Ukraine: It’s in the best interest of the United States to continue funding the defense of Ukraine and sticking with our NATO allies.
It’s “popular” to somehow make the argument that we can better spend that money here, but the reality is that it’s one of the cheapest investments to weaken an aggressive adversary in Vladimir Putin and bring millions of Ukrainians into the “west” as friends and allies…not to mention their industrial and agricultural resources.
We need a long-term strategic approach to our international engagement. Yes, we need more checks and balances, yes, we need to avoid putting U.S. soldiers at risk; and yes, we need to take care of our own.
Close the border, stop rampant crime, and start teaching our kids to read, write, and do math. There is a huge mental health problem in America…and encouraging demented thinking isn’t helping.
Let’s hope for change…to paraphrase and borrow a phrase.
Facts Matter: Slowly but surely, the politically motivated cases against President Trump are falling apart. More and more evidence is emerging that there were mass irregularities and potential fraudulent acts during the last election. Few question whether the elections were rigged in favor of the radical left…and now America is paying the price.
Why do so many Democrats oppose free, fair, transparent, and verifiable elections?
No advantage to anyone… just honest elections?!? Our republic depends on it.
The left fights reform at every step. They open the borders to flood our country with illegal immigrants. They make a mockery of our judicial system.
Elections matter. It’s not a partisan issue…It’s a question of right or wrong…Western civilized values vs. chaos and some Marxist utopia.
Pay attention, America…The risks are VERY high.
Read more below and follow me on Twitter & GETTR – @sanuzis
–Saul Anuzis
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Saul’s News Weekly Rewind Video
This Week: Senator Kevin Cramer introduces the PROVE IT Act to rein in China, government assisted censorship helped kill the Hunter Biden laptop story, and illegal immigrants may account for up to 22 Congressional seats in the House!
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Former Rolling Stone Editor Lists the Top Jokers Who Escaped Accountability in the Russian Collusion Hoax
Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag have done an excellent job reporting on the new trove of documents and reports concerning how the intelligence community ran an illegal spy operation against the Trump team that pre-dates the FBI’s counterintelligence probe, which began in the summer of 2016. Obama’s CIA was the starting quarterback in this scheme, getting the intelligence services of our allies involved while targeting 26 individuals with ties to the former president to be placed under surveillance illegally. They did a deep-dive into how the CIA, run by then-Director John Brennan, cooked the intelligence in their 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, blocked other agencies with differing opinions from offering their input, and rehashed some of the worst habits that led this nation into a lengthy war in Iraq in 2003, except this is much worse.
Matt Taibbi wrote on his Substack about how the two incidents caused irreparable harm, how Democrats should be horrified by the latest revelations despite Trump being the victim, and how this Russian collusion hoax is worse than Watergate.
The former Rolling Stone editor, who has been a collusion skeptic since day one, went into detail about the serial intelligence failures in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that was used as a primer to invade Iraq during the Bush presidency. In that situation, our allies also botched their reports, with the British exposed as sexing up their weapons of mass destruction portions. It wasn’t until 2015 that the whole operation was exposed, showing multiple times that the IC cooked the books to make the case for war. Taibbi noted that this isn’t a partisan issue—it’s just pure corruption among people in the shadows whom we trust to protect us asymmetrically. Instead, they didn’t like a presidential candidate and executed an elaborate, complex, and unlawful operation to hamstring Trump.
New Poll Shows GOP Has Strong Chance to Flip Multiple Democrat Senate Seats
As RedState reported, former Maryland governor Larry Hogan (R-MD) unexpectedly announced his run for the United States Senate. Polls show Hogan leading against Democrat Angela Alsobrooks 44 to 37 and tied with Democrat David Trone at 42 apiece.
In a state where President Biden defeated former President Trump in 2020 — if Hogan manages to flip the Maryland seat, the GOP should comfortably be able to win back the Senate.
As RedState also reported, Hogan has an uphill battle because he isn’t the first choice for most Republicans. However, they might hold their nose and vote for him if that means Democrats lose control of the Senate.
Although it will be tough to win some seats, such as defeating Jon Tester in Montana, as Rep. Matt Rosendale (R) dropped out of the race, and former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy (R) trails in the most recent poll there, though he did just pick up the endorsement of Trump. Still, the GOP candidate is all but guaranteed to win in West Virginia. Joe Manchin will likely opt out of running for re-election. But the most recent poll showed all three GOP candidates defeating Manchin.
