Did you ever think that former President Donald Trump and infamous rapper Tupac would be compared to one another?
Watch Amanda explain the latest developments below:
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm should be removed from her position amid a “litany” of alleged ethics violations, a group of conservative leaders report.
More than a dozen conservative leaders, including Media Research Center President Brent Bozell, sent a letter to President Joe Biden requesting Granholm’s resignation “based on a series of violations of federal ethics laws and regulations,” the MRC reports.
“In light of the repeated ethical lapses, as well as the apparent tolerance of a lax culture of ethical compliance at the Department of Energy, it is crucial for ensuring the trust of the American people that Secretary Granholm be immediately relieved of her duties,” the letter to Biden states.
The letter lists a “litany of abuses of public trust,” including:
Failure to accurately report financial holdings
Participating personally and substantially in matters directly benefiting a company in which she had a financial interest
Inappropriately using her official position to promote products for multiple companies in which she had a financial interest or covered relationship
Abusing her position of authority and misusing government resources to advance partisan activities in violation of the Hatch Act
Signaling to career civil servants and senior political leadership under her command that policy objectives take priority over basic compliance with ethics and legal obligations.
The letter also accuses Granholm of using her office to boost the value of her stock in Ford Motor Company.
“The recent revelations about Secretary Granholm’s continued financial ownership of Ford stock while acting to enrich – and at times even publicly endorse – the company is egregious,” the letter read. “However, it is simply the latest incident evidencing recklessness at best and intentional disregard for the law at worst.”
The leaders also demand Granholm’s resignation for engaging in prohibited partisan political activity noting the Office of the Special Counsel found Granholm violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits government employees from using their positions to engage in some forms of political activity, in an October 2021 interview.
“Taken together, these episodes cast serious doubt on the Secretary’s fitness to hold a cabinet seat,” the letter reads.
“You often speak of maintaining the highest standards for your administration’s appointees. It is past time that you demonstrate that this promise holds some meaning,” the letter concludes.
Granholm would not the first Biden administration Energy Department official to resign in disgrace.
Former Acting Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Kelly Speakes-Backman amid allegations she used her office to benefit a former employer.
Senior DOE official Samuel Brinton was also fired and later arrested for stealing womens’ luggage from airports.
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Liberals just can’t help themselves…
Watch Amanda explain the controversy below:
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ANALYSIS – ‘Gold Star’ families of U.S. troops killed in the August 2021 Abbey Gate bombing at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan, are blasting Team Biden excuses over the disastrous retreat. Saturday marked the two-year anniversary of the terrorist attack during Joe Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from the country.
At least 183 people were killed in the attack, including the 13 U.S. service members (12 Marines and a sailor).
Shamefully, Biden allowed the Taliban to retake the country almost 20 years to the day of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on Washington, DC, and New York City.
AND HERE, TWO YEARS AFTER THE AFGHAN COLLAPSE, WE STILL DON’T HAVE ANSWERS, AND NO ONE HAS BEEN HELD ACCOUNTABLE.
As I wrote about earlier, senior Biden defense officials spent the days before and after the deadly 2021 attack in Kabul obsessing on getting Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to sign off on their Climate Change plan rather than focus on the chaos and death in Afghanistan.
Now, several of these Gold Star families spoke at a House Foreign Affairs Committee roundtable where they expressed their anger at the Biden administration, including Chairman of the Chiefs Mark Milley, who they blame, in part, for the bombing that killed 13 service members.
As the hearing was about to commence, Milley released a statement in which he said the U.S. owes Gold Star families “everything.”
“We owe them transparency, we owe them honesty, we owe them accountability. We owe them the truth about what happened to their loved ones,” Milley said.
But the families didn’t appear impressed. Instead, they were angry about the “excuses” and misinformation they received.
Fox News reported on their justified anger and venting. Kelly Barnett, the mother of Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Taylor Hoover, said “I don’t want to hear lies, I don’t want to hear excuses from Joe Biden, from the administration.”
Hoover’s father, Darin Hoover, called on top Pentagon brass to resign.
He poignantly noted: “Today is the date, two years ago, that we received our kids home at Dover. Two years ago today, where we were disrespected with stories of Biden’s son and him looking at his watch. And today, here we sit as their families, begging you two years later, to find these answers.”
Christy Shamblin, mother-in-law of Marine Corps Sergeant Nicole Gee, who was pictured prominently with an Afghan baby in her arms prior to her death, asked why credible warnings were ignored in the days leading up to the attack.
