Elon Musk Moves Into President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Resort

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, a prominent billionaire backer of Republicans in recent years, has moved in to President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. According to a report by the New York Times, Musk lives in a $2,000 a night cottage at the resort, giving him unprecedented access to Trump. Mar-a-Lago serves as President Trump’s winter home, with Trump typically spending summers at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey and the White House. Musk’s proximity to Trump allows him to wield particular influence over the ongoing Trump transition, with several Musk allies appointed to key administration positions. Among the

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Elon Musk Moves Into President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Resort

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Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, a prominent billionaire backer of Republicans in recent years, has moved in to President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. According to a report by the New York Times, Musk lives in a $2,000 a night cottage at the resort, giving him unprecedented access to Trump. Mar-a-Lago serves as President Trump’s

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Trump Makes Key Law Enforcement Administration Appointments

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President Donald Trump has announced the appointment of Kash Patel as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director and Chad Chronister as Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Patel served on the National Security Council during the last administration, playing a key role in negotiations with Syria over American hostages in 2020. He is

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Trudeau Visits Mar-a-Lago For Trump Trade Talks

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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in West Palm Beach, Florida, in a last-ditch attempt to stop Trump’s threatened 25% tariffs against Canada. Trudeau was photographed having dinner with Trump at the club, and was reportedly accompanied by the Public Safety Minister of Canada, Dominic LeBlanc.

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Freedom Caucus Takes Over Wyoming State House

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In the safe Republican state of Wyoming, the right-wing, national-conservative Freedom Caucus has taken over the state House of Representatives, seizing the four key positions in House leadership following the November elections, according to a report by Wyofile. Freedom Caucus members took the positions of Speaker, Majority Leader, Majority Whip and Speaker pro tempore. 

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Profit And Pleasure: The Tragedy of Human Trafficking And The Power of Pornography

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It was a small solemn room in which many were seated with serious expressions. Around me sat clergy of many faiths, from Nuns to Coptics to Evangelicals. All gathered to hear a panel at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference in DC centered around on a little recognized epidemic.

The daunting discussion was on the Human Sex Trafficking of young women, girls and boys across the United States and the world, paramount to a new sexual slave trade ensnaring millions. The stories shared brought shock or sadness to some and seething anger to others. A Coptic Orthodox Priest with a long white beard named Father Mena, whom I later befriended, shook his head emotionally at the thought of this shadow society lurking doing evil in the underbelly of our own civil society.

At the closing of the panel, I shook hands and spoke with some of the speakers such as Pat Trueman, the president of The National Center on Sexual Exploitation and David Labahn, CEO of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys. I promised them that I would cover a few of these calloused cases, these stories of suffering and woe. Hopefully, this will shine a light on the gravity of the situation and the need to advocate for greater action against human trafficking and the powerful fuel that is pornography. 

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Toxic Masculinity, 1920s-Style

A recent headline at Politico begins, “Don’t Blame Mental Illness for Mass Shootings; Blame Men.” To be fair to the author, Laura

Where Are All the Right-Wing Intellectuals in Academia?

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You might have had the privilege of taking a course on Friedrich Nietzsche or Martin Heidegger in the Philosophy Department here at Cal – or perhaps you had the good luck of studying H. P. Lovecraft or D. H. Lawrence in an English course. If you were lucky, you might have heard tell of Arthur Schopenhauer or Oswald Spengler’s influence on these writers and philosophers. Undoubtedly their politics came up in passing – and certainly you heard them dismissed as racist, nativist, sexist, and every other slur under the sun. But did your professor or graduate student instructor have you read these thinkers’ political works or commentary? Did they have you thoroughly engage with these ideas, however repulsive they might be to your person? In answering these questions, I would venture a No, or at most, an Unlikely.

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Annihilation Movie Review: Has the Left Officially Ruined Science Fiction?

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Believe me: I’d love to write a movie review of director Alex Garland’s brand-new sci-fi flick Annihilation where I could address its retro-futuristic score, kaleidoscopic graphics, and thought-provoking ideas – but instead of judging the film based on its artistic merits, I’m forced to take a skeptical look at its politics.

Alex Garland had shown himself to be something of an ‘indie’ director with his debut film Ex Machina (2015), which was well-received by critics for its exploration of the subject of artificial intelligence. So I wasn’t expecting a radical departure from his independent cast of thought and an excessive amount of kowtowing to Leftist norms of representation in his next work. Indeed, Annihilation is not an explicitly political film: it’s genuinely engaged in pursuing themes of identity, self-destruction, unreliability, and the difference (if any) between annihilation and creation. In fact, it’s so committed to these ideas that its five core actresses appear rather lifeless and listless even when pursued by mutant animals of every possible configuration. This decidedly uninspired, un-terrified acting is one of the chief criticisms I could levy against Garland’s second directorial endeavor – but again, I’m not addressing artistic merit in this movie review.

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Wakanda Forever!

Marvel’s Black Panther is smashing box office records left and right, due in no small part to the mainstream media’s

Making of a Tragedy: The Cowards of Broward County

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In the wake of all mass shootings, the predictable exhortation from the conservative corner of our national discourse is to wait before injecting politics into the discussion. It’s out of respect for the dead, it’s an instinct to not use these tragic victims as political footballs. This isn’t a competition between dueling ideologies. The Left has no such qualms about instantly leaping to their emotionally charged conclusions and maybe they have a point. Maybe it’s more disrespectful to the victims to not politicize their untimely deaths. Maybe the most respectful thing we could do is to leap directly into action.

Regardless of which side is correct, I decided to take a few days to wait before commenting on our most recent national tragedy. There’s no set length of time to wait, it’s a decent enough sentiment but it’s ambiguous and arbitrary. One way or the other, I waited, and now I’ve got some things to say.

David Hogg may or may not be a crisis actor. He is most certainly a wannabe crisis actor which would be despicable enough, but he also seems to completely lack any compunction about using the murder of his peers to advance his personal ambitions and political agenda. He’s an opportunistic scumbag and a weakling who revels in his fifteen minutes of fame. He doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously, he should go eat a Tide pod and shut up.

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Slam the brakes on proposed gas-tax hike

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Thanks to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Republicans are on a roll. So, why is President Donald Trump praising a gas-tax hike to finance his infrastructure plan?

Despite House Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi’s complaints that the GOP tax-rate reductions are “Armageddon, “crumbs,” and — as of Tuesday — “unpatriotic,” Americans are growing fond of tax reform. Tax-relief promises helped boost GDP growth from 2016’s 1.5 percent (under Obama) to 2017’s 2.3 percent (under Trump). Unemployment is just 4.1 percent. And some 3.8 million Americans at 377 companies are enjoying bonuses, higher wages, lower power bills, and other post-tax-cut benefits.

Survey Monkey has watched the tax cut’s popularity climb from 37 percent of adults in December to 46 percent in January to 51 percent on February 11. Eight percent of Democrats backed this measure in December. Today, 19 percent do.

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Stop Blaming Mexican Violence on American Guns

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2017 may have been the worst year for homicide in Mexico since the government began keeping track in the 1990s. 

It’s a safe bet that the homicide rate isn’t coming anywhere near what it was in the years surrounding the revolution. But it may be the worst rate in several decades. 

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Assault Weapons: America’s Final Barrier to Tyranny

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In what has become a grim routine, some sickeningly look to capitalize on the mass outpouring of anger and grief following mass shootings to push a political agenda – namely, the implementation of so-called “common-sense” gun control.

Debates on the issue, much like the recent town-hall discussion hosted by CNN, regularly devolve into kangaroo courts where those who oppose “common-sense” reforms are interrogated, bullied, and demonized.

“If you’re not with us, you’re with the child murderers,” is their slogan of choice.

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Security Works at Disney — But Can’t Work at a Public School?

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An odd thing has happened. Advocates for gun control have actually begun arguing against practical measures addressing school security. Rather than take strategies that can be implemented virtually immediately, and which address the dangers in a specific place in a common-sense way, gun control advocates would rather focus on a political victory at some point in the future and continue to leave schools without proper security measures. 

The general argument is that any effort at meaningful security is unacceptable because it turns schools into “fortresses.” Numerous examples of this line of reasoning can be found on Twitter. They are often remarkably similar in message which is “forget school security, just ban guns!” Ah yes, the “ban guns” solution. It certainly worked in Latin America. And, of course, as soon as they’re banned, everyone will immediately turn theirs in to the authorities and no one will have them anymore. Security of any sort will immediately and forever be rendered unnecessary. At least, this is how the thinking goes. 

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A Strategic Realignment of Conservative Priorities

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We don’t know for sure if Charles Darwin actually said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change,” but whether he said it or not, it’s an insightful observation that transcends the context of natural selection. It is supremely relevant in this day and age of a Republican Party and conservative movement both in a state of flux after Donald Trump’s ascension to the presidency.

The RINOs in congress and various think tanks and the Never Trumpers are enormously outnumbered by the ranks of disgruntled voters and their era of arrogance is coming to an end. Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard has made a career out of being wrong about… well, everything. George Will, once a giant of conservative thought, has grown shrill and should probably stick to opining about baseball in his golden years. The National Review, despite its cachet, declared war on the candidacy of President Trump, lost their gambit. Two-faced Republicans in congress such as Jeff Flake, are retiring en masse as they watch their party transform into something new and out of their control.

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Key Gubernatorial Races in the 2018 Midterm Election

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After successfully holding the gubernatorial seat in Virginia, as well as flipping the state of New Jersey following the departure of unpopular Republican Chris Christie, Democrats hope to seize more gubernatorial seats in 2018 – a critical objective as many Governors elected this year will play a major role in the process of re-drawing congressional lines following the upcoming Census.

Republicans currently hold 33 gubernatorial seats, its highest total since World War II, while Democrats hold 16. The lone remaining seat, in Alaska, is held by an independent.

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Shootings: Why Don’t Schools Have Better Security?

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Whenever there is a mass shooting in the media, commentators rush to figure out on what to blame the latest violence. Predictably, those who want gun control blame gun control. Others blame mental illness — and perhaps a lack of government programs related to it. Some others blame racism or ideology, as was the case with the Aurora theater shooting when one ABC talking head concluded the shooter must a “Tea Party” member within hours of the shooting. And then there’s the Republican politician who blamed the same shooting on “the ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs.”

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GOP spending bonanza screams for budget reforms

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There’s plenty to hate about last week’s GOP surrender on the federal budget. According to Citizens Against Government Waste, this nearly $300 billion extravaganza is “a 14 percent annual spending increase over current levels.” This exceeds 2017’s 2.1 percent inflation rate nearly seven-fold.

Even worse, this spend-o-rama avoids structural reforms to limit, or even reverse, the damage from this midnight raid on the Treasury. Among the items that Congress should have included:

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The Leftist War on Meat

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Plant-based diets, especially vegan diets, seem to be all the rage these days.

Based on the practice of eschewing animal products, veganism has attracted a broad coalition of interest groups — ranging from animal rights to environmental activists — who believe that veganism is the most ethical and sustainable way of promoting human health and animal welfare.

At first, these appear to be reasonable premises for an alternative lifestyle that challenges the dietary status quo.

But when placed under the microscope, the modern vegan movement has shown signs of increased politicization and a tendency to mesh with socialist causes. 

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Why the media just can’t handle Jordan Peterson

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Watching the mainstream press try to interview University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson, one thing becomes exceedingly clear: they literally can’t even.

While the above expression makes my inner grammar Nazi cry, it is possibly the best description of the predictable sequence of befuddled expressions, desperate strawmen, and whiffed shots fired at Peterson from a growing list of increasingly cautious media personalities.

Cathy Newman’s interrogation of the professor has garnered over five million views, and if one were to judge its contents solely on the consequent collection of memes, pundit reactions, and response/splice videos, one would conclude that Dr. Peterson spent 30 minutes deriding and verbally dominating his interviewer, banging his fists on the table and shouting like right-wing cherry bomb Alex Jones – but that’s not Dr. Peterson’s style.

Instead, the quiet Canadian spent a half-hour discussing free speech, the gender pay gap, and Pepe the frog in such a calm and reasonable manner that even his use of the occasional swear word sounded as though someone swapped “golly gee” out of his script at the last moment. Keep Reading

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DOJ and FBI subjected Trump to Watergate without the break-in

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Two recently declassified documents offer chilling details on how deeply Department of Justice and FBI leaders intervened in the 2016 election, to advance Hillary Clinton and stymie Donald J. Trump. GOP senators Charles Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina penned a,January 4 criminal referral against former British spy Christopher Steele. A January 18 memo by House Intelligence Committee Republicans outlines DOJ and FBI abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).

These records confirm actions by Trump haters atop DOJ and FBI to assure Hillary’s election and foil Trump’s nascent government by deceiving federal judges (in another branch of government) and manipulating America’s intelligence institutions. Why break into the opposition party’s headquarters to plant listening devices — as befell the Democratic National Committee’s offices in the Watergate building in June 1972 — when Hillary essentially purchased a search warrant to eavesdrop on her rival’s campaign?

“In short,” Grassley and Graham explain, “it appears the FBI relied on admittedly uncorroborated information, funded by and obtained for Secretary Clinton’s presidential campaign, in order to conduct surveillance of an associate of the opposing presidential candidate.”

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Secession Movements in Mexico Challenge Federal Power

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Earlier this month, The New York Times reported on a remarkable development in Mexico. In an article titled “Losing Faith in the State, Some Mexican Towns Quietly Break Away” we discover that some municipalities in Mexico are turning to de facto secession in order to put a stop to the rampant drug-cartel violence that has become so problematic:

“Tancítaro represents a quiet but telling trend in Mexico, where a handful of towns and cities are effectively seceding, partly or in whole. These are acts of desperation, revealing the degree to which Mexico’s police and politicians are seen as part of the threat.

Visit three such enclaves — Tancítaro; Monterrey, a rich commercial city; and Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, just outside the capital — and you will find a pattern. Each is a haven of relative safety amid violence, suggesting that their diagnosis of the problem was correct.”

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Toxic Masculinity, 1920s-Style

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A recent headline at Politico begins, “Don’t Blame Mental Illness for Mass Shootings; Blame Men.” To be fair to the author, Laura Kiesel, she probably didn’t choose that title. And to be doubly fair, she doesn’t blame men in general for mass shooting. She does — correctly — point out that the overwhelming majority of people who shoot other people are men. 

These nuances, however, have done little to shield Kiesel from what was probably the expected response. “Politico Blames Masculinity for Mass Shootings. Here’s Why That’s Ridiculous,” an article in The Federalist fires back. Many other responses were less polite. When it comes to mass shootings, it seems that “toxic masculinity” rears its head yet again. 

Many readers, even those not prone to thinking up defenses of men, might think that blaming “men” for mass shootings takes things a bit far. Some might even think that such a claim takes anti-man rhetoric to a new level. 

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A Message to Congress: Repeal Obamacare, Then Get Out of the Way

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The drama and tension surrounding the future of healthcare in the United States give House of Cards a run for its money. To say that the Affordable Care Act (ACA, nicknamed Obamacare) is falling apart would be a great understatement. Like many issues facing our country, the disaster that is the ACA is a clear example of misguided government intervention. While the recent tax cut legislation Congress passed repeals the individual mandate, Republicans in Congress should not even dare to think that they are now off the hook for their years of promising to repeal Obamacare once they regained control.

The bare minimum that we should tolerate is a clean repeal of Obamacare; however, if we really want to fix our country’s broken healthcare system, Congress is going to have to address the elephant in the room that is making both health insurance and healthcare unaffordable: excessive government regulation and a lack of market price transparency. The solution to this quagmire is simple: fully repeal Obamacare, then continue to remove the government’s burden so that the free market can flourish.

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Gowdy Out! Who’s Next?

Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, stated Wednesday he is not going to seek re-election —

How President Trump can build infrastructure the Right way

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In a stellar State of the Union, President Trump was firmly in control Tuesday evening as he addressed leaders in all three branches of government.

Trump offered specific ideas on immigration, national security, and — for terminally ill patients — an urgent “Right to Try” experimental, possibly life-saving drugs. He also invited Democrats to collaborate with him on multiple issues.

But Trump’s scowling resistance was virtually paralyzed. The Party of No refused to stand and cheer even the fact that black unemployment is at record lows. This reveals just how little liberal Democrats really care about black Americans.

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Special Election in PA’s 18th District: Critical Test for Both Parties

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The first major special election of 2018 is set to occur less than two months from now in southwest Pennsylvania, and the result could paint a clearer picture of the political climate as the midterm election approaches.

On March 13, voters in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional district will cast ballots in a special election to replace former Republican Representative Tim Murphy, who resigned following reports he encouraged a woman with whom he was having an affair to have an abortion.

The Republican candidate is state Representative and former Air Force counterintelligence officer Rick Saccone, while the Democratic candidate is former federal prosecutor and Marine Corps veteran Conor Lamb.

Lamb, who has cast himself as a moderate, drew headlines when he declared he would not support House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House should Democrats recapture control of the chamber.

President Trump enthusiastically tweeted his support for Saccone, who has described himself as “Trump before Trump was Trump,” before traveling to the district to campaign with him last week.

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Border wall needed for national security, counterterrorism

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As the bench-clearing brawl over border security roars on, it would behoove wall advocates to broaden their pitch. A wall would slash illegal immigration on the southern frontier. And it also would bolster U.S. national security and counterterrorism.

Not every illegal alien dodges Gila monsters and skirts cacti in search of the American dream. Beyond old-fashioned killers, such as the remarkably brutal MS-13 gang, “special interest aliens” hail from nations rife with militant Islam, including Iran, Pakistan, and Syria. Most of these border jumpers may be perfectly harmless, but the risk that even a few may crave American blood is a needless gamble.

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Schumer Shutdown Debacle Reveals Dems’ Historical Cynicism and Racism

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In addition to being a leftist icon, President Lyndon B. Johnson was an extraordinary vulgarian and a rabid racist. Prior to the passage of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, he is said to have told fellow Democratic power players that the bill would initiate a liberal golden age in which “those niggers” would be “voting Democratic for two hundred years.”

An eccentric purported whore-monger at Snopes would have you believe that because this quote is “unproven” it is not worth taking seriously. Not long ago our current Commander-in-Chief is alleged to have referred to Haiti and Africa as “shitholes.” There’s as much proof for this quote as there is for LBJ’s so if we’re going to take President Trump’s alleged remarks seriously then we have reason to take as true the LBJ quote.

As I said regarding President Trump’s alleged comments, it sounds like something he would say; after only a cursory examination of President Johnson’s prefered verbiage, his racist prognostication about an epoch of manipulating blacks into voting Democratic is equally authentic.

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ISIS is Defeated, so Let’s Bring The Troops Home

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In the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, much was made of the threat of ISIS. Wild threats abounded as candidates fought each other over who would come down harder on the then-thriving Islamic State.

Sen. Ted Cruz threatened to “carpet bomb (ISIS) into oblivion.”

Now-President Donald Trump promised to “bomb the (expletive) out of ‘em.”

Former Secretary of State and presidential participation trophy winner Hillary Clinton added the possibility of war with Russia by insisting on a no-fly zone over Syria.

And who could forget neocon mascots Sens. Rick Santorum and Lindsey Graham engaging in what amounted to a bidding war over who would dump more American ground troops into the Middle East?

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How Free Market Economics Birthed the Video-Game Era

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In 1962, the first version of Spacewar! was completed. Technically, this wasn’t the first video game ever created, but it was probably the first one that really mattered, as it serves as the beginning of the long line of advances in video game technology that continues into the present day.

The invention of the game is generally credited to Steve Russell, who was the primary programmer. But the development of the game was the product of a handful of programmers working with an early computer known as the PDP-1. The original version of the game employed two “ships” – really just shapes on a screen – that could shoot a missile (a dot) at the other ship. It was a two-player game, and the goal was to destroy your opponent.

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Marxism: The Unwavering, Cancerous Assault on Life, Liberty, and Individualism

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Marxism is a cancer that has plagued societies across the globe in one form or another for well over a century, leaving behind a trail of death, destruction, and misery in the most appalling ways imaginable. The tyrants of the 20th century – Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Che, and Castro among others – settled once and for all what happens when the Marxist ideology is unleashed upon the world. Rather than usher in the promised utopia, what occurred was nothing short of hell on earth. Sadly, we were wrong to think that this cancer had been eradicated. Instead, it’s continued to mutate into various subsequent, seemingly benign, outgrowths, culminating in its current metastasized form in Postmodernism.

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