The Biden administration has recently disclosed its intention to deploy an additional 800 U.S. military personnel to the southern border.

However, their role will be limited to assisting with the processing of migrants, rather than aiding in law enforcement efforts.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under President Biden has clarified that the active-duty troops will be tasked with "logistics and other functions at the border to allow more Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents and officers to return to their core mission and responsibilities."

While the Democratic Mayor of Dallas says the city has thrived, Eric Johnson writes in a very frank WSJ op-ed that, elsewhere, Democratic policies have exacerbated crime and homelessness.

"The future of America’s great urban centers depends on the willingness of the nation’s mayors to champion law and order and practice fiscal conservatism.

Our cities desperately need the genuine commitment to these principles (as opposed to the inconsistent, poll-driven commitment of many Democrats) that has long been a defining characteristic of the GOP."

As we have written in detail previously, cities governed by Democrat mayors have seen the largest increases in homicide rates over the past year as well as registered the highest homicide rate per capita in Q1 out of 45 cities, according to a new report.

Homicide rates in 45 of the most populated American cities rose by approximately 10 percent on average between Q1, 2021 and Q1, 2023, and continue to rise, according to an April 26 report by WalletHub. Blue cities were found to have a higher increase in homicide rates compared to red cities. The report designated a city as red or blue based on the mayor’s political affiliation.

The top five cities that saw the greatest increase in per capita homicide are Richmond, Virginia; Memphis, Tennessee; Durham, North Carolina; Garland, Texas; and Washington, D.C.

Except for Garland, where Mayor Scott LeMay is a Republican, the remaining four cities have mayors who are affiliated with the Democratic Party.

Western officials and media pundits are now directly acknowledging that Ukraine’s much-touted “spring counteroffensive” has been a catastrophic failure, but rather than seeing this as a reason to reconsider the mainstream political consensus on this war, they are instead telling everyone that the counteroffensive’s failure means we must commit to the status quo of bloodshed and nuclear brinkmanship for years to come.

In a recent article titled “US and G-7 Allies Expect War in Ukraine to Drag On for Years,” Bloomberg reports that the US-centralized power structure expects to be backing its proxy conflict against Russia for a very long time, potentially into the 2030s. 

On Thursday, the the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report (pdf) which concluded that the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, was only mission capable about 50 percent of the time for the A and B variants and 57 percent for the C variant of the fighter. These mission capability rates, the GAO report states, are "far below program goals" of 90 percent for the F-35A variant and 85 for the B and C variants.

The F-35—which is operated by the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, as well as a host of U.S. allies—is one of the most advanced systems in Western arsenals. The 5th Generation fighter jet is made with an array of special radar-absorbent materials and other "stealth" features. The multirole fighter jet boasts capabilities for a range of different mission types, and the F-35B variant operated by the Marine Corps has unique short take-off and vertical landing capabilities.

The F-35 is also one of the most expensive systems in Western arsenals. The U.S. Department of Defense has estimated the F-35 program will cost the department about $1.7 trillion over its life cycle. A majority of this estimated lifetime cost, $1.3 trillion, is expected to go toward maintenance. The GAO said it conducted this latest sustainment study of the F-35 in part because of this high program cost.

Contributing to this low mission capability rate, the GAO report concluded the F-35 program is heavily reliant on contractors for maintenance work and the DOD has been slow to take over the program's responsibilities.

Today in "your tax dollars at work" news, a suspect charged with murder in Minnesota has been released from jail due to a "clerical error", just two days after he was arrested.

28 year old Kevin Mason was recently arrested in Indiana on a murder warrant after a two year manhunt. Then, he was promptly mistakenly released from jail, NBC News wrote this week. 

Now, authorities are on the hunt for him in Indiana again. They have kept his accidental release quiet for six days, supposedly to gain a "tactical advantage" over him, the article says. 

Colonel James Martin with the Marion County Sheriff’s Office described his arrest warrants: "One being for homicide, one being for a parole violation, and the other being for a firearms possession."

