THANKS JOE BIDEN! al Qaeda Terrorist Network Now Moving Back Into Afghanistan

Here we go again!

Just a few years after Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the al Qaeda terror network is moving back into the country.

Leaders of the group have reportedly been given ‘safe haven’ there. This is the beginning of the story that led to the 9/11 attacks, chapter and verse.

Plus, they now have the advantage of all of the American weapons and military equipment that Biden left behind in 2021. What could possibly go wrong?

Townhall reports:

How Is Afghanistan Doing Post-U.S. Withdrawal? Well…

It will come as little surprise to anyone who followed the Biden administration’s policy toward Afghanistan which culminated in the botched withdrawal of U.S. forces at the end of August 2021 that handing the country over to the Taliban has not resulted in some vibrant liberalized democracy. Instead, also unsurprisingly, Afghanistan has turned into a hotbed of terrorist activity…

Just a few short years later on Biden’s watch, and he’s again failed to deliver on a promise to hold the Taliban accountable, prevent a reemergence of terrorism, or act decisively to squash any threats emanating from Afghanistan.

The latest quarterly report to Congress from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) states that al Qaeda maintains “a safe haven in Afghanistan,” including for “around a dozen senior al Qaeda leaders.”

What’s more, there are now “up to eight new al Qaeda training camps, one stockpile weapons base, and five madrassas this quarter with help from al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent.”

Let the record show that this is all unfolding on Biden’s watch.

UN team identified up to 8 new al Qaeda training camps, one stockpile weapons base, 5 madrassas this quarter; UN also said al Qaeda continued to support other violent extremist organizations in #AFG, including TTP, with cross-border attacks & weaponshttps://t.co/GDFMJsAzuj

— SIGAR (@SIGARHQ) May 9, 2024

In 2021, Biden pledged that he would “reorganize” U.S. assets to prevent a “re-emergence of terrorists” in Afghanistan.

In the first quarter of 2024, “up to eight new al Qaeda training camps, one stockpile weapons base, and five madrassas” opened there.https://t.co/jJJTuExMnN

— Spencer Brown (@itsSpencerBrown) May 14, 2024

Biden is too busy taking weekends at the beach in Delaware to notice this obvious threat to national security.

The post THANKS JOE BIDEN! al Qaeda Terrorist Network Now Moving Back Into Afghanistan appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

“This Guy Who Can’t Even Walk Over Here – And Sh*ts His Pants Every Now and Then?” – Aaron Rodgers Destroys Old Joe Biden in His Must-See Interview with Tucker Carlson (VIDEO)

Tucker Carlson sits down with Aaron Rodgers for an interveiw and IT’S EPIC!

NFL star Aaron Rodgers sat with Tucker Carlson for an extended two-hour interview that was released on Tuesday.

The New York Giants quarterback dished about vaccines, pharmaceutical companies, government corruption and Joe Biden as President.

The discussion got really interesting when Aaron Rodgers started talking about Joe Biden sh*tting his pants.

The entire interview is well worth your time – but this segment was particularly entertaining!

Aaron Rodgers: You did one of the most controversial, somehow, not to me, most controversial interviews in the last, I don’t know how long, when you went to Russia and did Putin. How did it feel coming back? Because anybody who watched the interview was like, number one, it was f*cking awesome. Number two, Putin came off as an interesting, thoughtful, smart individual.

And if you’ve read 1984, the game plan of government control is you have to have an enemy, and you have to slander that enemy regardless if you know anything about them. And I think a lot of people are like, “Oh, Putin apologists are like, whitewashing all the stuff that he’s done to the different people.” And I was just like, “No, I’d love to see Joe Biden give an interview where he can speak on the history of the United States in the same way that Putin talked about the history of his country.”

Tucker Carlson: I’d love to see Biden do an interview where he shows how to operate a microwave, and I don’t think that’s going to happen. And by the way, Biden won’t do interviews, and neither will Zelensky so far…

…I thought he was an interesting guy, smart guy, impressive guy, in some ways, obviously a lot more impressive than Joe Biden, But he’s Russian, and he runs Russia, and I’m American, and I live in America, so I care about my country. I want my leaders to be better. I’m not on Putin’s side. I don’t have any emotional attachment to any foreign country because I’m not a foreigner. I’m an American, and this is the only country I care about. But for the record, yeah, I thought people can watch it and assess for themselves.

Aaron Rodgers: And they should. It’s a fascinating interview.

Tucker Carlson: But the idea that you shouldn’t be allowed to do that is so crazy to me. I’m just not going to submit to that.

Aaron Rodgers: Like being canceled by the people who have just bowed down and given interviews from their knees to the Zelenskyy’s of the world.

Tucker Carlson: Gargling as they interview, yes. It’s wild.

Aaron Rodgers: As this guy comes over in f*cking in an outfit you’d wear to the store on a Sunday morning to ask the Congress for another $100 billion is f*cking wild.

Tucker Carlson: He looks like he’s going to be in the Village People music video. It’s like it’s saying the whole thing. It’s – That’s what I’m saying. You do wonder that and a million other things going on right now. You wonder if they’re seeing how far they can push the population until someone starts laughing. Like, are you joking?

Aaron Rodgers: It feels like that sometimes. What if we did this? Is anybody going to give a shit? No? Okay, now let’s try this one here. We’re going to put Joe Biden up and do this. Wait, what? This guy who can’t even walk over here? And sh*ts his pants every now and then?

Enjoy.

NFL star Aaron Rodgers tells Tucker: “I’d love to see Joe Biden give an interview where he can speak on the history of the United States in the same way that Putin talked about the history of his country.” pic.twitter.com/zoEL8JSfsF

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) May 14, 2024

The full interview is here at Tucker Carlson’s X page.

Aaron Rodgers pic.twitter.com/sYBCtOVNU2

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) May 14, 2024

The post “This Guy Who Can’t Even Walk Over Here – And Sh*ts His Pants Every Now and Then?” – Aaron Rodgers Destroys Old Joe Biden in His Must-See Interview with Tucker Carlson (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Wartime Consigliere: Here Are the Policies the Next RNC General Counsel Must Consider to Outflank Leftist Lawfare and Secure the 2024 Election

With news of the recent departure of RINO RNC General Counsel, Charlie Spies, there is now a prime opening for the next General Counsel to lay down a truly bold, MAGA-aligned agenda to ensure the election procedures and laws are as fortified and secure as possible in the lead-up to the 2024 election.

