By now, it must be overwhelmingly apparent to every American citizen that what candidate Barack Obama promised on the campaign trail back in 2008 has come to pass. Obama touted a “fundamental transformation of America” if elected president and, once elected, he proceeded to accomplish that one huge goal. The question in 2024 is whether enough people want to make the effort to re-ravel America to the normal, constitutional nation she once was.
It can certainly be argued that the country experienced a slow boiling of the frog during the eight years of Obama’s presidency and that, during that period, the pot neither got to boil too long nor did the frog feel the heat intensely enough to hop out. The Democrats anointed Hillary Clinton to follow Obama to continue the unraveling of America’s constitutional republic, replacing it with their own interpretation of a “democracy.”
But, somehow, out of nowhere, a wrecking ball named Donald J. Trump collided with the original fundamental-transformation plan. That, as we all experienced, was only a temporary setback. Once the 2020 election was successfully rigged and stolen and a hand-puppet-Biden government was installed, Obama and his global handlers continued stirring and reheating the pot to the required boiling point.
As it turned out, this time around, turning up the heat also necessitated putting a lid on the pot because there was a real chance that the frog might finally catch on and attempt to jump out.
So, where are we now?
Image of our unraveled flag by AI.
The pot continues to frantically boil with the frog finally awakening to its fate—but trapped inside the pot. And the only one capable of removing the lid is that same old why-won’t-he-just-go-away-already Trump. Even with the onslaught of tactics straight out of the Jussie Smollett playbook (i.e., if you can’t find a crime, make one up) resulting in New York- and DC-style “fair” trials and verdicts, Trump continues to generate his own heat resulting in the heads of Democrats boiling—and sometimes even exploding.
What is it about Trump and, more importantly, about the movement that he has inspired? One could say that the MAGA movement is the Tea Party supercharged. The latter was pushback against Obama’s early years in office, with a large portion of the country seeing what “fundamental transformation” really means—pitting poor against rich, black against white, women against men, children against parents—and saying these are not the ideals upon which our country was founded nor for which it fought.
Can anyone stand in a cemetery and thoughtfully observe rows upon rows of simple, small, white crosses heading hundreds of graves that mark fallen soldiers and not reflect upon their noble sacrifices? Did these overwhelmingly young men and women not go off to war to fight tyranny overseas to preserve the God-given freedoms we peacefully enjoy here at home? What would any of them say today about their sacrifices? Would they really have gone off to fight to preserve the unraveled, fundamentally- transformed country in which we now find ourselves? A country where:
Wide-open borders allow an overwhelming influx of unvetted foreigners, along with human traffickers, drug pushers, killer gangs, dangerous diseases Males claiming to be females win swimming meets and track races against girls Graphic sex literature is made available to kindergarten and young elementary school children Boys and girls are being told they can medically and surgically change their sex if it “feels right,” even without parental consent Election Day has become Election Season, where one party can keep counting ballots until they have manufactured their desired outcome And of course, rounding out this partial list is the fact that we are a country where the government vilifies and even jails the opposition party.
Whenever Democrats and the Far Left talk about Trump supporters, they always sneer when saying the name “MAGA.” In other words, they never say the words to which the letters refer. Why not? They do not want people to hear that those opposing their leftist views want to “make America great again.”
If you love this country, why would you not want to see it great, now and in the future? And the opposite is also true. If you do not love this country, wouldn’t you naturally want to change it in a whole other direction, thus the need to manufacture a transformation?
When you marry someone, it’s only the most devious who, after saying, “I do,” then say, “Now that I have you, I want you to transform, to be a totally different person. I don’t love you , per se, I love the person I can now turn you into.”
If you don’t love this country, and you don’t want to leave it, you would stay and fundamentally transform it. And to do so, you would have to unravel the very foundations upon which the country was built. Unravel the unity of We the People; unravel the belief of Nature and Nature’s God; unravel limited government. All of these must go because these three principles alone are key to the true freedom made possible within self-government.
This year’s election is our final wake-up call.
Good men and women need to be ever vigilant to make sure that the Democrats, the Deep State, the RINOs, and the globalists do not have even the slightest chance to solidify their scheme to fundamentally transform this great nation by completely unraveling its foundations.
Albin Sadar is the author of Obvious: Seeing the Evil That’s in Plain Sight and Doing Something About It, as well as the children’s book collection Hamster Holmes: Box of Mysteries. Albin was formerly the producer of “The Eric Metaxas Show.”
The Deep State and the Biden regime is at war against the American people
Who would or could have predicted that our own representatives in Congress would vote to allow the government to spy on American citizens without warrants?
Of course, all the Democrats voted to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) .
The Democrat party has fully morphed into a Marxist cabal, ready and willing to impose tyranny on American citizens.
But how do we explain the Republicans who capitulated to the left and voted 'yes' for the two-year extension? Even House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Reps. Matt Gaetz and Anna Paulina Luna flipped.
They will say it was the lesser of the evils, two years instead of five, but that is no excuse. The bill to extend should not have passed and Rep. Andy Biggs’s amendment to require warrants if it did should have passed, but did not.
It seems that small-government, conservative, Americans have very few actual representatives in Congress.
Speaker Johnson has not kept any of the promises he made to obtain his office. He was all in on what was essentially Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s latest big spending bill.
The promise to defeat warrantless surveillance of Americans was likewise broken.
Apparently, Attorney General Merrick Garland made numerous phone calls to wavering reps.
We know that the Obama administration and his worker bees in the DOJ, FBI and CIA abused FISA throughout the Obama and Trump administrations.
The FBI alone used the intel database 278,000 times ! Their illegal misuse of the FISA gave us the entirely fabricated Russia collusion hoax and destroyed numerous lives by implicating them in their scheme to destroy Trump. The Republicans in Congress know this and yet voted to perpetuate it!
The same betrayal is at work regarding the billions sent to Ukraine, Biden’s proxy war against Russia that is being fought to the death of every last Ukrainian fighter.
Why? Because those members of Congress all get rich off war. Defense industry lobbyists pay millions to buy those votes. But the war in Ukraine is lost. It is just a money-laundering operation now, one big grift.
As J.D. Vance wrote the other day, another $60 billion will make no difference. Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is not remotely a champion of democracy; he’s a dictator, a puppet of the oligarchs. Ukraine has long been one of the most corrupt nations on the planet.
Biden sold his soul, if he ever had one, to the moneyed crooks of Ukraine and China to enrich himself. He and his partners in crime are protected by our unscrupulous agents of chaos in the DOJ, CIA and FBI. Those once lofty institutions, or so we thought, have all been co-opted by greed and anti-Americanism. They have let the WEF and the WHO have their way with the American people. That is what the pandemic and the vaccine mandates were all about. Who is paying them all to betray their own country, who, besides George Soros?
Then there is the war against Israel begun on October 7 by Hamas. That barbaric attack against innocents was the last straw for the Israeli people. Israel’s just war against that terrorist organization, elected and still wholly supported by the Palestinian people, must be fought until Hamas is finished. You do not negotiate with terrorists; you destroy them.
But is the Biden regime supporting Israel? With words, but not deeds. Like Obama, Biden hates Israel and its prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and has sabotaged the Jewish state relentlessly behind the scenes. The U.N., too, of course supports Hamas. UNWRA was radicalized by Yassir Arafat decades ago. And thanks to the Marxist indoctrination of our universities, thousands of ill-informed college students think it’s cool to support Hamas and demonize Israel and that they are superior beings for protesting in support of Hamas. It is sickening and pathetic that the Islamists are on their way to defeating the Judeo-Christian values that created Western civilization with the help of our own brainwashed youth.
Western civilization is becoming more uncivilized by the day. The saddest thing is that our own government, the Biden administration, and the deep staters that run it, are doing it all on purpose.
They do not care that Biden has created still rising inflation with his irresponsible spending. They do not care about the $132 trillion exploding debt that may well bring about the death of the dollar if not the nation.
They push their climate change hoax in an attempt to control how we live, work and travel. Worst of all, they have imported 10 million to 20 million migrants who are taking jobs away from blacks and Latinos and they’re doing it with glee.
Meanwhile the illegal migrants continue to pour over the border and are given cell phones, EBT cards, food, housing, medical care, and transportation to wherever they want to go.
In NYC, they are put up in hotels and given $350 a week. Numerous big cities have been utterly wrecked by this influx of third world illegal aliens. These usurpers are being paid, fed and sheltered at taxpayer expense while the homeless problem continues to worsen. American veterans are booted from their living quarters to make room for migrants who being carefully distributed throughout the country to be counted for re-apportionment.
The left leaves nothing to chance. They cheat in every way possible. The lawfare being waged against Trump is the most obvious scheme. None of those charges would have been made had he not decided to run again. They are all contrived to take Trump out of the running. Our deep state is operating like Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela and Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva in Brazil run those countries. They put their opponents in prison.
The rule of law no longer exists in the U.S. What prevails is a two-tiered, thoroughly corrupt system of spoils. “All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed, they must rely on force.” One does not have to think too hard to see what might come next if they are foiled in their fraudulent attempts to destroy Trump.
Image: Ted Eytan, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED
The Deep State and the Biden regime is at war against the American people
Who is paying them all to betray their own country, who, besides George Soros? PATRICIA McCARTHY (MORE BELOW)
For George Soros it was about control to gain influence, access, and special treatment. After the election Biden formed a transition team that staffed itself with people connected to Soros.
But his money also played a part. Soros spent over $70 million on activities that backed Biden's candidacy. Soros bought frequent access to Obama. That access returned under Biden. Biden's Kampf
The list of predicate crimes is extensive and includes bribery, embezzlement, fraud, theft, money laundering, and obstruction of justice.
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The Investor Who Rules the World AND THE DEMOCRAT PARTY RULING CLASS| George Soros Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aovDdiMjN9w
“Obama would declare himself president for life with Soros really running the show, as he did for the entire Obama presidency.”
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/01/democrat-party-billionaires-for-open.html
The Investor Who Rules the World | George Soros Documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aovDdiMjN9w
George Soros Donates $125 Million to Democrats Before November Midterms THE DEMOCRAT PARTY’S OPEN BORDERS FOR CHEAP LABOR
Those are the subliterate, low-skill, non-English-speaking indigents whose own societies are unable or unwilling to usefully educate and employ them. Bring these people here and they not only need a lot of services, they are putty in the hands of leftist demogogues as Hugo Chavez demonstrated - and they are very useful as leftist voters who will support the Soros agenda. DEM PARASITE LAWYERS GATHER AROUND THE SAME DADDY BIGBUCK$ NEO-FASCIST GEORGE SOROS
Records: Son of Billionaire Democrat Donor George Soros Has Visited the White House 14 Times https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/04/08/records-son-of-billionaire-democrat-donor-george-soros-has-visited-white-house-14-times/
World’s largest asset management firm was “front and center” of Fed’s Wall Street bailout Nick Beams
The close collaboration between the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the multi-billion dollar asset management firm Blackrock in devising the March 2020 rescue operation for Wall Street has been revealed in an article published in the New York Times yesterday.
WHERE DID ALL OF JOE BIDEN'S LOOT COME FROM???
Jesse Watters : WOW, this is just OUTRAGEOUS! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgDVORGTg_A
There it is. That's the issue. To begin, you have the corrupt family Biden. They've been scamming us and our system well for almost fifty years. The man is supposedly worth over 250 million dollars. How is this possible on his salary? It's not. So where did his wealth come from? Not from being a brilliant businessman. DAVID PRENTICE
While Alex Soros has given only a fraction of his dad’s campaign donations, he has been spotted hobnobbing with President Joe Biden (GAMER LAWYER), Vice President Kamala Harris (GAMER LAWYER), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) (GAMER LAWYER) , former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), and other Democratic luminaries. Alex (SOROS) has visited the Biden White House nearly 20 times, and had several meetings with National Security Council officials (ALEX SOROS IS ALSO A GUEST OF V.P. HARRIS AND THE V.P’s MANSION).
“Protect and enrich.” This is a perfect encapsulation of the Clinton Foundation (TWO GAMER LAWYERS - OWNED BY GEORGE SOROS ) (WHAT ABOUT THE CHINA BIDEN PENN CENTER?) and the Obama s (TWO GAMER LAWYERS - OWNED BY GEORGE SOROS ) book and television deals. Then there is the Biden family (FOUR GAMER LAWYERS - JOE, HUNTER, JAMES, FRANK - OWNED BY GEORGE SOROS AND LARRY FINK OF BLACKROCK) corruption, followed closely behind by similar abuses of power and office by the (GAMER LYING LAWYER ) Warren and Sanders families, as Peter Schweizer described in his recent book “Profiles in Corruption.” These names just scratch the surface of government corruption (ADD GAMER LAWYER KAMALA HARRIS (OWNED BY GEORGE SOROS) AND HER LAWYER HUSBAND AND THE BANKSTERS’ RENT BOY, (GAMER LAWYER ) CHUCK SCHUMER , OWNED BY LARRY FINK OF BLACKROCK WHO OWNS A BIG PIECE OF THE ‘BIG GUY’ JOE, AND GEORGE SOROS’ RENT BOY ( GAMER LAW Y ER ) TONY BLINKEN , AS WELL AS CON MAN (GAMER LAWYER) ADAM SHIFF AND HIS CORRUPTNESS (GAMER LAWYER) BOB MENENDEZ STILL EVADING PRISON, AND NOT BE VERY LEAST, (GAMER LAWYER) ERIC SWALWELL , THE CHINESE SPY AND HO CHASING BRIBES SUCKER, AND OF COURSE, PREDATOR LAWYER AND COVID LIAR (GAMER LAWYER) ANDREW CUOMO.
BRIAN C JOONDEPH
HOW CAN WE SEPARATE THE DEMOCRAT PARTY FROM THEIR PAYMASTERS IN RED CHINA???