Nearly half of voters think it’s likely Biden will be replaced as nominee, a new poll shows
About a third of voters said they thought Trump could lose the Republican nomination because of his legal troubles.
Nearly half of American voters think it’s at least somewhat likely that President Joe Biden will be replaced as the Democratic nominee because of his health, and a third believe Donald Trump could ultimately lose the Republican nomination as a result of his extensive legal troubles, according to a new poll conducted by Monmouth University.
Questions about Biden’s age and mental stamina have intensified since last week’s release of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report that described Biden’s memory as “poor.”
The study says the Hur report didn’t shift public opinion on whether Biden mishandled classified documents that were found in his home and a think tank office he uses, but it did reinforce the increased concern of Biden’s physical and mental health.
Fifty-one percent of voters were confident in the mental capacity and physical stamina of Trump to lead the country — but only 32 percent were able to say the same for Biden, the poll found.
Voter opinion on both candidates has shifted from a 2020 study conducted months before the last presidential election.
In 2020, just 45 percent of voters were confident in Trump’s stamina. Over half of voters at that time were confident in Biden’s stamina — a statistic that has decreased significantly.
The trend is also true among Democratic voters: 91 percent of Democrats surveyed in the summer of 2020 had confidence in Biden’s mental and physical stamina, compared with 72 percent today.
Conflict-ridden Michigan GOP has to run a presidential caucus in a few weeks
After a chaotic battle for the chairmanship, the state party is now turning its attention to the early-March contest, which has also been a source of confusion.
The Republican National Committee formally stepped in Wednesday to resolve more than a month of conflict over who really leads the Michigan GOP. Now, the state Republican Party needs to turn around and put on a party-run caucus in early March.
Michigan’s presidential primary is on Feb. 27, after the Democratic National Committee agreed to a new schedule of nominating contests that moved the state earlier. But that wasn’t compliant with RNC rules, resulting in a two-part solution: Republican voters in Michigan will now be able to participate in the state’s primary on Feb. 27, followed by the GOP caucuses on March 2 that will decide most of the state’s presidential delegates.
While the state runs the primary, the party puts on the caucuses — and the party is having trouble running anything right now. In January, a group of Michigan GOP state committee members voted to remove Kristina Karamo, who has served as state party chair since February 2023, but she said the vote was illegitimate and has refused to give up her position to former Rep. Pete Hoekstra, who was voted in by a separate faction last month.
On Wednesday, the Republican National Committee formally recognized Hoekstra as the chairman, though Karamo implied she’ll continue fighting. Amid the civil war with Hoekstra, who won support from former President Donald Trump, she had retained control of party email accounts and other assets.
Goodbye John Kerry and China Coddling. Hello PROVE IT Act and China Accountability.
The resignation of John Kerry from his role as climate czar signals more than a change in personnel; it underscores a fundamental shift in America’s stance on environmental and foreign policy. Kerry’s tenure, characterized by a zealous attempt to cozy up to Beijing, starkly contrasts with the America First ethos. His approach, marked by bending over backward to accommodate China, left American businesses in the lurch, as they grappled with the fallout from China’s environmental negligence and economic manipulation. Serendipitously, Republicans in the Senate made this contrast abundantly clear as they moved the anti-China PROVE IT Act through a committee vote.
Designed based on ideas championed by influential MAGA figures like Bob Lighthizer, Trump’s Trade Representative, PROVE IT is a vital effort towards holding nations accountable for their environmental shortcuts that undercut U.S. industries. This exemplifies the stark contrast between the MAGA vision of robust economic and environmental policy and the Uniparty’s capitulation to international, especially Chinese, interests.
Contrary to the narrative peddled by skeptics in the Davos crowd, taking a firm stance against these injustices will not spell doom for the American economy. We know this because under President Trump, we had the best economy in my lifetime, built with America First policies and leadership.
The PROVE IT Act paves the way for an economic resurgence, ensuring fair play in international trade and fostering a landscape where American industries can thrive without the threat of foreign exploitation. The true beneficiaries of this bold move will be American workers, who have long deserved a level playing field.
The average direct-deposit refund also dipped 25%, from $2,056 to $1,543.