Mason was charged with second degree murder "in connection with a shooting in June 2021 in the parking lot of the Shiloh Temple in Minneapolis that killed Dontevius Ahmad Catchings," the report says. 

There is evidence that cancers are occurring in excess after people receive COVID-19 vaccinations, according to Dr. Harvey Risch.

Dr. Risch is professor emeritus of epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine. His research has focused extensively on the causes of cancer as well as prevention and early diagnosis.

In an interview for EpochTV’s "American Thought Leaders," Dr. Risch said patients must now wait months, not weeks, to get an appointment at an oncology clinic in New York.

here is difficulty in observing whether a vaccine can cause cancer, because cancer usually takes time to develop, Dr. Risch said. It can take anywhere from two years to 30 years, depending on the different types of cancer, from leukemia to colon cancer.

“What clinicians have been seeing,” said Dr. Risch, “is very strange things: For example, 25-year-olds with colon cancer, who don't have family histories of the disease—that's basically impossible along the known paradigm for how colon cancer works—and other long-latency cancers that they're seeing in very young people."

He said this is not how cancer normally develops.

"There has to be some initiating stimulus to why this happens," he said.

McDonald's advertising efforts portray its promotion of family values in Japan, whereas, in the West, it subverts society with 'woke' propaganda. 

X account End Wokeness first pointed out McDonald's advertisements in a post titled "McDonald's Japan vs McDonald's USA. Try and spot the difference" on Thursday. The cholesterol-laden fast-food chain appears to embrace sanity in Japan while promoting woke insanity in the US. 

It turns out that we really do need the police after all.  Do you remember a few years ago when blue cities all over the nation wanted to defund the police?  Needless to say, that didn’t work out too well.  Wherever police budgets were slashed, crime rates shot up.  Today, we are in the midst of a massive crime wave that is sweeping the country.  In fact, it has gotten so bad that even many our most liberal politicians are desperate to restore law and order.  But that won’t be so easy, because after everything that has transpired blue cities are discovering that they are having a really difficult time finding enough warm bodies to serve in their crime-ridden communities.

Just look at what is happening in Minneapolis.  Since the death of George Floyd, the number of officers serving in the MPD has fallen by about 35 percent…

The Minneapolis Police Department is experiencing historically low staffing shortages, with ranks down approximately 35% since the death of George Floyd in 2020.

According to a June report from the Department of Justice, the MPD had 892 sworn officers in 2018, but that number has since dropped to just 585. An officer told the DOJ that the police department’s morale “is at an all-time low.”

Once upon a time, Minneapolis was one of the most beautiful cities in the country.

But now it is a crime-infested hellhole, and at this point the city “has one of the lowest ratios of police officers to population” in the entire nation…

Some days, the department has only four officers working a given precinct, the outlet reported. The MPD is often so understaffed that it does not have anyone available to work the station’s front desk.

Minneapolis has one of the lowest ratios of police officers to population, with 1.4 officers per 1,000 residents, while the national average is 2.4.

The World Health Organization’s pandemic treaty, the amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHRs) and the global One Health agenda are all part of a soft coup, a global power grab

The globalists’ plan for our future can be summarized as “global dominion by the few and total control of the masses”

The technocratic cabal has control over most if not all Western governments, as well as the bureaucratic structure of the WHO; 85% of its funding comes from private entities, so it’s owned by private interests

Based on the current treaty draft and proposed IHR amendments, it’s clear that mRNA-based vaccinations will be mandatory under the WHO’s power structure, and these vaccines will be made in 100 days by skipping human trials and shaving safety and efficacy testing down to the bare bones

Under the treaty, as currently written, nations will be required to surveil and censor social media. The WHO’s narrative will be the only one allowed

On September 14, 2023, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania heard arguments from the legal counsel advocating for the city of Philadelphia about if the city government has the power to pass its own gun control laws. 

On that day, justices didn’t issue a decision on the matter but plans on doing so in the forthcoming weeks.