THE OLD WHORE FEINSTEIN OF SAN FRANCISCO, EMPLOYED A CHINESE SPY FOR YEARS AS SHE CUT DEALS FOR RED CHINA IN THE U.S. SENATE THAT PAID HER PARASITE HUSBAND WADS OF MONEY!
When Biden took office, one of his first acts was the elimination of our border security. Like a power-hungry dictator, Biden simply decided to ignore our immigration laws. His catastrophic border policy resulted in untold millions of unidentified foreign citizens from around the world pouring into our country. Its impact is now being felt in cities across the country. The worst is yet to come. PETER LEMISKA
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JUST NOW: Biden is TOTALLY COMPROMISED by Communist China!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caNTUxjth9Y
Biden’s America: Nearly 25,000 Chinese Nationals at U.S. Borders in 6 Months, 37,000% Increase in 3 Years Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images Under President Joe Biden, the number of Chinese nationals crossing the nation’s borders has increased by more than 37,000 percent in just three years, new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data reveals.
In the last six months, which represents the first half of Fiscal Year 2024, nearly 25,000 Chinese nationals crossed United States borders and were encountered by Border Patrol agents.
Screenshot via CBP.gov
During the same period in Fiscal Year 2021, just 65 Chinese nationals were encountered by Border Patrol while crossing U.S. borders. By the first half of Fiscal Year 2022, Chinese crossings had increased to 432 in the same period.
For the full 2023 fiscal year, Biden set a record where 24,125 had crossed U.S. borders and were encountered by Border Patrol.
In the first half of this fiscal year, though, Biden has already surpassed that record and could oversee nearly 50,000 Chinese nationals crossing the nation’s borders by September.
RELATED — John Rourke: I’ve Found Chinese, Russian IDs at Biden’s “Wide Open” Southern Border
Jack Knudsen / Breitbart News
In his opening statements during a budget hearing on Tuesday, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-TN) raised the issue of a record number of Chinese nationals crossing U.S. borders on DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s watch.
“Beijing has shown that if we give an inch, they will take a mile, and Mr. Secretary, you have given them all 1,951 miles of our southwest border,” Green told Mayorkas.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here .
Report: Chinese Military Companies Spent $24 Million Lobbying U.S. Government Kevin Frayer/Getty Images 5:50
The Daily Caller on Thursday published a report that found Chinese military companies have spent over $24 million on lobbying the U.S. government since 2020.
The list of names includes companies the U.S. government has identified as major security threats , including telecom titan Huawei and Megvii, a facial recognition firm that helped Huawei design a system that could spot members of China’s oppressed Uyghur minority in a crowd.
“Chinese military corporations cast a wide net across the American government, lobbying the House, Senate and various parts of the executive branch, including the office of the president, often setting their sights on proposed policies that would impact their U.S. operations,” the report from the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) found.
The definition of a “Chinese military company” was established by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), which maintains a list of entities that are either owned by various arms of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China, or are involved in “ military-civil fusions .”
Huawei was the biggest spender on Washington lobbyists, with over $10.8 million in outlays since 2020. This is unsurprising not only because of Huawei’s vast size , with nearly $100 billion in annual revenue, but because Huawei has been battling against U.S. legislation that would sharply limit the sale of its products.
As DCNF noted, Huawei won quite a few of those battles after paying big money for the services of high-powered, heavily-connected lobbying firms like the Podesta Group. Huawei has a subsidiary called Futurewei that also reportedly spent millions on lobbyists, and also saw the defeat of legislation that would have harmed its interests.
File/The Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China (Comac) corporate flags and the Chinese national flag fly outside the headquarters in Shanghai, Monday, Jan. 18, 2021. The Trump administrations addition of Comac to a Defense Department list of companies with Chinese military ties comes after a breakthrough in the state-backed jet manufacturers effort to win customers when an Indonesian airline agreed to buy its planes. (Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty)
Another troubling name on the list is BGI, a genomics company suspected of using prenatal test kits to “collect genetic and genomic data from around the globe,” as the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center put it. BGI spent far less than Huawei or its subsidiary on lobbying, but a bill that would have outlawed it from operating in the United States due to its involvement in bioweapon programs has been stalled in Congress.
A few of the Chinese companies on DCNF’s list are linked to the Uyghur genocide, either for helping Beijing keep the Uyghurs under constant surveillance or enslaving them.
DCNF noted that some big D.C. lobbying firms canceled their contracts with Chinese companies in February amid rumors of a congressional blacklist against lobbyists who worked for Chinese military companies.
“It’s definitely a conversation among members on the China committee. These companies represent our adversary and there is obviously an orchestrated effort on their part to buy us off with lobbying firms to gain influence,” a Republican committee member told Politico in February.