JPMorgan Chase and institutional investors BlackRock and State Street Global Advisors announced Thursday that they are quitting or, in the case of BlackRock, substantially scaling back involvement in a massive United Nations climate alliance formed to combat global warming through corporate sustainability agreements.
In a statement, the New York-based Jamie Dimon’s JPMorgan explained that it would exit the so-called Climate Action 100+ investor group because of the expansion of its in-house sustainability team and the establishment of its climate risk framework in recent years.
Larry Fink’s BlackRock and State Street, which both manage trillions of dollars in assets, said the alliance’s climate initiatives had gone too far, expressing concern about potential legal issues as well.
The stunning announcements come as the largest financial institutions in the US and worldwide face an onslaught of pressure from consumer advocates and Republican states over their environmental, social and governance (ESG) priorities.
Congressionally-Chartered Nonprofit’s Disinformation Dashboard Used to Track Hunter Biden
Junkipedia, a dashboard for tracking and reporting “problematic content” created by the Algorithmic Transparency Institute (ATI), a project of the Congressionally-chartered National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC), was used to help discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 election — linking the laptop story to “Pizzagate” and other conspiracy theories.
Rolled out in 2020, Junkipedia is a database for online censors to log examples of “problematic” speech so it can be tracked and, if necessary, escalated to Big Tech content moderators for suppression. ATI’s parent, NCoC, is a purportedly nonpartisan nonprofit established by Congressional charter in 1953.
In 2009, Edward M. Kennedy’s Serve America Act formalized a partnership between NCoC and the Census Bureau to track the nation’s civic health, measured by rates of voting, volunteering, and engagement in civic and religious groups. It receives funding for these efforts from AmeriCorps, an independent agency of the U.S. federal government.
US says Russia has suffered 315K casualties in Ukraine
Russia has suffered more than 300,000 casualties in the war in Ukraine, according to the latest U.S. estimate, and has also lost 20 medium-to-large ships in the Black Sea.
Laura Cooper, the Pentagon’s deputy secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, said 315,000 Russian soldiers have died or been wounded in the fighting so far. In addition to the naval ship losses, Russia has lost one tanker in the war.
And Russia is also spending massive amounts of money on the war, Cooper said, with around $211 billion spent so far. The war has cost Russia’s economy $1.3 trillion in anticipated economic growth through 2026, she added.
Cooper said it was important “to focus on these larger questions of costs and attrition” in the ongoing war.
“Russia has suffered significant costs in that respect,” she said.
Russia has struggled to achieve its objectives in the war but still holds some 18 percent of Ukrainian territory in the eastern region of the country. While Russia repelled a 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive, its own forces have only made incremental gains on the battlefield.
Average American set to receive 29% less in refunds this tax season, IRS says
Inflation-battered Americans waiting on a much-needed infusion of cash from their tax refunds have received 29% less than last year, according to early data from the Internal Revenue Service.
The average refund issued through Feb. 2 totaled $1,395, a massive $568 decline from this time last year, the IRS’ filing season statistics showed.
There was also a precipitous plunge in the amount refunded via direct deposits: roughly $4 billion thus far for the 2023 tax-filing season versus $14.3 billion the previous year, a staggering 71.4% drop.
The average direct-deposit refund also dipped 25%, from $2,056 to $1,543.
10 Tax Forms Retirees Receive and What They Mean
Knowing what you’re getting and why is important so you can ensure that you or your tax preparer have what’s needed to file your taxes.
I’m an IRS enrolled agent, which sounds (sort of) cool and scary. What it actually means is that I am licensed by the IRS to prepare taxes and represent taxpayers, which is not cool or scary. The reality of the situation is that I have the same feelings of unhappiness and annoyance you do every time tax season rolls around. And here we are again …
The tax forms have started arriving, increasingly by email. Most of our clients either put everything in a folder, virtual or paper, and hand it over to an accountant or upload it to TurboTax and hope for the best. The heavy lifting and planning for retirees is the work we do before December 31. So, by the time the forms come, it’s more of an administrative task.
It’s important for you to understand what you’re handing over, mostly so you know if you’re missing something. The volume of tax returns prepared by most CPAs means that they are not going to notice if something is missing. Here are the most common tax forms you, our clients, are receiving:
