden Trips and Falls During Graduation Ceremony, Recovers Quickly"

CNN: "White House Says Biden Is Fine After Tripping on Sandbag and Falling on Stage at Air Force Academy Commencement"

Parody: Report: Sandbag That Tripped Biden On Stage Also Participated In Jan 6 Capitol Riot | Babylon Bee

. . ."Though unharmed in the tripping incident, President Biden has privately vowed to bring the full weight of the federal government behind his crusade to hunt down other sandbags. Additional reports seem to have indicated the sand inside the bag was white, raising concerns about ties to white supremacist organizations.". . .

Powerful: Biden Falls To The Ground In Support Of LGBTQ Rights | Babylon Bee . . . "Biden reportedly made the gesture after giving a speech at the Air Force Academy graduation ceremony. According to sources, he became so deeply moved by his love for the LGBTQ movement that he took a knee--followed by an elbow, a hip, and a face, before finally lying motionless on the stage until Secret Service came to pick him up.

"The gesture was completely on-purpose and in no way an accidental fall by a President who can't really walk anymore," said Jean-Pierre". . .

The Mainstream Media Threatens American Democracy  

When the Biden crime family has more than 200 banking irregularities and nine family members have received significant funds from foreign governments, the Leftist press will claim that this is all conjecture and no proof has been presented. 

If Joe’s a No-Go, Then Who?  . . ." Except in physical features, there wouldn’t be a dime’s worth of difference between any of them.  There wasn’t in 2020, and there wouldn’t be next year, either.  Whoever the nominee is, if he/she/it is elected President, he/she/it will do exactly what the Far Left of the Democratic Party tells him/her/it to do, just like Joe Biden is doing right now.  They might as well renominate Joe, for whoever follows him would be a Joe-clone.  Well, they could nominate a hill of beans.  Half of America would vote for it.  The Marxist Far Left is in total control of the Democratic Party and will allow none but one of theirs as the nominee.  And every Democrat knows it.". . .

Woke Corporations Take On America. We're winning, and now they call us terrorists

 Christian Goya Foods CEO ROASTS woke corporations collapsing under boycotts - Whatfinger News' Choice Clips

https://twitter.com/i/status/1664300572751568897

Woke Corporations Take On America. We're winning, and now they call us terrorists (rumble.com)   "Woke corporations like Target and Disney are learning what happens when they move against Conservative America or insult freedom. All over America, Conservative boycotts work, but the Left's boycotts almost never do except when they try to make a group or corporation even more woke than they already are. Goya CEO has it right, DeSantis is right too... as the nuts on MSNBC call us terrorists now for daring to not shop at Target or any other Woke company. As if they can force us to shop where we are hated. Remember folks - YOU have all the power. Your money well spent, and NOT at any woke BS companies unless you have to, makes and breaks any company. So keep going, check the labels, buy American as much as possible, and keep fighting. - Mal Antoni

"Clips in full can be found at the following  link:  https://choiceclips.whatfinger.com/2023/06/01/christian-goya-foods-ceo-roasts-woke-corporations-collapsing-under-boycotts/

"The News Variable Show, with Mal Antoni hosting... Now here on Rumble. All controversial statements by Mr. Antoni are his own opinions. If you don't like them, don't watch. If you are one of those nut cases who watch just to complain, get a life or stick to fake news. We have no time for your BS. America needs patriots that just say it like it is. If you don't like it, too damn bad.". . .

Chick-fil-A’s Woke Turn Signals Larger DEI Problem in Corporate America (dailysignal.com)

 . . ."The fast-food chain simply adhered to some level of biblical morality in its corporate practices, which meant closing on Sundays and donating to organizations that supported traditional marriage between a man and a woman. 

"But that was too much for the Left to bear.". . .