“China’s lobbying roster reads like a who’s who of Washington insiders, from retired Pentagon brass to former high-ranking congressional aides. One moment they’re advocating for a Fortune 100 company or U.S. defense contractor, the next they’re billing hours for DJI, Huawei, or another Chinese firm linked to China’s military or Chinese human rights atrocities,” lamented Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) senior fellow Craig Singleton.
Some Republican lawmakers had reportedly started to boycott lobbyists who worked for Chinese military companies on their own initiative, and some lobbyists had been informally put on notice that they could find themselves frozen out of Capitol Hill if they did not drop their Chinese clients. The boycott threat never went public, but it evidently had an effect – which is remarkable considering how powerful the top lobbying firms are.
Voice of America News (VOA) reported last month that the informal boycott and threats of legislative action convinced lobbying firms to “drop clients from China.”
File/Two men set up a weapon model next to a mannequin at a display of Chinese manufacturer Tianhe Defence during the 9th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai on November 13, 2012. (PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP via Getty Images)
“There are just certain entities we won’t meet with because we understand that while they may be doing it for commercial reasons, the interests that they’re representing are linked to Chinese goals, military goals and aspirations,” explained Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL).
One of the legislative remedies under discussion was requiring lobbyists to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) if they worked for entities on DoD’s list of Chinese military companies, or perhaps even for any Chinese firm, since all of them are subject to control by the PLA or Chinese Communist Party.
“The Chinese are unique in that there is no true solely private sector; they are forced to share information with the PLA and with their intelligence agencies. So, I would say anytime we’re dealing with a Chinese-owned enterprise, it’s a cause for concern,” mused Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), co-sponsor of a transparency bill.
Registering as foreign agents would be a bad public relations move for most lobbyists, and even that was not the sternest proposal on the table. According to VOA, some lawmakers are “considering a measure prohibiting lobbyists who represent companies on the list from meeting with members of Congress, even to discuss matters on behalf of their American clients.”
FDD’s Singleton told VOA in March that Chinese corporate lobbying exploded after the U.S. government began imposing restrictions on Huawei, at which point “Chinese firms switched gears and quickly scaled up.”
“The goal of these lobbying operations is simple: disrupting any actions that could negatively impact their clients’ market share, deflecting regulatory scrutiny and defending against sanctions,” Singleton said.
San Francisco's mayor, London Breed, comes calling on China
With bums going to the bathroom people's doorways, thieves smashing their car windows before robbing them, and retail establishments growing ever sparser owing to nobody prosecuting thieves, far-left San Francisco has done a bang-up job in chasing out businesses and taxpayers.
Which presents a crisis to them, as these falling sale-tax receipts and this retail vacancy picture have cut sharply into city revenue.
But rather than change their radical policies to make their city more liveable and bring in the taxpayer cash, as has been done in the past, San Francisco's mayor, London Breed, has found an easy way out: By selling out to China.
According to Breitbart News :
Much like when California’s far-left Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) made a politically useful visit to China in October, Chinese state media on Sunday fawned over visiting San Francisco Mayor London Breed (D).
“While Washington is taking a politically motivated hawkish stance on China to reiterate its global hegemony, Breed’s visit may set a good example of how sincere and pragmatic cooperation can take place in China-U.S. relations,” gushed China’s state-run Global Times.
Breed’s first stop was in Hong Kong, where China shocked the world by brutally suppressing the massive 2019 pro-democracy protests and imposing an authoritarian “national security law” that effectively criminalizes all dissent from the Communist Party.
Who needs to make a city liveable when you've got incoming Chinese cash to bail you out?
You can carry on the same old bad policies with the big moneybags with global ambitions from the next continent backfilling the deficit.
We have already seen at least some of this dynamic building, as when Breed ordered her city cleaned up, Potemkin Village-style, for the visit of China's leader, Xin Jinping, restoring it to its customary chaos after the man left. She took lots of flak for that, and rather then clean the city up 24/365 as seemed logical, she just ignored the criticism and went back to business as usual.
Why she isn't courting normal investors, foreign and domestic, but going for this guys, is kind of a red flag.
It's roughly the same dynamic seen in Venezuela when Hugo Chavez turned the country into a socialist hellhole. As locals sought to bail out, nobody was there to buy their properties because Chavez clearly didn't respect private property or rule of law. There was one exception, though -- FARC Marxist narcoterrorists from the Colombian side of the Venezuelan border. FARC'S terrorists wanted a good spot to launder their cash from the cocaine trade and a safe haven from Colombia's military. They didn't care if Venezuela had no rule of law, because they didn't need rule of law. What they had were guns and political muscle, which served as their working substitute for rule of law, ensuring that their property rights on the property they bought at firesale prices would never go disturbed. I observed this myself in Yaracuy state when I visited in 2005. People were desperate to get out. But the only eager buyers at the time were FARC, which put these people seeking to flee on the horns of a dilemma.
Which brings us back to San Francisco and its failure to restore rule of law there, in its abundant bum and criminal populations. Who do you sell to when you want to flee, but nobody wants to buy your property in a high-tax, high-crime, high-bum-exposure milieu?
The red Chinese of course, who would be delighted to set up a political power base in San Francisco through major property acquisitions, taking advantage of the progressive city's miserable real estate market and its leaders' refusal to improve the city's liveability. What do the Chinese need those things for when strategic advantage is the aim and they see even their own people as dispensible? Anything to have a political power base in a major American city, calling the shots there, and sending its people from its West Coast base into Washington.
Already they have a Chinese citizen on the board that counts San Francisco's election results, so the power base seems to primed to build. They have bought land and conducted questionable lab experiments in San Francisco's outskirts. The American public views them with a jaded eye as America's top adversary in recent polling.
Sound like the Chicoms are going to stop there? A power base, beginning on the socialism-weakened West Coast is the name of the game. The police stations, bought-off politicians, spy balloons, other spying, Fang-Fang honeytraps, legislative lobbying, propaganda education centers, state harassment of Chinese dissidents, the flow of fentanyl, and more, is bound to follow. So much for the sanctuary city thing for the actual dissidents.
And now in waltzes London Breed for her dog and pony show, courtesy of the ChiComs, just like the assorted third world dictators who sell their countries out to Chinese interests from the One Belt, One Road initiative. The Chinese have seen her kind before.
To the dictators' dismay, they often find that Chinese money comes with strings, something the gullible Breed is unlikely to notice, or care much about if she did.
It's always a good idea to follow the money in these junkets, particularly this one, since China is a major human rights violator, an oppressor of freedom-loving Hong Kong, an abuser of the peoples of Tibet and Xinjiang, a major fentanyl shipper, as well as a growing adversary to the U.S. in the Pacific.
In this case, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the trip was financed by civic group called the San Francisco Special Events Committee , a private nonprofit run by a man named Tom Horn , focused on better-the-city civic projects. So far, so good. Horn began as the heir to an oil fortune, later became a supporter of gay-agenda causes , and then at the age of 40, added 'Francophile,' to his activities, and becoming well honored by the French government, and serving as honorary consul to Monaco. One of his fellow board members is wealthy socialite Charlotte Maillard Schultz, who is the widow of the late Secretary of State George Schultz from a late marriage, who is credited with swinging George rather leftward.
While they don't seem to have obvious interests in China, and I found no smoking guns on anything improper as I searched their history, it's interesting that they suddenly got interested in China for this trip. The group's Form 990 financial statement from 2021, the last year of availability, shows that their finances swing wildly from year to year, are 97% privately financed, yet they are not required to say who donated to them to send the mayor on her way. Could it be Chinese money they are fronting for as they arranged this trip? No one from the general public, at least, knows, and it would be good to know that pretty relevant fact as we watch this dog-and-pony show go on.
As for Breed, she's going the full junket on this trip, and there is little doubt she's traveling in style.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports :
Breed’s itinerary for her upcoming trip features meetings with Chinese-based businesses, including an electronics company, CVTE, and the air carriers Air China, Hainan Airlines and Shenzhen Airlines. Breed’s office framed those gatherings as a continuation of her administration’s endeavors to bring more international businesses and tourists to San Francisco as downtown grapples with a record-high office vacancy rate, an exodus of major retailers and sluggish foot traffic.
Chinese tourism has recently shown signs of rebounding: China last year regained its pre-pandemic status as the leading country for visitor spending in San Francisco and San Mateo counties, according to SF Travel, the city’s tourism bureau.
Twenty years ago, this might have sounded good, but today it sounds just a little different, what with China's obvious bid to grab power all over the world and the feckless messes left in blue cities now there for the Chinese to scarf up.
It sounds like a way out for Breed, but it's more like a roach motel she's entering her city into, easy to get in and very difficult to get out of when the Chinese turn the screws.
As for the rest of us, all we can see is China getting an ever stronger and politically more powerful foothold into the U.S. from this, brought on by blue-city failure and mercenary greed. Other blue cities are likely to follow.
Advantage: China.
Image: Screen shot from NBC Bay Area News YouTube video
THE DEMOCRAT PARTY AND GEORGE SOROS' DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA
HOW THE RICH RULING CLASS HAVE FUKED OVER AMERICA COMING AND GOING!