Special attention must invariably be placed on critical battleground states like Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.

By fortifying election procedures in those states, an undertaking that must prioritize maximizing voter turnout via registration campaigns and ballot harvesting efforts coupled with a legal strategy centered on bringing transparency and accountability back to electioneering, Republicans will find themselves having a much easier time litigating irregularities and fraud if and when those problems do reoccur, rather than having to play again from behind – much as they did four years ago.

One of the advantages of enduring these last four grueling, dismal, miserable years – a period of unprecedented constitutional breakdown in American history defined by witch-hunts, political persecutions, censorship, gaslighting, deplatforming, and general conspiracy and paranoia – is that more Americans than ever are awakened to the harsh realities of voter fraud and election corruption generally speaking; and the horrors that might befall the republic if those issues are ignored and left to fester and metastasize.

America now finds itself on the brink of totalitarianism; a despotism once characteristic of socialist and communist banana republics to our South has arrived on these shores with a vengeance.

This explains the importance of the 2024 presidential election in a nutshell: its outcome will determine whether the United States continues to sustain as a bastion of freedom the world over or succumb to tyranny once and for all. There is no third option.

President Trump arrived on the political scene in 2016, when nearly all hope was lost, and breathed life into our decadent and desiccated nation – made weak over decades by a bipartisan consensus in Washington that engorged on the excesses of its own self-indulgence — an indulgence that has carved out America’s middle class by offshoring industrial jobs to places like China, while empowering our foreign adversaries to the detriment of our national security – and overall sovereignty.

Despite having been unceremoniously ousted from office in 2020, and targeted maliciously thereafter by a multi-pronged rapacious gaslighting campaign, executed by that same bipartisan consensus that bled America to near ruin, hardly anyone believed Donald Trump would be able to stage a comeback from so great a defeat.  And yet here we are.

Blessedly, miraculously, the 45th President finds himself in a formidable political position four years since that dismal departure.  By the force of his own indomitable will, aided by God’s good grace, President Trump is polling arguably better than he ever has at any point in his nearly ten-year sojourn in politics.

The traits that made Donald Trump such a tremendous salesman in private life have transmuted with uncanny dexterity to his political career.  His branding skills that made the Trump name a standalone product later in his career remain unparalled.

He has the entrepreneur’s penchant for problem-solving, and the marketeer’s knack for making complex policy issues digestible for mass consumption.  This explains the phenomenon of the Trump rally, which has no equivalent in the history of presidential politics – or, really, the politics of any nation.

The rally is at one and the same time quintessentially American and consummately Donald Trump: these go hand-in-hand in explaining the President’s durability, having withstood – and continuing to withstand – the tidal wave of criticism and attacks by a bloated administrative state.

The administrative or deep state can mobilize at the ready a coterie of apparatchiks in the media, judicial system, big tech, and even non-governmental organizations and institutions, which collectively march to the beat of the drum of the Biden Regime’s orders.

President Trump’s prowess on the campaign trail remains unrivaled; his popularity, coupled with his white martyrdom at the hand of a weaponized justice system, to which he has frequently made comparisons to Nelson Mandela, has only emboldened the MAGA faithful this cycle, more so than in 2020 or 2016.

The President’s supporters viscerally feel that the country is on the line, and that the 45th President is truly the only thing preventing the feds waging an all-out assault on their fundamental rights and liberties.

Indeed, in many cases, they already have: between the prosecutions of the J6 “political hostages,” to the crackdown on traditional Catholic masses and parents who protest the curricula of woke school boards, the Biden Regime has waged warfare directly on the American people, in a manner that is starkly reminiscent (for those Americans who lived through it) of the kinds of witch hunts routinely carried out in the former Soviet Union, or communist Cuba.

A Policy Approach For The Next RNC General Counsel

Which brings me back to the RNC.  While President Trump right now must focus his attention on the indictments, trials, campaigning, and rallies, the RNC and its new General Counsel should strategize a counter-offensive, playing both offense and defense, to capitalize — and complement — as much as possible on President Trump’s success on the campaign trail, and the unintended political windfall he has thus far received from his many show trials.

Fundraising is one part of the equation, and under the new leadership it would appear based on recent reports that the newly overhauled RNC is doing quite well raking in the dough.  But there is much more to winning than simply fundraising.

Being able to raise money is one side of the equation; deploying that money economically and efficiently, in a way that maximizes utility – factoring time constraints and personnel talent – is a completely different animal.

On that note, an effective RNC strategy would make the following agenda items a priority:

1. Engage the New York Gag Order: The need to run a counteroffensive for President Trump, while he is unable to speak and criticize the trial (which is teeming with disqualifying conflicts of interest), is of utmost importance.

The gag order can be criticized in myriad ways.  Surrogates, including politicians who visit the courthouse – like, just this past week, Vivek Ramawamy, Sen. J.D. Vance, Gov. Doug Burgum, Rep. Byron Donalds, and Rep. Mike Johnson – should take to the airwaves, be it cable television, radio, print, and podcasting, to explain why Judge Merchan is egregiously wrong for having undermined the President’s due process and First Amendment rights.

Because of what is at stake here, the Constitution literally hangs in the balance, this narrative that Merchan is undermining the Constitution must be drilled home persistently, relentlessly.  Politicians should encourage their peers, no matter their political office, to show up at the courthouse and sit there in solidarity with President Trump.  They should likewise encourage their constituents to peacefully protest outside the courthouse, and continue to do so as long as the show trial remains in effect.  They should demand Merchan recuse himself every single day until he does, or until he feels enough public pressure to step down from his post.

2. Engage in Counter Lawfare: The Right must learn from the Left and engage in counter lawfare.  Speaker Johnson should subpoena Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, and Judge Merchan.  While they currently operate behind closed doors (since cameras are not allowed in New York State criminal proceedings), they should be required to account for their actions, before the cameras, in front of the House Judiciary Committee.

Pledge to set up investigations into every rogue judge, prosecutor, district attorney, and attorney general once the Republicans reclaim power.  House Republicans, especially within the New York GOP delegation, should inundate the New York State Court system with ethics complaints and lawsuits to signal their disapproval of what is going on.  Congress should consider subpoenaing the New York State Bar, and if necessary, file charges against them for allowing Alvin Bragg and Letitia James to run roughshod over the New York judicial system.