Some even accused the Pentagon of giving them ‘made-up stories’ about their loved ones in the aftermath of the attack.
As Breitbart News reported:
…[in a Fox interview] Cheryl Rex, whose son, Lance Corporal Dylan Merola, was killed in the Kabul airport attack in 2021 reacted to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley saying that he believes military briefers gave all the information to the families of those killed in the bombing all the information they could by stating that the briefing on her son was completely inaccurate…
…[When Rex was asked] “Do you believe that all the information was there, or do you agree with other families that it wasn’t about the information, it was about the warnings that were ignored?”
Rex answered, “Me personally, he did not — the brief report was not correct. They changed my son’s location a couple of times. They were trying to accommodate his wounds that were not even in the right spots of his body according to his autopsy report. He did not — the brief report is nothing [like] what we were actually told… I feel it was made-up stories that they were trying to cover up the wounds.”
These Gold Star families deserve answers and accountability. And so do the American people.
ANALYSIS – Words matter. In a post on his Truth Social platform last Friday, former President Donald Trump suggested that outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley deserved to be executed after speaking with China’s top general during Trump’s final months in office.
Trump said Milley’s “treasonous act” was “so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”
Clearly, Trump wasn’t threatening to do so but saying that Milley’s actions could have been punished by death in a prior era.
I condemned Milley’s actions at the time because they seemed to give the Chinese Communist regime a promise that they would be given a warning prior to any attack under Trump.
While Milley claims his actions were a normal part of his duties, I disagree.
They appeared to be more a normal part of the mission that he took upon himself, which was to counter Trump when Milley believed the president had crossed some line only Milley could see.
Some argue that Milley’s actions were not only disloyal to the president but also borderline ‘treasonous.’
Milley contends that he was behaving appropriately to avert an accidental war. He responded to Trump’s comments on CBS:
He also assured viewers that he had adequate safety measures for himself and his family.
The two backchannel calls to China’s top general, Li Zuocheng, that Milley made, and at the center of all this, were revealed in the 2021 book “Peril.”
As CNN reported:
In October 2020, as intelligence suggested China believed the US was going to attack them, Milley sought to calm Li by reassuring him that the US was not considering a strike, according to the book. Milley called again two days after the January 6 riot at the US Capitol to tell Li that the US is “100 percent steady” even though “things may look unsteady.”
How much of this reporting in the book was accurate, is hard to say. But Trump sees things very differently.
Trump said that Milley “turned out to be a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States.”
And Trump may be right. For Milley to do that could be seen as highly inappropriate, if not exactly ‘treasonous.’
Still, Trump, a former president, and current front-runner for the Republican nomination for president, is way out of line. No American political leader should be using that kind of language against any American military official or political leader.
In today’s volatile climate, it is extremely dangerous.
Yet few in the GOP will condemn Trump’s statements. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson is one of those willing to take aim at the Republican frontrunner. Politico quoted Hutchinson as saying:
To suggest that Gen. Milley should be executed is inexcusable and dangerous. While some will excuse this latest outrage as Trump just being Trump, the fact is that his statement endangers people and is an insult to those who serve in the military.
Perennial Trump critic, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, had stronger words, calling Trump an “absolute child” for the “reprehensible” remarks.
But it is part of a disturbing pattern by both sides to use dangerously inflammatory rhetoric at the highest levels against the other side.
Democrats raised the political temperature considerably against Trump, calling for, or at least condoning the calls for, his beheading and death on many occasions.
The demonization of Trump by the left and Democrat Party was more than I had ever seen in over thirty years in and around U.S. politics.
It was, and still is, outrageous.
But Trump isn’t helping things with his own dangerous rhetoric.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Joe Biden has officially announced his campaign for a second term in the White House.
Things are about to get interesting.
Watch Amanda explain the situation below:
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Maybe the realistic threat of the U.S. taking some sort of limited military action against the Mexican drug cartels is having an effect on Mexico’s socialist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO).
Because Joe Biden’s administration is certainly not the reason — more likely though, this is just wishful thinking and AMLO, as the president is better known, is just pretending to play nice.
Still, AMLO now appears to be quietly meeting with American lawmakers on security and drug policy.
This, after several prominent GOP lawmakers recently called for the authority to use military force against the drug cartels, as part of the broader battle to protect our borders.