"Final Warning: America's Last Chance Before Collapse" | Victor Davis Hanson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Aq2xd6ccgE
TikTok’s Campaign of Using Influencers to Target Lawmakers Could Backfire ‘Our intention is for TikTok to continue to operate, but not under the control of the Chinese Communist Party,’ said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi.
The TikTok logo is displayed on signage outside the TikTok social media app company offices in Culver City, Calif., on March 16, 2023. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images) 4/15/2024
Updated: 4/16/2024
WASHINGTON—Key congress members and their aides say they’ve been besieged by phone calls triggered by a campaign sent out by Chinese social media giant TikTok.
Some of their constituents were delivered full-screen notifications on TikTok.
“Tell your Senator how important TikTok is to you. Ask them to vote no on the TikTok ban,” the notification said.
“Now, if the Senate votes, the future of creativity and communities you love on TikTok could be shut down.”
The notification then urged users to enter their zip code to locate their senator’s phone number.
One particular
message was left for Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), which he posted on social media.
“Okay, listen, if you ban TikTok, I will find you and shoot you,“ one female caller says as others giggle in the background. ”That’s people’s job, and that’s my only entertainment. And people make money off there, too, you know. I’m trying to get rich like that. Anyways, I’ll shoot you and find you and cut you into pieces. Bye!”
The campaign began targeting members of the House ahead of a vote by the House Energy and Commerce Committee to move the bill to the House floor without giving the normally required week’s notice. After the legislation passed the House on March 13 in a 352–65 vote, senators began receiving the same calls.
It is too early to say whether TikTok’s mobilization campaign will bear fruit. It could just as easily scare lawmakers into action against the company rather than for it.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) departs from the U.S. Capitol during a vote on legislation related to TikTok on March 13, 2024. The House voted to ban TikTok in the United States due to concerns over personal privacy and national security unless the Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance sells the popular video app within the next six months. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) is one of many in the Senate who say that TikTok’s lobbying campaign is all the more reason to swiftly sever ties between the company and China.
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is headquartered in Beijing, and both companies have a dubious history of suppressing content the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) finds displeasing.
“If TikTok wants to stay in the U.S. marketplace, they need to separate from the CCP’s control—plain and simple,” Ms. Blackburn told The Epoch Times.
“The Senate should take this issue up swiftly to protect our national security interests, and we should declassify the information given to Congress so that the American public can understand the exact threat we’re facing.”
TikTok is among the world’s most popular social media platforms, with more than 150 million users in the United States, many of whom get their news primarily from the platform.
That popularity, combined with the possibility that the platform could receive editorial direction from the CCP, creates an imminent threat, according to Ms. Blackburn and others in Congress.
It is unclear how much indirect control the CCP retains over ByteDance and TikTok. However, the regime purchased a “golden share” in ByteDance’s Chinese subsidiary in 2019, which could allow it to influence how the company’s board votes on key decisions. A golden share is usually a small amount of shares, but the stake gives the owner special voting powers, including veto power.
There are also growing indicators that some influencers on the platform are coordinating with the regime, according to Chihhao Yu, co-director of the Taiwan Information Environment Research Center.
Pro-CCP propaganda is now beginning to appear on TikTok in some instances before being published on Douyin, the version of the app available in China.
“Some of these TikTok videos are published before their Douyin counterparts by [Chinese] state media,” Mr. Yu said during an April 8 talk in Washington.
“So that’s an even stronger signal, indicating that these influencers on TikTok are having at least some kind of coordination with [Chinese] actors.”
Still, Mr. Yu said that the proliferation of misinformation and foreign influence operations online isn’t unique to TikTok. Instead, he said, it’s one problem among several.
“There are two more things: the top one is personal data security, and No. 2 is the addictiveness of the platform,” Mr. Yu said.
A man walks past a restaurant with a TikTok logo displayed in the window in Beijing on Sept. 14, 2020. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images) Data Security Ms. Blackburn likewise believes that the foremost threat posed by TikTok is that ByteDance is required by law in China to provide any data it has to the CCP upon request, including whatever sensitive personal information it may have collected on Americans through TikTok.
“TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is tied to the Chinese Communist Party by strict laws in Beijing that force companies to hand over users’ personal data,” Ms. Blackburn said.
Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Brendan Carr warned that TikTok is being used to collect troves of information on millions of American users, including “search and browsing history, keystroke patterns, biometrics, and location information.”
“At the end of the day, any entity that is inside of China, particularly if they’re a CCP member, is compelled by a national security law in China to do the bidding of the CCP surveillance apparatus and to keep it secret,” Mr. Carr
said during a recent interview with EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.”
Indeed, the most recent version of the TikTok legislation was crafted in large part due to the threat posed by China’s security laws.
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), who chairs the influential House Select Committee on Strategic Competition with the CCP, said that’s why the bill includes language to force the divestiture of any social media company believed to be under the control of U.S. foes.
“This bill is squarely focused on preventing foreign adversaries—China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran—from controlling social media apps in the U.S.,” Mr. Gallagher told The Epoch Times.
“Under ByteDance’s ownership structure, the Chinese government not only has the ability to surveil Americans’ user data but also manipulate TikTok’s algorithm and conduct influence operations on Americans’ ‘For You’ pages,” he said.
“We simply cannot continue to allow an app controlled by our nation’s foremost adversary to take over the American media landscape.”
(Top) Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) (L) and Rep. Mike Gallager (R-Wis.) talk with reporters after the House voted to ban TikTok if it remains under Chinese ownership, at the U.S. Capitol on March 13, 2024. (Bottom) A person arrives at the offices of TikTok in Culver City, Calif., on March 13, 2024. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, Mike Blake/Reuters/File Photo) Opposition to TikTok Ban Grows TikTok has painted the bill as a targeted ban on its operations and an assault on freedom of speech.
“This bill is an outright ban of TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to disguise it,” a TikTok spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email. “This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs.”
Opposition to the effort against TikTok is also growing in Congress, with a small but bipartisan minority in both chambers expressing numerous concerns about the legislation.
Speaking during the House vote on the legislation, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) suggested that the bill could become a “Trojan horse” for perpetual overreach from the executive branch as it would empower the president to force the sale of social media companies deemed even indirectly influenced by foreign powers.
“I know the sponsors of this bill are sincere in their concerns and in their effort to protect Americans,” Mr. Massie said.
“[But] We don’t need to be protected by the government from information.”
There is also the question of whether the U.S. intelligence community has independently verified any of the claims that the CCP has directed the promotion or suppression of content on TikTok through ByteDance.
To date, the only claims that the intelligence community has openly made regarding CCP involvement with ByteDance or TikTok have been confined to statements previously made in
U.S. media reports that have relied on anonymous sources.
For this reason, Ms. Blackburn and many others in Congress have requested that their classified briefings on the subject be made public.
Some, however, have suggested that declassification wouldn’t unveil a unique threat.
Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) said prior to the House vote that “not a single thing” Congress has heard in its classified security briefings is unique to TikTok, but pervades all social media.
Mr. Massie also highlighted numerous contentions about the bill’s premise and legality, including the fact that Bytedance is not actually owned by the CCP or even majority-owned by Chinese investors, that the bill has no sunset clause, and that the bill would require all appeals to be handled through the District of Columbia Court of Appeals rather than the states.
There is also the issue of whether the bill is lawful, given its reliance on presidential authority, an issue that several lawmakers, including Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), have spoken about.
That’s because the Cold War-era Berman Amendments revoked the Executive Office’s authority to ban or regulate the free flow of any “informational materials” to American citizens, including foreign propaganda.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) speaks at a news conference on TikTok in Washington on March 12, 2024. House Democrats and TikTok creators held the news conference to express their concern over legislation that would force the owners of the popular Chinese social media app to sell the platform or face a ban in the United States. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) “One of the key differences between us and those adversaries is the fact that they shut down newspapers, broadcast stations, and social media platforms. We do not,” Mr. Himes said.
“We trust our citizens to be worthy of their democracy. We do not trust our government to decide what information they may or may not see.”
What’s Next? For now, the bill’s future remains uncertain, though it’s clear it won’t sail through the Senate with the speed that it did the House.
During his last days in office, Mr. Gallagher is playing the role of an unofficial whip, urging the Senate to take up the legislation as quickly as possible for fear that the CCP could use TikTok to promote propaganda ahead of the U.S. election cycle.
“This bill passed in overwhelming fashion with 352 votes in the House of Representatives, which I have not seen on something this important in my eight years in Congress,” Mr. Gallagher said.
“This level of support makes it impossible for the Senate to ignore. The White House has signaled that they will sign the bill if and when it passes the Senate, and I know Leader Schumer is very concerned about the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party,” he said.
Reflecting on Taiwan’s recent experience with CCP election interference, Mr. Yu acknowledged the threat posed by the regime’s influence on social media.
Noting his three major concerns—CCP influence, data security, and addictiveness—he concluded that the freedom to speak and share ideas should not be curbed. Instead, he said, the problem of CCP misinformation would be solved by encouraging the exchange of debate and ideas rather than eliminating it.
“I think we need to address all [the] three big problems of TikTok and maybe, by extension, all social media platforms and what all these tech tools are doing to our democratic processes,” Mr. Yu said.
“Freedom of speech is why we do this—because we want a healthy democracy. It’s not because we want to get rid of something when we don’t want something in our country. We want a healthy functional debate of our country’s direction.”
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