The RNC can actively aid and abet Congress’ efforts, by mobilizing media campaigns and making lawfare strategy recommendations, of the kind outlined above.  Alternatively, the RNC could draft and issue “letters of complaint,” a more informal method of attack, but in keeping with the general sentiment to always be on the offensive.

3. Investigate the Watchdog and Pressure Groups. The RNC must not only keep track of the groups that target media companies like Fox News and Newsmax with defamation lawsuits that prevent commentators to this day from discussing the outcome determinative fraud affecting the 2020 presidential election in any great detail.

Recently, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani was put on leave from WABC radio for discussing the fraud and irregularities of the 2020 election – under no circumstances should anyone be professionally penalized for raising legitimate questions and conducting legitimate inquiries and investigations into our election procedures.  If that topic is taken off the table, it is impossible to ensure free and fair elections, which is the lynchpin of our democracy.  If there was no fraud, then let those who believe there was fraud to be discredited in the court of public opinion.

That is, after all, the whole point of the First Amendment.  But to continue to shut those down who raise such allegations raises a strong suspicion that there in fact was fraud, and plausibly to a scale that was outcome determinative.  Indeed, what else accounts for the fact that Joe Biden, who purportedly received more votes than any man in American history for President, also happens to have the lowest poll numbers in history?

Make that make sense.  What is more, we now know, even more so than in the weeks and months immediately following the 2020 election, that there was evidence of systemic fraud – a ton of it, more of which continues to come out by the day and constantly redefines the narrative of just how corrupt the 2020 presidential race actually was.

One recent development, to drive the point home, is that Georgia’s State Election Board is now reviewing an allegation that Fulton County double counted thousands of ballots. Considering that Georgia was officially decided by an asserted 11,000 votes – the over 3,000 that were double-counted in Fulton County (which is surely indicative of fraud in other counties if proper investigations were allowed to be made), eats a significant portion of that vote total.

This is of course just one of many cases of widespread fraud that occurred in not only Georgia, but other key battleground states like Arizona, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.  Thus, the RNC must create a strategy with a focus on maximizing transparency into electioneering processes.

This calls for monitoring vote tabulation and ballot processing all throughout election season – with resources allocated based on the importance of the state or voting area.  So, for instance, Fulton County, Philadelphia County, and Maricopa County should be prioritized over counties in conventionally non-competitive states.

4. Counter-Lawfare Strategy: Lawyers must be deployed on the ground, at the scene, on election day and on the days leading up to election day, to monitor electioneering processes to ensure best practices.  Moreover, from a macro level, a counter-lawfare strategy must be devised to allow discussion of allegations of fraud without fear of reprisal.

One’s First Amendment right to speak freely and criticize and expose fraudulent election practices is inalienable and must be rigorously guarded in the courts of law.  Where courts fail to uphold this sacred duty, appeals must be made.

Lawyers should also work to curb egregious attacks by the Left on the First Amendment – such as the absurdly high legal penalty Mayor Giuliani (as just one example) faces for criticizing the Dominion Voting Systems.  Under no circumstances should one’s free speech rights be stripped away so callously and ruthlessly as Giuliani (and many others) experienced – which resulted in numerous professional and personal costs, including his recent termination by WABC radio.

Media organizations like WABC and Fox News should not feel pressure by activist left wing pressure groups – who get away with suing their political adversaries to oblivion.  That should not be tolerated in a society that purports to uphold the rule of law (to say nothing of that little document called the Constitution).

An RNC-led conservative counter-lawfare strategy must lay down rigorous procedures to clearly telegraph that Left wing subversion into election procedures will no longer be tolerated – and if the Left attempts any funny business, they will be retaliated tenfold by the Right, with an blitzkrieg of lawsuits that will render leftist pressure groups bankrupt, and force them to heel.

That must be the general strategy and mentality of the next RNC and General Counsel, in particular.  And it is imperative that they embark upon a media campaign to let their political opponents know that they mean business and will not be playing around.

5. Prevent Illegal Aliens From Voting:  Given that Joe Biden’s border policy (or lack thereof) will unleash an estimated 7-10 million migrants (or more) into the American homeland once his term expires, it is imperative that the RNC leads a strong initiative to prevent illegal aliens from voting.

What should be a top priority for the RNC’s next General Counsel is to propose legislation that would make a felony of any non-citizen who votes in any election, and any institution – such as NGOs like Catholic Charities – that receive federal grants which might aid and abet illegal voting.  The Republican-controlled House of Representatives should pass this legislation before Election Day, and the Senate should try to.

If the Senate fails to pass it, the Democrats – and Biden – will have to own the policy of effectively licensing illegals to vote, which a supermajority of American voters vehemently oppose.  The next RNC General Counsel should also recommend that the House strip all funding – in terms of grants, mandates, and other federal monies – to NGOs that have facilitated Biden’s migrant catastrophe.

The RNC should also ask states to pass laws in special sessions that would make non-citizens voting a felony and encourage Republican Attorneys General to lead on this.

Politically, such policies could be a huge windfall for down ballot Republicans this cycle, given that, again, most Americans – of all political affiliations – absolutely abhor the idea of illegals and non-citizens voting in any election: local, state, or federal.

Let me repeat a third time: the overwhelming majority of Americans don’t want illegals voting in their elections (as it stands, dead people are bad enough!). Make the Democrats own this issue by passing legislation in the House as well as Republican-controlled state legislatures.  Not only would this initiative set a nice foundation for securing our elections, but it would be hugely politically advantageous.

The definition of lawfare is “waging war by use of law.”  Does anyone on the Right recognize that we are not in a debate or a conversation about the future?  Politics is war by other means.  We are at war!  Time for the next RNC General Counsel to adopt a war footing – before it is too late.

As the Don said of Spies, “you are not a wartime consigliere.” We are in war; the next General Counsel must have what it takes to win, win, win!

The post Wartime Consigliere: Here Are the Policies the Next RNC General Counsel Must Consider to Outflank Leftist Lawfare and Secure the 2024 Election appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Exclusive: The Left’s ELECTION INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX Is Run Like a 5th Generation “Weapons System”

The Left’s Election Industrial Complex Part II.

There is a battle over US Elections going on today. It’s the Left’s Election Industrial Complex verses fair and transparent US elections.

While conservatives argue over whether we should vote early or on election day, the Election Industrial Complex is adding, deleting and managing entities that are clandestinely operating behind US elections.

A document produced by Higher Ground Labs entitled the – 2022 Political Tech Landscape Report – outlines what we have labeled the Election Industrial Complex (see diagram above).

This document shows the many entities and interactions between these entities and groups involved in the Left’s Election Industrial Complex. Higher Ground Labs is led by a group of far-left zealots and politicians. It started in 2017 after Hillary lost the 2016 Election.

Higher Ground Labs created and published its 2022 report that describes its landscape and connections in the election industry complex. This document outlines the many initiatives, connections and activities it is involved in and the players it interacts with to ensure radical far-left and increasingly communist anti-American Democrats win elections.

This landscape involves “non-profits” and publicly traded companies which prevent the public from requesting information that would be required to be provided by the government in FOIA requests.

Based on our initial analysis of this Complex, the Left uses money to manipulate these groups where conservative entities for the most part run on trust. Money is used to incentivize. “Trust issues” in a grass roots environment are minimized through the use of money and funding.

See our first post on this topic below:

BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: The Left’s ELECTION INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX Discovered and Defined

A deeper dive into the Left’s Election Industrial Complex from a military expert’s point of view indicates that this system runs more like a 5th generation weapons system.

A military weapons system is an integrated system, usually computerized, for the control and operation of weapons of a particular kind. With this in mind, It appears that the Left has weaponized US elections.

5th Generation warfare is described by Dr. Robert Malone as follows (emphasis added):

5th-Gen warfare is an extension of Asymmetric and Insurgent Warfare strategies and tactics, whereby both conventional and unconventional military tactics and weapons are incorporated and deployed, including exploitation of political, religious and social causes. This new gradient of warfare uses the internet, social media and the 24-hour news cycle to change cognitive biases of individuals and/or organizations. It can be conducted by organized or unorganized (ergo decentralized) groups; it may be led by nation states, non-nation state actors and organizations, non-governmental organizations or even individuals. A key characteristic of 5th Gen warfare is that the nature of the attack is concealed. The goal is to disrupt and defeat opponents by creating new cognitive biases.

The most effective 5th-Gen warfare strategies employed by those lacking integrity are not purely based on pushing false narratives, mis- dis- or mal- information. The most effective strategies mix truth with action, and act to increase confusion and disorder.

This Left’s Election Industrial Complex communicates real-time election operations. It’s a psychological war that uses activists and volunteers as troops. It relies heavily on messaging and influencers are highly valued. The ultimate goal is to obtain committed hearts and minds.

This is why the “New Media” is so despised by the Left. The Truth reported by New Media is the enemy of the Left.

See this brief and brilliant explanation below.

Here is a document that outlines the comments shared in the video above.

Real Time Operations by Joe Ho on Scribd

The Far-Left are working on new entities and activities within their Political Industrial Complex to steal a Democrat win in November 2024. The problem is the Left pushes more disinformation than truth.

(Joe Hoft is the author of three books related to the 2020 Election which have been referred to as “definitive documentation of the enormous fraud in the 2020 Election” and “classics”.)

The post Exclusive: The Left’s ELECTION INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX Is Run Like a 5th Generation “Weapons System” appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

CREEPY: Mirrored Image of King Charles III’s New Portrait Allegedly Reveals Baphomet Face

The unveiling of King Charles III’s first official portrait since his coronation has taken an unexpected and unsettling turn.

The artwork, characterized by its vibrant red hues and detailed depiction of Charles in his Welsh Guards uniform, was intended as a tribute to the king’s longstanding service. However, an unexpected visual phenomenon involving the mirrored image of the portrait has captured the public’s imagination.

The Gateway Pundit reported on Tuesday that the portrait was painted by artist Jonathan Yeo, and it depicts Charles against a background of ‘vivid red hues’ – maybe too vivid – wearing the uniform of the Welsh Guards military unit, Charles was made Regimental Colonel of this regiment in 1975.

A butterfly flutters just above his right shoulder to complete the disturbing effect.

“My aim was also to make reference to the traditions of Royal portraiture but in a way that reflects a 21st Century Monarchy and, above all else, to communicate the subject’s deep humanity,” Yeo said.

WATCH:

King Charles III unveiling his first official painted portrait since his coronation.

The colour red is associated with Satan, the monarch butterfly symbolises mind control, and black eyes in a dream symbolises a demonic entity.

When they tell you who they are, believe them. pic.twitter.com/rlgvMPPKyC

— Cillian (@CilComLFC) May 14, 2024

Commenters were not kind to the artwork, basically saying ‘it looks like he is in hell’. Even the NY Post called it the ‘ghostly-looking’ Charles portrait, but people went much harder.

Some asked if it was ‘all the blood on his hands?’, or said that they ‘100% thought this was satire’, called it ‘a little creepy’, ‘slightly disturbing’, ‘like he’s bathing in blood’.

“The portrait — which will ultimately hang in Drapers’ Hall — was commissioned in 2020 to celebrate the then Prince of Wales’s 50 years as a member of The Drapers’ Company in 2022.”

The discourse took an even more bizarre turn when social media users conducted a simple yet revealing experiment: mirroring the image. The mirrored image, laid next to the original, allegedly shows a face resembling Baphomet—a figure associated with occult and satanic practices.

King Charles III mirrored image

The mirror image of King Charles first portrait as King is pretty wild….. #WeWantAnswers pic.twitter.com/sbbTC6lkm7

— Isaac’s Army (@ReturnOfKappy) May 15, 2024

I don’t know what people are talking about. Nothing at all pops out. pic.twitter.com/KxZrBrdbKK

— 0xagonal (not not a parody) (@0xagonal) May 15, 2024

This unexpected twist has given rise to debates and “conspiracy theories” about secret messages and sinister symbols hidden in plain sight. Some have taken this as evidence of malevolent forces at work within the highest echelons of power.

Is this mirrored revelation merely a coincidence, a carefully orchestrated artistic conspiracy, or simply a trick of the eye? What do you think?

The post CREEPY: Mirrored Image of King Charles III’s New Portrait Allegedly Reveals Baphomet Face appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Anti-Israel Graduates Stand Up and SCREAM and CHANT “Shut It Down” During Washington University’s Commencement Ceremony – Drowning Out the Chancellor

Anti-Israel protesters SCREAM chants and disrupt the Washington University graduation ceremony on Monday. The pro-Gaza activists screamed for several minutes as the chancellor was speaking. Disgusting.

Pro-Palestinian Washington University graduates disrupted commencement speech by Chancellor Andrew Martin on Monday, ruining the experience for their fellow graduates.

The far-left protesters stood up and started screaming and chanting, “Shut it down!” during Chancellor Martin’s talk.

Their fellow students tried desperately to ignore the young Marxists.

Graduating students at @WUSTL protest and walk out of Chancellor Andrew Martin’s graduation remarks. The university has been under fire for its response to campus protests against the war in Gaza.

Stay tuned for more from my colleagues and I at @stlpublicradio. pic.twitter.com/UV5cq5my4v

— Brian Munoz (@brianmmunoz) May 13, 2024

Wouldn’t you just LOVE to hire one of these young Marxists at your company?

It’s interesting that local NPR reporter took the video put ignored this episode in his report. It’s almost as if he was purposely attempting to hide the truth from the St. Louis readers?

How weird?

The anti-Israel protesters were also blocking the street by the campus! Anything to make someone else’s life as miserable as their own.

RIGHT NOW: Pro-Palestine #protests on Washington University’s campus during #graduation. Protesters started as early as 7:30AM, blocking intersections and chanting. Protesters hold signs over the fence of Francis Olympic Field as the band plays during commencement.@ksdknews pic.twitter.com/bWhNHXhqjY

— Sydney Stallworth (@SydneyKSDK) May 13, 2024

Entitled, selfish leftists.

@wustl Washington University of St. Louis entitled hamas lovers are screaming. Their faces are here for all future employers to see. I’m just trying to help a bit. pic.twitter.com/Iqf2HzuOW7

— Yanki Yankovich (@YankiYankovich) May 14, 2024

The post Anti-Israel Graduates Stand Up and SCREAM and CHANT “Shut It Down” During Washington University’s Commencement Ceremony – Drowning Out the Chancellor appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Federal Reserve Chair Admits His Confidence Is Rattled as Wholesale Inflation Unexpectedly Surges

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Tuesday that his confidence has weakened that inflation is under control.

His comments made at a bankers’ conference in Amsterdam came the same day that the Labor Department reported that wholesale prices jumped 0.5 percent in April, the largest increase since April 2023.

Wholesale prices are tracked by the Producer Price Index, which measures the selling prices producers of goods and services receive.

CNBC: Wholesale inflation rose MUCH more than expected in April.

That’s Bidenomics! pic.twitter.com/NbVUyS3zVP

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 14, 2024

Powell first told the bankers that the U.S. economy is performing well, seeing strong growth of just over 3 percent last year, as unemployment remains below 4 percent and inflation has come down from its peaks in 2022 and early 2023.

“Core inflation got as high as 5.6 percent and is now at 2.8 percent, so it’s down by half. That progress though really happened over the course of last year, particularly the second half of last year,” the fed chief said.

Core inflation measures the change in prices of goods and services, but does not include food and energy costs, which have gone up considerably during President Joe Biden’s time in office.

Food prices are up over 21 percent since January 2021. Meanwhile the price of gasoline averaged $2.40 per gallon that month, and is currently $3.61, or a 50.42 percent increase.

“The first quarter in the United States was notable for its lack of further progress on inflation. We had higher readings in the first quarter, and higher than we expected,” Powell conceded.

“We did not expect this to be a smooth road. But these [inflation readings] were higher than I think anybody expected,” he continued. “What that has told us is that we’ll need to be patient and let restrictive policy do its work.”

CNBC reported that the Federal Reserve has increased interest rates 11 times in recent years in its efforts to combat inflation.

The purpose of raising interest rates is to make borrowing more expensive, which is designed to slow consumer spending and business investment, lowering demand and thereby bringing prices down, according to Chase Bank.

“I expect that inflation will move back down on a monthly level, on a monthly basis to levels that were more like the lower readings we were having last year,” Powell predicted.

But he added the caveat, “I would say my confidence [in that forecast] is not as high as it was, having seen these readings in the first three months of the year.”

“We’re just going to have to see where the inflation data fall out,” Powell said.

What the fed chairman did not get into is how Biden’s and the Democrats’ big government, high spending policies are a primary driver of inflation.

Former Trump and Reagan administration economist Larry Kudlow explained in May 2022 as price spikes were hitting their highest, “Look, you had prominent Democrat economists and Republican economists a year ago predict rising inflation because of huge social spending, aggregate demand increasing, deficit financing, too much borrowing and too much money printing.”

“And then you had the war against fossil fuels at exactly the wrong time,” he added, referring to Biden’s policy of greatly restricting oil production on federal lands and offshore.

In a February 2021 opinion piece for The Washington Post, former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers wrote that passing the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan as the economy was already well on its way to recovery would “set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation, with consequences for the value of the dollar and financial stability.”

After it passed the following month, Summers called it “the least responsible macroeconomic policy we’ve had in the last 40 years.”

Further, former Obama administration Treasury Department official Steven Rattner in a November 2021 article for The New York Times identified the American Rescue Plan as the “original sin” leading to the current high inflation rate.

He pointed to Summers’ warning, as well as “many others.”

“We worried that shoveling an unprecedented amount of spending into an economy already on the road to recovery would mean too much money chasing too few goods,” Rattner wrote.

The Democrats have since passed the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, with costs on green initiatives alone expected to exceed $1 trillion, and the $1 trillion dollar infrastructure bill, pouring more Federal Reserve printed money into the economy.

Kudlow said the answer for the nation’s current fix is to implement the policy President Ronald Reagan did in the 1980s — known as supply-side economics.

In other words don’t just try to decrease demand through Fed interest rate hikes and less spending, work on increasing the supply of goods and services through pro-growth tax and regulatory polices.

“The tax hikes and the environmental restrictions [under Biden] are suppressing the supply side of the economy — not enough goods. And the spending increases the demand side of the economy — too much cash,” Kudlow said.

“If you are going to spend more than you can produce, well, prices have to go up. And the obvious solution is to spend less and produce more.”

The proof is in the pudding. Inflation dropped from 13.5 percent in 1980 before Reagan took office to 4.1 percent in 1988.

Powell of course does not have the power to make these policy changes, but the American people do by re-electing former President Donald Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress, who implemented Reagan-style economic policies in Trump’s first term and promise to do so again in his second.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

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Russell Kirk and the Providence of Permanence

Russell Kirk and the Providence of Permanence

At the 30th anniversary of his death, the man of Mecosta still evinces a wisdom that is enduring—one might even say permanent.

When I find myself in times of trouble, Russell Kirk comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, “Permanent Things.” Hit Pause. Okay, so ends my career as a revisionist lyricist for The Beatles’ classic, “Let It Be.” 

But the permanent things endure. And in an hour of darkness, there is still a light shining on all of us. The faithful can detail that luminescence, and yet conservatives might also recall the shining and sturdying wisdom of Russell Kirk (1918–1994). In his Ten Conservative Principles, he wrote, “In essence, the conservative person is simply one who finds the permanent things more pleasing than Chaos and Old Night.”

Examining the first part of that sentence, “permanent things” include tradition, family, classical learning and architecture, and of course, the biological difference between the sexes. Later in the sentence, we see the twin devils of “Chaos,” which is the antithesis of conservatism, and “Old Night,” which we can interpret as primordial backwardness, an inky abyss more negative than, say, apparitions—of which, in point of fact, Kirk was a fan, writing his own ghost stories. 

To nail down the point about prudential progress alongside permanent thing-ness, Kirk added, “Conservatives know, with Burke, that healthy ‘change is the means of our preservation.’” Yes, preservation in the face of what’s coming, whether it’s merely entropic or obviously wicked.  

As for the simply erosive, if Kirk was dismissive of such ephemera as television, what would he make of social media? If he prized property, what would he make of the idea of software-as-a-service coming from the cloud? And if he didn’t like the automobile—deriding it as a “mechanical Jacobin”—we know what he’d think of Uber and the rapidly emerging everything-as-a-service.  

As for outright evil, Kirk would see rampant crime and violent protest as just what it is: barbarism. “In any tolerable society, order is the first need,” he explained, “Liberty and justice may be established only after order is reasonably secure.”

Months before the 2024 election, we’re already sensing the tremors of the political ruckus—maybe convulsion is a better word—to come. Top Democrats and allied celebrities routinely compare Donald Trump to Hitler. For his part, Trump says, “If we don’t win on November 5, I think our country is going to cease to exist.” Got apocalypse? Why yes, both sides have plenty. 

In fact, the ’24 balloting will start in mid-September in some states, and the counting and adjudicating could stretch into, well, who knows. For perspective, the outcome of the 1876 presidential election was not settled until March 2, 1877. 

Kirk would probably doubt the attachment of any of the presidential candidates to the permanent things, even if he might well have a preference. 

The deep-keeled author of The Conservative Mind would likely see Joe Biden as, at best, a luftmensch, wafting along on trendy currents. One recent waft is the rigid orthodoxy of political correctness, now wokeness. Kirk foresaw this: “Liberalism had begun, defying authority and prescription, by breaking all sorts of ancient ties and obligations…. Liberals came to accept a new authority, that of the omnicompetent welfare state.” If Kirk could update that point today, he’d no doubt agree with Mary Harrington, who sees a progressive “omnicause,” uniting student Hamasniks with international greens such as Greta Thunberg. It’s the usual intersectionalism, plus the New Fanon Canon of “cleansing” violence. Biden himself might not be any of these things, but as the incumbent leader of the party of the left, he owns them. 

As for Trump, Kirk quite possibly would be a supporter; like Burke before him, he was not above partisan brawling. Indeed, in his time, Kirk was a longtime adviser to Barry Goldwater. So in our time, he could perhaps accept Trump as a preferable right-winger, if not his kind of conservative. It’s hard to imagine that the once-married man who lived on Piety Hill in Mecosta, Michigan would think much, personally, of the thrice-married Don of Mar-a-Lago. And as for rowdy MAGA, Kirk was never a fan of pro wrestling or anything close. 

So come what may, this year and next, the permanent things seem destined for a collision with big-box politics. But then, Kirk always saw conservatism as at odds with modernity.

So what can the rest of us do? We can take inspiration from T.S. Eliot, shoring up our shards—and everything else we own—against the prospect of ruin. That means keeping hard, or analog, copies of books, music, photographs, memorabilia, etc. so that they’re safe from sneaky digital censorship, to say nothing of hacking, ransoming, and electro-magnetic pulsing. Already, great intellectual treasures seem to have been deleted. So we need the spontaneous order of DIY preservation, somewhere between what the Mormons do already and The Benedict Option.

What else needs permanence? All the cultural and social structures of our lives, that’s what. From churches to fraternities—frats are back in favor now, at least in some circles, thanks to a new display of manly virtues—from private schools to home schools, from the separation of powers to the sovereignty of the states. While we’re at it, let’s take care to preserve and protect the decent drapery of life: Burkean “little platoons” and Tocquevillean “habits of the heart.”  

To be sure, conservatives should always be instantiating positive permanence, but the looming threat of emulsification is a helpful spur to action. Because Bruce Springsteen was right about this much: “Gonna be a twister to blow everything down / That ain’t got the faith to stand its ground.”  

Yes, Chaos and Old Night will always be threats, but Kirk had the faith of a stoic and a Catholic that the permanent things will endure. If, that is, they are lovingly and dutifully maintained.  Kirk is gone, now, these 30 years, and yet, through his wisdom, he’s still around—maybe just a tune away.  

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What Does Richard Nixon’s Prophet Tell Us About 2024?

What Does Richard Nixon’s Prophet Tell Us About 2024?

The late Kevin Phillips pointed the way toward a populist-driven American renewal.

The late Kevin Phillips is the most underrated theorist of American populism. The brilliant strategist behind Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” dubbed by some the “Karl Marx of the American middle class,” devoted nearly half a century of reflection to the evolutions of the Republican Party. To him, Nixon’s presidency represented a squandered opportunity for populist realignment; he viewed the Reagan era as a period of self-liquidation for conservatism and saw in George W. Bush’s presidency a manifestation of the messianism typical of declining empires. He read the triumph of neoliberalism as a symptom of the Republic’s decadence, advocating for a more direct democracy to dismantle the power of bipartisan oligarchies and lobbyists, and proposed a neomercantilist policy in response to what he saw as the dangerous American naivety of clinging to free trade principles. Far-sightedness of his diagnosis makes one wonder why his death last October passed virtually unnoticed on the right.

Phillips, a young Irish Presbyterian from the Bronx, made a breakthrough with an analysis that would later be published in 1969 as the book The Emerging Republican Majority. In it, he suggested expanding Nixon’s center-right coalition to include the votes of Northern Catholics and Southern Protestants who had previously voted for George Wallace. This strategic opening is what guaranteed Nixon’s victory.

However, Phillips’s thesis was met with resistance and ultimately rejected by the liberals surrounding the president. Members of the administration will publicly deny ever having read the book. In the introduction to Mediacracy, Phillips states that this attitude was a manifestation of the “fear of a public-relations-focused administration to identify itself with any specific philosophical or historical perspective.” 

According to Phillips, Nixon’s victory in 1972 represented an opportunity for self-renewal through a populist coalition standing against the “limousine liberals” and “effete snobs” of the big cities. The administration contributed to the defeat of its own agenda by prioritizing political advertising, managerialism, and espionage over formulating programs and building grassroots party commitment. “A lot has been written about the corrupting effect of money on politics,” wrote Phillips, “yet the corrupting effect of communications technology may be even worse.” 

Mediacracy creates a false sense that winning an argument equates to a political victory. Christopher Caldwell saw this as precisely the Reagan administration’s greatest weakness: the belief that proving social programs were wasteful would inevitably lead to their dismantlement. Being a “Great Communicator” helps win elections, but is not enough to change the country. 

The author of The Emerging Republican Majority contended that elites abandoned Middle American values, leaving their cultivation to the disadvantaged by post-industrial society. During the neoliberal transformation of the 1980s, the gains of the post-war “Great Compression” were largely erased. Those who feared that the American Dream was slipping away from them were left without any voice.

In Phillips’s perspective, the GOP bears the brunt of responsibility for this evolution. Instead of representing Middle America, it has degenerated into an incoherent, individualistic synthesis that advocates for the interests of the top 1 percent. Reagan did not bring about a renewal but rather a nostalgic restoration, with his greatest fault being the creation of a “new plutocracy.” In the 1980’s the Republican Party was in the hands of an elite whose attitude to the middle-class decline fluctuated between “it isn’t happening” and “we can’t do anything about it.” By accelerating financialization, Reagan, as Phillips contends, paved the way for Clinton and the triumph of neoliberalism. This shift ultimately completed the process of deindustrialization and wrecked the material base upon which Middle America stood.

The inability to provide a critique of the economic paradigm of the 1980s and 1990s confined Republicans to the theme of cultural decline, a narrative both incomplete and ineffective. For Phillips, even the maverick populist challenger, Pat Buchanan, was too focused on questions of identity. The weakness of conservatism and its ideological entanglements, however, are not the U.S.’s biggest problem. Phillips argues that the greatest predicament is that the cycle of successive political and economic renewals has been stalled since the 1960s.

The U.S. has known periods of intense financialization, such as the Gilded Age or the Roaring Twenties. The boom was always inevitably followed by a bust, as speculation faded and a return to the real economy ensued. This self-correcting mechanism stopped working in the 1980s, and with it American capitalism lost much of its vitality. Phillips argues that “financial mercantilism,” the collaboration between financial elites and Washington policymakers, has stifled market forces to a previously inconceivable scope.

The same process of cyclical self-renewal ceased to function in American politics. It has expressed itself through critical elections recomposing political cleavages and elites. Phillips mentions 1800, when Jefferson broke the Federalist consensus; 1828, with the election of Andrew Jackson as president; 1860 with Lincoln’s victory, which introduced a new type of polarization; and 1896, with the presidency of McKinley, which finally overcame the divisions of the Civil War. The election of Roosevelt in 1932 was the last in a series of great realignments that reinvented American politics. Each of these critical elections represented a bloodless revolution.

“During the period from 1800 to 1932,” claims Phillips, “the American people did something no other nation’s population has ever done—they directed, roughly once a generation, revolutionary changes in the nation’s political culture and economic development through a series of critical presidential elections.” Each of these revolutions was aimed at elites who no longer served the nation and turned into selfish oligarchy. 

The political cycle of renewal came to a halt with the election of Richard Nixon. The elites in the capital had swelled to such an extent that they could not accept an outcome that did not suit their interests. Over the past 60 years, Phillips argues in his 1994 diatribe Arrogant Capital, Washington has become a fortress of an elite disconnected from the rest of the nation, “a capital city so enlarged, so incestuous in its dealings, so caught up in its own privilege, that it no longer seems controllable by the general public.” Both parties merged into “venal center”; the elite replacement mechanism was effectively disabled by “the permanent Washington.”

Since the late 1980s, Phillips has constantly evoked the historical pattern of the decadence of great powers. He maintained that America is, in many respects, mirroring the trajectory previously followed by Spain, the Netherlands, and Britain. Parallels can be observed, for example, in the diminishing role of industry. Just as the textile sector in Zaan or Leiden in the Netherlands, and British steel in Lancashire or shipbuilding in Clydeside experienced decline earlier in history, cities like Pittsburgh and Flint followed a similar path in the United States. The shift from a manufacturing economy of builders to one driven by finance and burdened with an overload of lawyers, speculators, and rentiers resulted in income polarization and ushered in a period of stagnation.

According to Phillips, it was the GOP that governed the country during the most decisive moments of national decline in recent decades. Reagan initiated the process of financialization of the economy, which led to the decimation of the industrial base and ultimately undermined the middle-class. The victory of Bush 41 symbolized the triumph of an establishment of privilege and connections, while his son’s victory drove financialization to the extreme, fostering the “reckless credit-feeding financial complex” that would be responsible for the 2008 crisis. 

The America of Bush 43 displayed two additional signs of decadence in full: imperial overstretch and a messianic fever that supported strategic blunders in the Middle East. “What kind of politics or crisis”, asked Phillips in American Theocracy, “could overcome the combination of Bush administration strategic neglect, Washington interest-group entrenchment, and parochial Republican constituency pressures no one quite knew.”

Despite all of this, Phillips did not relinquish faith that the United States can disrupt this historical pattern and shake off the decadence that Spain, the Netherlands, or Britain could not.

To defeat the Permanent Washington, he argued, America should draw inspiration from the populist impulses that arose in the early 20th century. During that period, a push for direct senatorial elections, as opposed to selection by state legislatures, aimed to diminish the influence of interest groups. Just as then, the essence of American politics—its ability for peaceful democratic renewal—and the legitimacy of government institutions are at stake.

In his 1912 platform, Roosevelt argued that “it is often impossible to establish genuine popular rule and get rid of privilege without the use of new devices to meet new needs.” That new tool, Phillips contends, should be the referendum. The author of Arrogant Capital points out that advances in information technology would greatly facilitate this method of public consultation.

Another proposal from Phillips suggests establishing term limits in Congress to prevent politicians from spending decades in office, only to retire as influential and well-paid lobbyists. To counter political deadlock, when cooperation between Congress and the White House becomes impossible, an early election option should be on the table.

Opposing the primacy of finance, Phillips advocated for a return to industrial policy. In Staying on Top, published in 1984, during the heyday of neoliberalism, he observed that America alone clung dogmatically to free trade, while other countries pursued aggressive neomercantilist policies. “To keep Dayton, Ohio, safe for the figurative middle-aged machinist and his wife and also to keep Santa Clara County, California, safe for the next generation of computers and the next generation of silicon chips,” Phillips proposed a series of measures. He argued for tariffs and subsidies for U.S. companies, as well as protections for American workers against mass layoffs. He considered worker retraining programs, state support for innovation and, above all, the creation of a Department of Trade and Industry that would coordinate these industrial and trade policies as urgent and necessary reforms.

Phillips warns that there is no more harmful mindset than the belief that all will end well, “because, after all, this is the U.S.” Lying low and hoping for the best, while shutting one’s eyes to the unpleasant reality, won’t cut it. America’s past capacity for renewal instilled in him the belief that determined reformers, once they took action, could reverse the decline. “If that hope is no longer justified,” he wrote, “gambling on it will still have been justified.”

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The 1990s Were a Decade of Failure

The 1990s Were a Decade of Failure

The thematic problems of 2024 were born in the relatively idyllic final years of the 20th century.

Like many people of my age and looming decrepitude, I have developed a nostalgia for the 1990s. The decade of Nirvana, Notorious B.I.G., and Newt Gingrich looks like the pinnacle of human civilization compared to the nonsense going on right now.

Back then, Boyz II Men was a popular singing group. Today their name would be considered the premise of hate speech, unutterable in blue-state public schools. It would at a minimum have to be revised to “Boyz II Men Sometimez.”

The political culture was healthier too, even if Bill Clinton was president for most of the decade. I do sometimes wonder if I had not misspent so much of my outrage during the Clinton years, I would have had enough left to participate in the group outrage against Donald Trump. 

My younger self definitely felt about Clinton’s election in 1992 the way many friends and colleagues felt about Trump’s in 2016: disillusioned and disheartened, thinking I no longer recognized my country after it chose to elect someone of such low character. My parents forbade me to bring up this topic at Thanksgiving dinner, preventing 32 years ago the inverse of a popular perennial article of the last decade or so: “How to survive a holiday meal with your Republican nephew.”

All vaguely embarrassing stuff in retrospect, until you consider all the problems that were relatively manageable during the 1990s that were instead punted to a future generation of (mostly manifestly unfit) political leaders. The 1990s was a decade of missed opportunities, much like Seinfeld—a show that is more enjoyable to watch than most things on the air in 2024, but ultimately really about nothing.

The first of these missed opportunities is immigration. Clinton had tapped Barbara Jordan to lead his commission looking at policy reforms on this vital issue. Her vision of what constituted sensible immigration reform was quite different from the various bipartisan proposals that have been floated since George W. Bush’s administration.

“Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: Those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave,” Jordan said. “The top priorities for detention and removal, of course, are criminal aliens. But for the system to be credible, people actually have to be deported at the end of the process.”

There was still a bipartisan consensus that there was nothing racist or illegitimate about enforcing national borders, even if the country is rich and most of the migrants are poor. Republicans, including comparatively moderate ones like California’s Gov. Pete Wilson, were waking up to the fact that the 1986 amnesty, signed into law by the sainted Ronald Reagan, had failed. 

The combination of a more or less centrist Democratic president, even if his centrism was mostly forced on him by political circumstance, and a Republican Congress should have made enacting Jordan’s immigration-reform recommendations doable. Instead, a left-right coalition mangled them beyond recognition. For decades afterward, Beltway elites never again considered a solution to immigration-related problems that did not include more immigration.

At least it is conceivable that a multiracial working-class GOP could succeed on immigration where the two parties failed. On entitlements, both parties seem to be less interested in solving the problem as it gets worse. Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund will be depleted in 2036, Social Security’s in 2035. These are actually modest improvements, but there is zero appetite to do anything about this a little more than a decade out.

The 1990s were the time to try. The Baby Boomers were in their peak earning years. Now they are retiring. There was a centrist Democrat in the White House and a Republican majority in Congress—you’ll note the pattern here—that might have crafted a bipartisan solution. Now not only is the problem more difficult to solve painlessly, but Democratic demagoguery on this issue and Republican aversion to arithmetic is arguably worse than ever.

Conservatives might have spent the 1990s reimagining foreign policy at the end of the Cold War. No less a neoconservative than Jeane Kirkpatrick argued it was time for a new era of domestic focus. But with some notable exceptions, conservative opposition to Clintonian military adventures was driven more by partisanship than prudence. The people who billed themselves as neo-Reaganites wanted to celebrate Reagan’s Cold War victory by seeking new conflicts. 

Here too a revamped GOP could make up for past errors, but tragically not before a squandered unipolar moment, years of endless and unwinnable wars, the resumption of hostilities with Russia, and our current political dysfunction.

Perhaps the 1990s weren’t as great as I remembered. Oh well, whatever. Nevermind. 

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