A massive wave of illegal Fentanyl is today killing thousands of young Americans each month (over 100,000 in a year) thanks to the Mexican drug cartels which control parts of the border.
The deadly drug is made in Mexico with precursor chemicals shipped from China.
These cartels along the border also recently kidnapped and murdered several Americans who legally crossed the border into Mexico. Others have disappeared. (RELATED: Mexican Drug Cartels Worried About GOP Calls To Use American Military Against Them)
Earlier AMLO delivered insulting lectures blaming the U.S. for the fentanyl overdose crisis because American families don’t hug their kids enough. (RELATED: Mexican President Says Mexico Is Safer Than US, But Murder Rate Is 4x Higher)
And this week, AMLO sent his foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, to Washington, D.C., to mobilize Mexico’s 52 consulates, the most foreign consulates in the U.S., to launch a nationwide information campaign “in defense of our country,” he said, following “unacceptable attacks” by GOP legislators.
In what I called foreign election interference, AMLO also called on Mexican Americans and U.S. Hispanics to vote against Republicans.
But now a bipartisan delegation of U.S. lawmakers met with AMLO over the weekend.
Six Republicans and five Democrats met with the Mexican president.
And they report he told them he would work with China to stop their shipments of fentanyl precursors that are brought into Mexico and processed before being smuggled into the United States.
According to their press release, Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the Senate Finance, Intelligence, and Judiciary Committees, led the congressional delegation (CODEL) which returned to the U.S. Monday afternoon.
This month, Cornyn visited the U.S.-Mexican border and called on Joe Biden to enforce existing U.S. immigration laws.
In addition to their meeting with AMLO, the group also met with intelligence, drug enforcement and government officials in Mexico.
Senators Chris Coons, D-Del., Jerry Moran, R-Kan., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Mike Lee, R-Utah, Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and Peter Welch, D-Vt., along with Representatives Tony Gonzales (TX-23), Henry Cuellar (TX-28), Veronica Escobar (TX-16) and Maria Salazar (FL-27) rounded out the rest of the delegation.
Their press release stated that they received:
…briefings from U.S. intelligence officials, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar on the United States’ security posture with regards to Mexico, recent killings of Americans in the country, efforts to stop drug trafficking, and illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border. The delegation shared their concerns with Mexico’s handling of these issues with President López Obrador and members of his administration.
“One of the interesting parts is he agreed to meet with China on how they could prevent getting some of the raw materials, the precursors, from China,” Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, told The Hill.
“So that in itself acknowledges the fact that China is sending these things through, mainly through Manzanillo and some of the ports on that side of Mexico.”
However, the threats of U.S. military action from GOP lawmakers have also helped AMLO whip the country into a nationalistic frenzy. And I trust his actions more than his words.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Until now, only billionaires could afford to enter sub-orbital space. And it needed to be by high-powered rocket (think Jeff Bezos in his Blue Origin, or Richard Branson in his Virgin Galactic).
Star Trek actor William Shatner also did a flight on a Blue Origin’s rocket.
But now you too can see the earth from 20 miles high. It will cost you just over $120,000 and it’s by a high-altitude balloon.
And, no, it’s not aboard a Chinese spy balloon. These will be private companies running the trips.
The billionaires in rockets still have one treat we can’t get – they can briefly experience weightlessness. They also go twice as high.
Space officially starts at the Karman line, 62 miles above the earth’s surface. But for most people there won’t be that much of a difference.
And at half the price, no training required, and a much softer, smoother ride, these edge-of-space balloons will be far more accessible and may become popular among the slightly less rich.
And unlike the rockets, these balloons will give you a much longer ride, with luxury amenities, food, and drink.
There now appears at least two companies on the verge of launching these space balloon trips. One is American and the other is French.
Both seem to avoid mention of the 1937 Hindenburg hydrogen-filled dirigible disaster.
The French company Zephalto with its Celeste balloon will provide Michelin-starred fine dining. It is partnered with France’s national space agency.
These balloons filled with helium or hydrogen will depart from France with two pilots on board and six passengers and rise 15.5 miles into the stratosphere.
Once at peak altitude, the balloon, carrying a pressurized capsule, will stay aloft for three hours, giving guests a chance to take in views previously seen only by astronauts. While in the air, passengers will be served high-end French food and wines.
These near-space rides will start at €120,000 ($132,000) per person in 2025, Bloomberg reports.
The other option will be Florida-based Space Perspective, which is testing its own passenger balloon, designed to reach the edge of space.