 'No longer the Lord’s Chicken': Woman 'grieving' over 'woke' Chick-fil-A hiring diversity lead (msn.com)

Woke Capitalism: How Huge Corporations Demonstrate Status by Endorsing Political Radicalism (ammo.com)     . . ."The very notion of dialogue and civil debate isn’t just missing. There’s a deep hostility to the notion that there is any point of view other than the most woke possible. There is a line in the sand: On one side, there are the people who believe that America is a profoundly racist country and that this colors every aspect of our history. On the other side, there’s anyone who is even mildly skeptical of this – and the people on this side are “white supremacists.” By the logic of wokeism, these people deserve anything that happens to them (including being “cancelled”).

"What this means is that wokeism does not simply operate in the background of the rest of society. You cannot simply ignore the cringe-inducing woke commercials on your television and not click the frankly hateful and racist articles of the woke online. Your compliance is a required aspect of wokeism. Think back to the social media phenomenon of large companies denouncing alleged “white supremacy” with a black square. Compliance with this was required, as if one were painting blood over their threshold to avoid the plague of the firstborn in ancient Egypt.". . .

Supreme Court rules 8-1 against unions' claimed right to destroy employer property during strikes, with just one justice (Biden's choice) not getting the memo

The other eight are obviously racist. Let's ask the "View" ladies, shall we?.

 Monica Showalter; American Thinker  "Someone who doesn't know what a woman is wouldn't be expected to know much about strike law, either.

"That brings us to Supreme Court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who served as the lonely dissenter on a cut-and-dried case regarding sneaky union tactics that destroyed company property during a strike.

"Even the other liberals on the Court went along with the majority, 8-1, in the ruling.  But not she.". . .

"What Jackson misses here is that strikes for companies are the deprivation of company labor, not company property.  If workers walk off the job, they had better turn the lights out and the machinery off and leave the fridges on.  They had better not get the cement mixers started and leave them running for ruin because now they'll face a few consequences of their own.  All they have to do is go on strike, taking "reasonable precautions" not to spoil work or property left unfinished.  They can't wreck the place on the way out and call that their "protected behavior" and rely on the political hacks at the National Labor Relations Board to cover for them.

"It goes to show that Jackson is a creature of union interests, not an impartial justice.  One wonders how she'd rule in cases like Antifa burning courthouses in its strike "duties" or Black Lives Matters rioters looting shops in their strike "duties," too.  Would she defend those characters with the same logic?  Don't hold your breath that she wouldn't.". . .

The Case for Ron DeSantis -

 

The American Spectator | USA News and Politics 

 He single-handedly made the nation's largest swing state ruby-red.

"Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ much-anticipated 2024 presidential campaign is finally here. DeSantis is, by any empirical metric or otherwise reasonable estimation, the only person with a viable chance of defeating former President Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. What follows is a straightforward affirmative case for DeSantis’ candidacy, written from the perspective of someone who moved to the Sunshine State during the COVID-19 pandemic due in no small part to his courage, independent judgment, and dynamic leadership during that most woeful chapter of recent American history.

"President Ronald Reagan famously said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.'” That was an accurate assessment at the time Reagan said it, when America was drowning in punitive taxation and draconian regulation. In the year 2023, by contrast, overweening government is certainly still a threat, but the single all-encompassing threat facing the American people is the metastasis of the woke ideology, which spreads like a cancer and is weaponized by the out-of-touch ruling class elites who populate all the major institutions of our political and civic life. 

"There is no elected official in America who better understands this reality and — even more important — who has wielded political power to repeatedly fight back against it than Ron DeSantis. Whether it is anti-Americanist critical race theory or gender ideology indoctrination in the elementary school classroom, the university faculty lounge or the corporate boardroom, DeSantis has taken decisive measures to defend civilizational sanity and curtail or outright proscribe the dissemination of wokeism’s corrosive tenets.

"DeSantis’ righteous crusade to remake New College of Florida as a “Hillsdale College of the South” is perfectly emblematic of the approach now needed to recapture lost institutions, over a century into the Left’s insidious “long march,” to salvage and revive the American experiment in ordered liberty. DeSantis’ similarly righteous crusade against The Walt Disney Company is the encapsulation of how a conservative elected official evinces “knowing what time it is” amidst today’s woke-addled social decay: the prudential wielding of political power to bolster the forces of civilizational sanity and punish the forces of civilizational arson within the confines of the rule of law. His ongoing battle against a Fortune 500 corporate behemoth may offend the delicate sensibilities of libertarian purists and “zombie Reaganites” wedded to outmoded 1980s-era bromides, but it reveals a sound understanding that, in the year 2023, corporate America is firmly on the side of civilizational arson — not civilizational sanity." . . .

Joe Biden Keeps Lying That His Son Died in Iraq -

 

"Don't make eye contact. Don't make eye contact. Don't look"

The American Spectator | USA News and Politics

In fact, he lies about an assortment of his dead relatives.

But carting out dead relatives to gain sympathy with voters by embellishing their manner of death amounts to not a mode of grief but exploitation.  WWGWD? — What would George Washington do — makes for a good guide for politicians. WWGSD? — What would George Santos do — makes for a bad one.

"My son was a major in the U.S. Army,” Joe Biden told Marines stationed in Japan on Thursday. “We lost him in Iraq.”

"Beau Biden died in Bethesda, not Baghdad. He did so six years after he took his last step in Iraq.

"The president’s son served honorably and sacrificed much, particularly when considering that back home a wife, two kids, and a job as attorney general of Delaware waited for him. His father served as vice president for much of Beau Biden’s time in Iraq, so he did not benefit, at least in the location of his deployment, from the special treatment that occasionally shields the children of politicians from unpleasant duty.

"All that does not grant anyone the right to insinuate that he made the ultimate sacrifice, as about 4,500 of his fellow American servicemen did.

"The president apparently believes, or feigns to believe, that the existence of burn pits to dispose of trash caused his son’s death, and his votaries, including one who accused his critics of “ignoring the full story,” go along with his specious claim or pretend that he does not keep repeating this canard.

"Incinerating trash predates Operation Iraqi Freedom, and burn pits — which exist stateside among civilians, too — rank significantly below IEDs in terms of wartime dangers.

"Do burn pits even cause cancer? Joe Jackson, a scientist of song, famously sang, “Everything gives you cancer.” One guesses that this includes huffing the fumes from a burn pit. Guesses aside, actual scientific data does not support the president’s claims.

“ 'Existing statistics do not indicate that Iraq veterans are more affected by brain cancer than other veteran groups,” FactCheck.org reports, “although no comprehensive data is available to definitively say one way or the other.” The group’s headline said, “Biden exaggerates the science on burn pits and brain cancer.' ” . . .

The Biden’s are disgusting people. - Stew Peters (NOT FOR CHILDREN - from the laptop) - Whatfinger News' Choice Clips  "Pedo material galore, especially in second clip below this top one.  KEEP CHILDREN AWAY. And this freak calls his dad Joe Biden ‘Pedo Pete’  keep that in mind.  This is the Democrat Party, and the sickos at the DOJ protecting this kind of people"

Woke Corporate Governance Often Stems From Involved Investment Firms

 

AF Branco 

Former Anheuser-Busch Exec (resistthemainstream.com)  "A former Anheuser-Busch executive blames a handful of hedge funds for divisive corporate policies that cost his former employer billions.

"Anson Frericks remarked during a Friday interview with Fox News host Jesse Watters that many social governance policies emanate from money managers. Frericks noted BlackRock and Vanguard as examples.

"Corporate advocacy of LGBTQ agendas has fomented boycotts that cost Anheuser-Busch more than $15 billion. Stocks of retailers like Target and Kohl’s have recently tanked after social media amplified their LGBTQ support.

"Fox News further reported:

Woke corporate governance, which recently led to the fiscal hemorrhaging of Anheuser-Busch and Target, often begins with investment firms pressuring them to behave in certain ways, a former executive at the beer conglomerate said.