The plaintiffs contended that the state’s preemption law, which bars cities from passing local gun control measures, deprives Philadelphians of their right to life and liberty by allegedly subjecting them to gun violence.

Pennsylvania initially passed its preemption law back in 1974. State judges have used that law to stymie the city of Philadelphia’s efforts to implement local gun control measures which include:

• A prohibition on firearms at recreation centers and parks
• A hard limit on how many handguns an individual can buy on a monthly basis;
• A requirement compelling individuals to report lost or stolen firearms or be subjected to fines

Webmaster addition:

In the world of Twitter where political jabs and witty comebacks reign supreme, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) just delivered quite the roast. Responding to Joe Biden’s call for stricter gun control measures, MTG didn’t hold back.

Earlier today, President Biden took to Twitter to voice his stance on gun control, stating, “It’s time to again ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. And let me be very clear: If members of Congress refuse to act, then we need to elect new members of Congress who will act.” A bold statement, no doubt, but MTG was quick to fire back with her own brand of humor.

She responded, “Whatever you old fart. We are electing a new President. Turning 45 into 47,” referring to a return of Trump to the White House.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed a dramatic 143,233% rise in cases of turbo-cancers across America since late 2020.

The CDC hosts a Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) which contains historical data on adverse reactions reported against every vaccine that has been administered in America.

According to a search of the CDC VAERS database on the number of cancer cases reported as adverse reactions to the mRNA shots since December 2020 up to 5th August 2022, a total of 2,579 adverse events related to cancer were made in just 1 year and 8 months.

Katti Jisuk Seo, a young Korean-German woman who recently moved to Australia, was enjoying her first-ever scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef when she was shocked to hear that the Japanese government had begun dumping radioactive waste water into the Pacific Ocean.

“I come from Berlin, a city without an ocean,” she said in a speech to a September 16 rally in Sydney to protest Japan’s dumping.  “I grew up with a certain longing for the ocean though, inspired by my mum‘s childhood in Busan, Korea, where she would see the ocean every day. Now, I just recently moved to Australia, a country that connects me with the ocean in so many ways.

“I was still mesmerised by the colourful fish and coral in the Pacific when the news crashed in that on August 24, the Japanese government started dumping radioactive contaminated wastewater from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean.

“The horror of the news felt even more tangible as my mind was still full of the vivid images of the underwater world.”

Japan plans to release 1.3 million tons of radioactive contaminated wastewater into the ocean over the next decades — enough to fill more than 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools, Seo explained.

“Japan is sending its radioactive waste on a trip around the world. From the Pacific it will reach beaches and seas globally, entering fish, marine plants, other sea creatures and mammals throughout the marine food chain. Via evaporation, through rainfall, it will find its way back onto the lands across our planet.

“The Japanese government insists the radioactive contaminated wastewater is ‘safe’, basing this claim on a recent safety review by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). But this report clearly shows that the IAEA bears no responsibility for any fallout from Japan‘s actions.

Narrative is a “a representation of a particular situation or process in such a way as to reflect or conform to an overarching set of aims, goals, themes, or values.”  A narrative is a story – actual, distorted, even fabricated – created to convince others of narrator’s position or to justify narrator’s action. 

Progressive-dominated Washington, aided and abetted by complicit media, has repeated narratives that are said to be widely accepted, yet are demonstrably false. Just like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, pull aside the curtain to see what’s really there, rather than what they want us to see.

False narrative Number 1 was (and is) the COVID big con.

Washington presented a minor flu-like virus as a terrifying, life-ending illness comparable to Ebola or bubonic plague. Federal authorities declared a public health crisis and used it to justify suppression of constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties including quasi-martial law lockdowns, and even considered forced quarantine (internment) camps for the unvaccinated, as Australia activated.

Repeatedly fomenting public panic, Washington forced the entire population to accept injections of never-before-used, untested mRNA gene therapy disingenuously advertised as a “safe and effective vaccine.” 

