Democrats in Control – We Need some Checks & Balances: Facts…
White House…Democrats in control.
Senate…Democrats in control.
House…Democrats in control.
Border…Democrats in control.
Big Cities…Democrats in control.
The big problem is that this is NOT your parent’s Democratic Party. The far left progressives have taken control and are pushing policies that are out of the mainstream.
We need some check & balances. Electing a few more Republican House and Senate members will force bipartisan consensus on legislation and hopefully moderate the far left.
Complete Democratic control of government has been bad for America. Every voter feels the pain every week at the grocery store and every time they fill up their cars. Inflation is a tax on every American, driven by left wing, Democratic policies.
Ministry of Truth: Seriously, what are the Biden Administration and Democrats thinking? This Orwellian approach to somehow deal with “misinformation” because “they say so” goes against the basic freedom of speech principles that make this country what it is.
The freedom to express one’s views, regardless of how unpopular, vulgar, or offensive they may be is the cornerstone of an open society.
Biden and the Democrats are WRONG on this one as well.
Biden’s First Quarter Economic Numbers: The news that theGDP came in at -1.4% combined with an inflation rate of 8.0% is a real disaster. The highest inflation rate in 41 years!!! Inflation is a tax on EVERY American, keeping consumer spending down and hamstringing investments as well.
Biden and the Democrats are acting as if they have a new credit card, with no credit limits and NO responsibility to pay it off.
Biden’s deficit spending is a disastrous policy and our children (and grandchildren) will be paying off this fiasco.
Putin/Russia’s Terror: The only aim of Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian civilians is terror. Russia must be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism and treated accordingly. No business, no contacts, no cultural projects. We need a wall between civilization and barbarians striking peaceful countries and cities with missiles.
P.S. Russia should NO longer be a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. The irony?!? Come on!
Mike Pence’s Freedom Agenda: Former Vice President Mike Pence and his team at Advancing American Freedom rolled out his “Freedom Agenda.”
A well thought out agenda for America’s future. I encourage everyone to take a few minutes and listen to Vice President Pence’s short video introduction and then dive into the specific solutions they have laid out.
An agenda conservatives can get behind…a message we clearly need. See below.
Twitter: “The central tension of this discourse has nothing to do with racism or violence or anti-Martian colonialistic sentiment. The collective meltdown over Elon’s Twitter coup is likewise not about the dangers of rich people buying media platforms, a budding take growing in popularity, with innovators of the meme including most recently The Information’s Jessica Lessin. After all, if ‘rich people buying media platforms’ were a serious concern, we probably would have heard more about it last month, when every major media platform was … already owned by rich people.
The truth is there’s only one thing this is really about and that’s free speech. Still. It’s always just that.
Elon has repeatedly stated his goal of guaranteeing freedom of political dissent, which he considers essential to the functioning of our democracy. This is what his detractors are reacting to.”
Read more below and follow me on Twitter – @sanuzis
–Saul Anuzis
Click Here for Past Commentary from Saul
60 Plus Weekly Video Rewind
In this week’s video rewind- GDP shrinks like Biden’s poll numbers, Democrats in disarray about midterm legislative strategy, and former Vice President Pence launches bold forward-looking agenda for America!
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/us-economic-growth-gdp-first-quarter
–https://thehill.com/news/senate/3469505-democrats-split-over-how-hard-to-push-biden-agenda/
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pence-group-launches-freedom-agenda
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Vice President Pence’s Freedom Agenda for America
The uniquely American idea that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – American Freedom – has created, by any measure, the greatest and most prosperous country in the history of the world. Over the past 240 years, American innovation has created the greatest advancements in science, health, commerce, computing, communications, defense, travel, and transportation (including in space) – more than the people of the world could ever have imagined. Additionally, the American people are the most generous in the world, having shared American innovation, wealth, and knowledge for centuries.
Unfortunately, today American Freedom is under attack. Big Tech, Big Media, Big Government, and even Big Business have locked arms to advance a pernicious “woke” ideology designed to control the American people and destroy the American Dream. The ruling elites have never been more detached from the experiences of the average American – yet they have never worked harder to dictate what Americans can think, say, and do. They’ve already said, “You can’t go to work, you can’t go to school, and you can’t go to church.” They’ve exploited a pandemic to increase their power over our lives, and they aim to keep that power long after the pandemic is gone.