So Ghana is falling back into the suffocating embrace of the IMF for the 17th time since independence. After all, as the Times says, they have “no choice.” And we all know what is the universal prescription of the IMF for impoverished countries: more government spending and higher taxes.

How could that possibly make sense? If you don’t immediately grasp the logic, you need an education in IMF-speak. I had a post back on June 19, 2017 covering this subject. The title was “The Important Work Of International Agencies: Keeping The Poor Poor.” That post highlighted a quote from then IMF head Christine Lagarde as to how higher taxes and higher government spending are the magic elixir for alleviating poverty. Note Ms. Lagarde’s weird bureaucratic terminology:

[W]e are here to discuss an equally powerful tool for global growth — domestic resource mobilization. . . .  [T]axes, and the improvement of tax systems, can boost development in incredible ways. . . .  So today, allow me first to explain the IMF’s commitment to capacity development and second, to outline strategies governments can use to generate stable sources of revenue…

“Domestic resource mobilization” — that’s IMF babble for higher taxes and higher government spending. After all, you need to get the resources out of the hands of the layabout private citizens and into the hands of the brilliant government bureaucrats to make sure that they are “mobilized” appropriately. Multiple decades of this, and every one of the 49 sub-Saharan countries remains poor.

Parts of the Pacific Northwest are about to be hit with the first powerful storm series of the coming winter season, an impact that will bring some whiplash for the region as it goes from severe drought to flash flooding.

Rainfall will peak on Monday, and by Tuesday, 1 to 3 inches will be common in western Washington state, Oregon and into Northern California, mainly to the north of the San Francisco Bay Area. Even higher rainfall totals are a good bet around coastal Canada.

The main culprit is a storm that will rapidly intensify to the south of the Gulf of Alaska. It is forecast to reach “bomb cyclone” status over the weekend before unleashing fury on the Pacific Northwest into next week. Additional rounds of rain are also probable later in the week.

Does the media ever wonder why so few Americans want the new Covid booster shot? Or why so few Americans wanted the last booster shot?

I know why.

It’s because almost everyone (who isn’t blind, deaf or really dumb) knows someone who got the Covid jab and died soon thereafter.

There’s even a name for it. Look for it in the headlines. All over America people are “dying suddenly.”

And almost everyone knows someone who got the Covid jab…had no health problems in their life…but now after the vaccine, they’re very sick…

They’ve had a heart attack…or stroke…or blood clots…or sudden fast-moving Stage 4 cancer…or a terrible outbreak of shingles (ask Democrat US Senator Diane Feinstein about that)…or neurological diseases like Parkinson’s Disease (ask Democrat US Congresswoman Jennifer Wexman about that). Out of the blue. But always after being vaccinated.

Or here’s the really obvious thing everyone is seeing…someone they know was never a sickly person…but after getting the Covid jab they get sick nonstop…they get every flu bug that comes around. Their immune system no longer works.

Special counsel Jack Smith has added a veteran war crimes prosecutor — who served as Smith’s deputy during his stint at the Hague — to his team as it prepares to put former President Donald Trump on trial in Washington and Florida.

Alex Whiting worked alongside Smith for three years, helping prosecute crimes against humanity that occurred in Kosovo in the late 1990s. The Yale-educated attorney also worked as a prosecutor with the International Criminal Court from 2010 to 2013. He has taught law classes at Harvard since 2007 as well, hired as an assistant professor by then-Dean Elena Kagan — now a Supreme Court justice — and rising to a visiting professorship in 2013.

Whiting’s precise role on Smith’s team is unclear. A spokesperson for Smith declined to comment, and Whiting did not immediately return requests for comment. The prosecutors’ office in the Hague and Harvard University also did not respond to requests for comment about Whiting’s current employment status.

But a POLITICO reporter observed Whiting at the U.S. district courthouse in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday and Thursday, spending several hours monitoring the trial of a Jan. 6 defendant. The judge in the case is Tanya Chutkan, who is slated to preside over Trump’s trial in March on federal charges stemming from his efforts to subvert the 2020 election.

President Joe Biden has told his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, that the United States will provide a small number of long-range missiles to aid the war with Russia, three U.S. officials and a congressional official familiar with the discussions told NBC News on Friday.

The officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly, did not say when the missiles would be delivered or when a public announcement would be made.

For months, Ukraine has asked for the Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, which would give Kyiv the ability to strike targets from as far away as about 180 miles, hitting supply lines, railways, and command and control locations behind the Russian front lines.

Credit card companies are racking up losses at the fastest pace in almost 30 years, outside of the Great Financial Crisis, according to Goldman Sachs.

Credit card losses bottomed in September 2021, and while initial increases were likely reversals from stimulus, they have been rapidly rising since the first quarter of 2022. Since that time, it’s an increasing rate of losses only seen in recent history during the recession of 2008.

It is far from over, the firm predicts.

Losses currently stand at 3.63%, up 1.5 percentage points from the bottom, and Goldman sees them rising another 1.3 percentage points to 4.93%. This comes at a time when Americans owe more than $1 trillion on credit cards, a record high, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Luis Sanchez, a “sex attacker,” was released on a $1 bond due to prosecutors missing the deadline to indict him.

On Thursday, the 25-year-old man who had given a 16-year-old alcohol, waited for her to pass out and raped as well as impregnated her, was granted release where he will be sent to a shelter on house arrest. 

Sanchez had been in custody since May of this year and was charged with felony of sexual assault of a child. 

According to the state of Texas, prosecutors are required by law to acquire an indictment within 90 days of a person being detained. If this does not happen in time, the suspect has to be given a “reasonable or personal recognizance bond.”

The press reported that since Sanchez was not indicted in time, his attorney filed a motion to get the court to reduce his bond amount. 

Since a recognizance bond is one that a suspect can afford, they held the bond at one dollar. 

That motion was then granted by Judge Kathrine Thomas in the 184th court.

Former GOP Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s public records trial against Maricopa County over ballot affidavit envelopes has begun with a focus on voter privacy and will continue next week.

On Thursday, Lake was in the courtroom for her two-day trial before Judge John Hannah of the Superior Court of Arizona, Maricopa County, regarding a public records request Lake filed under Arizona's Public Records law.

In March, Lake submitted a public records request of ballot affidavit envelopes from the 2022 general election, but the Maricopa County’s Recorders Office denied her request in April.

Lake wants to review the envelopes, which voters write their signatures on when casting mail-in ballots, to determine if the signatures match voters’ signatures that are on file with the county.

Lake told Steve Bannon’s "War Room" TV show prior to the beginning of trial on Thursday that if her team wins the case and is able to review the envelopes, then “we’re gonna prove that mail-in ballots are not safe, are not secure, that many don't have signatures, that many of those signatures do not match.”

The Maricopa County’s Recorders Office has argued the ballot affidavit signatures are part of the voter registration record and are deemed confidential by state law with some exceptions, which they say Lake doesn't meet.

A police robot, called K-5, will patrol New York City’s busiest subway station overnights in a new pilot program.

“We must use every available method,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a Friday morning news conference announcing the deployment of the robot.

The mayor said the city is leasing the robot for $9 an hour, noting that is below the minimum wage in the city.

“It’s cost-effective,” Adams said. “No bathroom breaks, no meal breaks.”

The 420-pound robot will be on patrol at the station from midnight to 5 a.m. during the two-month test in two weeks.

“We’re taking existing technology and putting it on wheels,” Adams said.

Webmaster addition: I give it a week until it's stripped and up on cinder blocks!

For stock investors for much of this year, the trillion-dollar AI promise has masked a big threat in this era of Federal Reserve hawkishness: Real-world borrowing costs have jumped across Corporate America.

Now Wall Street is fretting over the monetary danger in a week that Jerome Powell signaled his resolve once again to keep the policy stance tight — sparking a rout across Big Tech and beyond.

His tool of choice to cool the still-hot US economy: Ensuring interest rates adjusted for inflation — seen as true cost of money for borrowers — stay elevated. Real yields, which touched decade-highs this week, need to stay meaningfully positive “for some time,” the Fed chief said at the policy gathering.

It’s a chilling message for the top-heavy US equity market. Double-digit gains this year have been fueled by optimism that nascent technologies such as artificial intelligence will unlock a new wave of growth for technology companies, justifying the sector’s eye-watering valuations. Yet skepticism is setting in as the cost of capital climbs, threatening to pressure companies big and small.

North Carolina and Virginia have been hit by tropical storm Ophelia, bringing with it damaging winds and dangerous surges.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) reported that just after 6:20am this morning, the storm had made landfall near Emerald Isle in North Carolina. 

Forecasters have warned that the storm could bring life-threatening flooding as it moves across the state and into Virginia. 

In an update from the NHC, the storm had maximum winds reaching 70mph, with sustained winds of 61mph. 

According to poweroutage.us, there is currently 52,000 people without power across North Carolina and Virginia. 

A saltwater intrusion in the water supply that's pumped out of the Mississippi river is threatening the drinking water of nearly 900,000 residents in Louisiana. 

Water with high salinity levels can pose serious health risks to human if ingested, and if contaminated, it could be months before fresh water returns as long as the drought persists. 

Mayor of New Orleans LaToya Cantrell declared a state of emergency due to the saltwater intrusion on Friday, in alignment with the Governor's Office. 

'Unfortunately, we just haven't had the relief from dry conditions that we need,' Gov. John Bel Edwards said at a Friday news conference in New Orleans. 

Many concerned households and business owners say they fear for their health, with some claiming they have had enough and are looking to move house.

Webmaster addition: Much of the water in that area comes from aquifers. The Mississippi river is heavily polluted. When I worked on the Mississippi Queen as an entertainer, the running joke was the Mississippi river was too thick to drink and too thin to plow, so they put boats on it!

It looks increasingly likely that at least one member of the United States Senate may owe his seat in the world’s greatest deliberative body not to his charisma or the persuasiveness of his message but to voter fraud.

As the Wall Street Journal's John Fund reports, Minnesota Democrat Al Franken’s narrow, 312-vote victory in 2008 over incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman may have come as the result of people being allowed to vote who, under existing law, shouldn’t have been.

[See who gave the most to Franken.]

The certification of Franken as the victor came only after a series of recounts dragging out for almost half a year. It also sparked an investigation by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group that compared the list of those recorded as having voted in the election against what Fund calls “criminal rap sheets.” The group found, in what appears to clearly warrant further and official inquiry, that

… At least 341 convicted felons voted in Minneapolis's Hennepin County, the state's largest, and another 52 voted illegally in St. Paul's Ramsey County, the state's second largest. Dan McGrath, head of Minnesota Majority, says that only conclusive matches were included in the group's totals. The number of felons voting in those two counties alone exceeds Mr. Franken's victory margin.

Thus far no one is calling for the results to be overturned. Indeed Dan McGrath, who spearheaded the inquiry, told Fox News, "We aren't trying to change the result of the last election. That legally can't be done." He added:  “We are just trying to make sure the integrity of the next election isn't compromised."

A Catholic woman who was arrested for silently praying outside an abortion clinic has vowed to continue as police dropped their investigation following her six-month ordeal.

Video showed Christian campaigner Isabel Vaughan-Spruce being confronted by police outside the BPAS Robert Clinic in Kings Norton, Birmingham, in February.

Officers from West Midlands Police told her 'engaging in prayer' was 'the offence' after she insisted she was 'not protesting'.

The latter act could be an offence inside 'buffer zone' regulations introduced last year. They make it illegal to intimidate or harass anyone within 150 metres of an abortion clinic.

And she has now slammed police saying, 'This isn't 1984, but 2023', comparing her experience to the famous George Orwell novel about authoritarianism.

Ms Vaughan-Spruce's arrest came weeks after she was found not guilty by Birmingham Magistrates Court for silently praying outside the same clinic in December last year.