Over many decades, liberal policies have created one disaster after another. Currently, our borders are under siege, our citizens have been betrayed, our allies have been abandoned, our currency has been debased through inflation, our schools have been transformed into indoctrination centers, our energy independence has been sacrificed on the altar of climate alarmism, and our great economy has been brought to a screeching halt by the radical Left’s program of big-government socialism. When patriotic Americans dare to stand for freedom, justice, and truth, the Left uses racial attacks to silence them and eventually erase them from public life.
President Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It’s to be fought for, protected, and handed down to them to do the same.”
That’s exactly what the Trump-Pence Administration did every day. The Trump-Pence team fought for and protected American liberty for every American of every race, color, and creed. In 48 months, the Trump-Pence Administration achieved the lowest unemployment, the highest household incomes, the most energy production, the most pro-American trade deals, the most secure border, and the strongest military in the history of the world.
The U.S. Constitution begins with “We the People,” and We the People have had enough of destructive policies. We must return to the pro-freedom policies of Presidents Reagan and Trump. What follows are some ideas for how – together – we can advance American culture, American opportunity, American leadership, and ultimately Advance American Freedom once again.
Biden & Democrats Fail: U.S. GDP Falls 1.4% as Economy Shrinks for First Time Since Early in Pandemic
Supply disruptions weighed on the economy, but consumers and businesses continue to spend.
The U.S. economy shrank in the first quarter as supply disruptions weighed on output, but underlying strength in consumer and business spending suggested growth will soon resume.
The decline in U.S. gross domestic product at a 1.4% annual rate marked a sharp reversal from a 6.9% annual growth rate in the fourth quarter, the Commerce Department said Thursday. The first quarter was the weakest since spring 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic and related shutdowns drove the U.S. economy into a deep—albeit short—recession.
The drop stemmed from a widening trade deficit. Imports to the U.S. surged and exports fell, dynamics reflecting pandemic-related supply-chain constraints. A slower pace of inventory investment by businesses in the first quarter—compared with a rapid buildup of inventories at the end of last year—also pushed growth down…
… High inflation, though, is cutting into households’ purchasing power. Consumer prices rose 8.5% in March from a year earlier, a four-decade high.
Elevated inflation is wiping away pay gains for many workers: average hourly earnings were up 5.6% over the same period.
Are Democrats ‘sleepwalking’ into long-term catastrophe?
The frenzied midterm second-guessing among Democrats appears to be intensifying.
The stories are everywhere: Democrats fear that they’ve failed to counter GOP cultural attacks. That they’ve fumbled the politics of immigration. That they’re unlikely to pass major new legislation to campaign on. That labor’s decline has put key races in peril. That they’ve failed to address widespread economic anxieties.
But a larger background fear potentially unites all these. It’s that in some sense, Democrats face deeper structural disadvantages and more fundamental problems with their coalition that could prove extraordinarily challenging over the near and long terms.
You saw this fear bubble up when a piece written by little-known Democratic data cruncher Simon Bazelon stirred deep angst. It suggested Democrats might be “sleepwalking into a Senate disaster.”
Its argument is that the 2022 and 2024 elections could produce a GOP Senate majority that’s filibuster-proof. The reason: the combination of the Senate’s right-leaning bias and Democrats’ travails with working-class voters, not just Whites but also possibly Latinos.
Democrats can’t fix their problems by November
You may have noticed that Democrats on Capitol Hill are trying their best to keep the Jan. 6 investigation in the news. Making the spring and then the summer and then the fall about former President Donald Trump would be a huge win for them, given the calamitous state of Democratic midterm election prospects these days. But even though the Jan. 6 committee will get a lot of coverage when it finally unveils its report, the fact is, the Democratic Party cannot divert voters’ attention from losing issues such as inflation, crime, and the border crisis.
Warnings abound. For example, a new poll shows younger voters abandoning President Joe Biden in droves. The Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics has just released its annual survey of voters ages 18 to 29. By their own account, 57% voted for Biden in 2020, and now, 56% say they disapprove of the job Biden is doing as president, versus just 41% who approve. Having an approval rating of 41% among a heavily Democratic group — the poll found that Democrats have a 13 percentage point edge over Republicans among these young respondents — is bad news for the Democratic Party. Biden should be doing better among them.
Biden has been on a steady downhill track among young voters. In the spring of 2021, his first months in office, his approval rating in the Harvard poll was 59%, meaning it has fallen 18 points in the year since.
Biden surpasses Jimmy Carter as the most incompetent steward of the American economy
President Biden should get out of the way and let American energy provide relief.
President Joe Biden has accomplished in just 14 months what many thought was impossible — surpassing President Jimmy Carter as the most incompetent steward of the American economy.
Biden just broke another record, leaving Americans saddled with 8.5 percent inflation — energy alone is up 32 percent since last year.
Those of us who lived through the ’70s remember the fuel lines at the pump, staggering inflation, and Soviet aggression. There was a sense that America was in decline. What Carter termed “malaise” was actually the product of his terrible policies that hollowed out the middle class while inviting tyrants and adversaries to test American strength.
When our leaders don’t learn the lessons of the past, “history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” President Biden’s actions to date appear to be directly taken from President Carter’s playbook.
Excessive spending and anti-supply-side policies have contributed to the worst inflation since the Carter era. Instead of invading Afghanistan, the Russians have invaded another neighbor: Ukraine. But they were emboldened to do so by President Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from the same country — Afghanistan — where the Soviets were mired in a war they couldn’t win. And, of course, we have disastrous energy policies reminiscent of the Carter era, leading to record high prices at the pump and a major missed opportunity to bring stability to Europe.
Prayer Shouldn’t Be a Firing Offense
I ask the Supreme Court to uphold my right to thank God after football games.
With all the bad things I’ve done in my life, it still surprises me that I was fired for praying.
I was a terrible kid. My adoptive parents did their best, but I was always getting in trouble. The Marine Corps became my ticket out of the fights, group homes and foster care. Twenty years after enlisting, I moved back home to Bremerton, Wash. I had never been particularly religious, but my wife persuaded me to go to church. I felt God was calling me to be a better husband, so I committed my life to him.
The Bremerton High School athletic director seemed sure that my experience training Marines to work as a team was all the qualification I needed to be a football coach. As I weighed the opportunity, I caught the movie “Facing the Giants.” It seemed an answer from God. I committed to coaching football and promised God that I would take a knee by myself in quiet prayer at the 50-yard line following every game, win or lose.
Over the years, my prayers developed into motivational talks in which I led players who chose to join me in prayer. When the school district eventually told me to stop doing that, I did. My commitment with God didn’t involve others. It was only to pray by myself at the 50-yard line after each game.
A good perspective: Elon Musk Got Twitter Because He Gets TwitterCan Elon Musk break Twitter? I hope so.
I’m not accusing Musk of being a sleeper agent. The man loves Twitter. He tweets as if he was raised by the blue bird and the fail whale. Three days before locking in his purchase of the platform, Musk blasted out an unflattering photograph of Bill Gates, and next to it, an illustration of a pregnant man. “in case u need to lose a boner fast,” Time’s 2021 Person of the Year told his more than 80 million followers. Musk believed Gates was shorting Tesla’s stock, and this was his response. It got over 165,000 retweets and 1.3 million likes. That’s a man who understands what Twitter truly is.
Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder and former chief executive, always wanted it to be something else. Something it wasn’t, and couldn’t be. “The purpose of Twitter is to serve the public conversation,” he said in 2018. Twitter began “measuring conversational health” and trying to tweak the platform to burnish it. Sincere as the effort was, it was like those liquor ads advising moderation. You don’t get people to drink less by selling them whiskey. Similarly, if your intention was to foster healthy conversation, you’d never limit thoughts to 280 characters or add like and retweet buttons or quote-tweet features. Twitter can’t be a home to hold healthy conversation because that’s not what it’s built to do.
So what is Twitter built to do? It’s built to gamify conversation. As C. Thi Nguyen, a philosopher at the University of Utah, has written, it does that “by offering immediate, vivid and quantified evaluations of one’s conversational success. Twitter offers us points for discourse; it scores our communication. And these gamelike features are responsible for much of Twitter’s psychological wallop. Twitter is addictive, in part, because it feels so good to watch those numbers go up and up.”
Left’s objection to Elon Musk is about one thing — they want to control speech
Three weeks ago, a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that Elon Musk, billionaire S–tposting God of Silicon Valley, had acquired over 9% of Twitter, making him the company’s largest shareholder and setting in motion a chain of events that led, ultimately, to yesterday’s outright purchase of the now $44 billion company. In a press release, Elon shared his goals for the platform, which echoed the goals he’s shared all month:
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”
“Freedom,” “open source technology,” and “man, I really hate these spam bots.” The media’s reaction to these ambitions was instant and apoplectic. They were akin, we were told, to literal Nazism.
Welcome to the Clown World. Boy, do we have ground to cover…
…The central tension of this discourse has nothing to do with racism or violence or anti-Martian colonialistic sentiment. The collective meltdown over Elon’s Twitter coup is likewise not about the dangers of rich people buying media platforms, a budding take growing in popularity, with innovators of the meme including most recently The Information’s Jessica Lessin. After all, if “rich people buying media platforms” were a serious concern, we probably would have heard more about it last month, when every major media platform was … already owned by rich people.
The truth is there’s only one thing this is really about and that’s free speech. Still. It’s always just that.
Elon has repeatedly stated his goal of guaranteeing freedom of political dissent, which he considers essential to the functioning of our democracy. This is what his detractors are reacting to.
NATO’s Nordic Expansion
Adding Finland and Sweden Will Transform European Security.
Before Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, the question of NATO membership was barely part of the political debate in Finland and Sweden. Both countries have a long history of military nonalignment, and although they have gradually pursued closer cooperation with the United States and NATO—and politicians in both countries have long advocated membership—NATO accession was hardly seen as a pressing issue.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine changed all that. In response to Russian aggression, both countries are reassessing their security policies, and seeking NATO membership is rapidly emerging as the most realistic option. Recent polls show that clear and increasing majorities in both countries support joining the alliance. In addition, both countries have delivered substantial amounts of weapons to Ukraine, including 10,000 man-portable antiarmor weapons from Sweden.
By invading Ukraine, Putin sought not only to bring that country back under its influence but to also change the security order of Europe. On the latter point, he has succeeded—just not in the way he likely intended. Russia’s assault has unified NATO and made its expansion much more likely. If Finland and Sweden join the alliance, as they look poised to do, they will bring substantial new military capabilities, including advanced air and submarine capabilities, that will alter the security architecture of northern Europe and help deter further Russian aggression.
Pat Boone says ‘moral values’ are missing from today’s Hollywood’s films: ‘America’s image is being destroyed’
The former teen idol of the ’50s and ’60s is starring in the new faith-based film ‘The Mulligan’
At age 87, Pat Boone is still keeping busy in Hollywood, making films on his terms.
The entertainer, who originally made his mark as a squeaky clean teen idol during the ‘50s and ‘60s, is starring as “old pro” Will Dunn in “The Mulligan,” a faith-based film that focuses on forgiveness. It tells the story of Paul McAllister (Eric Close) who seemingly had it all until his life falls apart. With the help of a golf pro (Boone), he learns important lessons on how to play a good game both on and off the course.
Boone, an avid golf player who calls rock star and “golf monster” Alice Cooper a pal, told Fox News Digital the role was “a dream of a lifetime.”
“I liked the idea of the old pro helping a young man not only with his golf but also his personal life – marriage and family,” said Boone. “That attracted me … And golf is certainly an attraction to me. I got to wear my own wardrobe. Golf teaches honor, truthfulness and fair play. No other sport does that in my opinion. It’s an uplifting film that was beautifully made. Families can watch it together.”
Medicare isn’t free; seniors need to prepare for that reality
About 10,000 Americans turn 65 each day. Many may soon leave the workforce and claim the Medicare benefits they believe they’re entitled to after paying Medicare taxes for decades in the workforce.
But they may be in for a rude awakening. Even after paying tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in Medicare taxes over their working careers, beneficiaries spend thousands of dollars more each year for coverage during retirement.
That coverage doesn’t always guarantee them timely access to the doctors or specialists they might like to see. It’s no wonder seniors are increasingly opting for privately administered Medicare Advantage plans, which often offer more value than the conventional government-administered Medicare program.
People start paying for Medicare long before they’re elderly. To fund certain parts of the program, the government levies a 2.9% payroll tax.
That money adds up. According to the Urban Institute, an individual currently in his mid-twenties earning less than $23,400 annually will pay $60,000 in Medicare taxes by the time he turns 65. If that same individual made $83,000 each year over his lifetime, he’d pay $220,000 in total Medicare taxes.
What a Republican-led healthy future looks like
The Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra is finally testifying before Congress this week. Republicans are eager to deliver him an important message: Americans’ health care is personal, and Democrats’ one-size-fits-all, “Washington knows best” approach is doing little to promote a healthier future for our country. We have proposals to help all Americans live better, healthier, and longer lives by guaranteeing access to new cures, transformational medical innovations, and lowering out-of-pocket spending on drugs.
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have learned a lot about the ways that we can improve our health care system. To put these lessons into action, House Republicans have created the Republican Healthy Future Task Force to develop positive, commonsense solutions to improve the health of all Americans today and in the future.
We understand that an 80-year-old widow on Medicare has different health needs than a 35-year-old single mom. Someone living in rural America has different concerns about accessing health care than our neighbors in urban areas.