Eight civilians and a pilot will be able to comfortably travel up 100,000 feet (19 miles) to near space in a reusable pressurized capsule carried by a gigantic hydrogen-filled balloon called Spacecraft Neptune – because Neptune’s atmosphere is predominantly hydrogen.
The company operates out of leased facilities at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, but plans to expand to Alaska and Hawaii, and then possibly to other countries around the world.
Flight will cost about $125,000 per person. And it plans to launch a year earlier than the Celeste.
Neptune’s ride will be similar to the Zephalto balloons, ascending at a sedate 12.5 miles per hour. It will give passengers two full hours to observe 360° views of Earth rotating beneath them and space above.
The overall ride will last six hours – two hours to ascend, two hours to float along the stratosphere, and two hours to descend into the Atlantic Ocean, where a recovery ship will be waiting.
The capsule comes complete with luxury seating, refreshments, a restroom, and Wi-Fi (so you can post to Instagram or live stream on Facebook as you fly – because – of course). The company plans to offer flights for weddings, corporate events, and scientific excursions.
Its flights are scheduled to begin in 2024, but the first batch of 600 tickets is already sold out.
Bon voyage. No smoking aboard.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Who would ever want to be a liberal?
A new study found women who identify as conservatives are often more attractive and happier than their liberal counterparts…but is it true?
Watch Amanda explain the situation below:
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Former President Donald Trump announced on his Truth Social media Saturday that he was going to be arrested on Tuesday, March 21.
He also urged his supporters to protest.
So far no other news media has confirmed his claim and Trump remains untouched.
It appears that this announcement citing illegal leaks in the Manhattan DA’s office was Trump’s successful attempt to get ahead of the story.
In part, he wanted to mobilize the GOP.
Still, if or when, this does happen, an arrest of a former president, and current candidate, would be an unprecedented event in U.S. history.
It would look like third-world criminalization of politics, and can only further alienate many of the 70 million Americans who voted for Trump in 2020.
Most Republicans will see it as a politicized witch hunt. It would also only deepens the belief that there continues to be a years-long conspiracy to bring down Trump.
It will seem that the Russia collusion hoax, the ‘resistance’ inside and outside of government, lawsuits, and two highly partisan, manufactured, and failed, impeachments against Trump by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn’t suffice.
Provoking a reaction from potential GOP primary opponents was also a Trump goal.
And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has not announced he is running for president, had a few things to say about the issue, even while claiming he wasn’t “going to be involved.”
DeSantis called the whole prosecution a ‘manufactured circus.’
The conservative governor focused on how the George Soros-backed New York City prosecutor Alvin L. Bragg, has seen major crime skyrocket in Manhattan while focusing on a relatively petty alleged crime to go after the former president.
The petty prosecution is over alleged hush money payments to adult performer Stormy Daniels to, as DeSantis said dismissively, “secure silence over some type of alleged affair.”
But it’s not even about the alleged payments made on his behalf by his then-attorney Michael Cohen (which wouldn’t be too different from the numerous illicit ways Bill Clinton tried to hide his many affairs while in office from the public.
This case is expected to actually focus on Trump’s role in recording the reimbursements he made to Cohen in the internal records of his company, the Trump Organization, which were entered as “legal expenses.”
That’s even pettier. The DA calls it “fraud.” Others might call it “sloppy bookkeeping.”
According to the Epoch Times (ET), DeSantis said:
We are not involved in this. We won’t be involved in this. I have no interest in getting involved in some kind of manufactured circus by a Soros-funded DA. He’s trying to do a political spectacle. He’s trying to virtue signal for his base.
He added: “I can’t spend my time worrying about things of that nature. So, we’re not going to be involved in it in any way.”
Well, DeSantis is correct, even if he is getting somewhat “involved.”
And DeSantis does know a thing or two about ideologically motivated, Soros-backed prosecutors.
As ET reports:
DeSantis removed Hillsborough County District Attorney Andrew Warren from office last year for stating he wouldn’t prosecute certain crimes. DeSantis’s action has so far survived a review by a federal judge.
DeSantis added: “He [Bragg] is a Soros-funded prosecutor and, like other Soros-funded prosecutors, they weaponize their office to impose a political agenda on society at the expense of the rule of law and public safety.”
The governor continued: “He has downgraded over 50 percent of felonies to misdemeanors. He says he doesn’t want to even have jail time for the vast majority of crimes. And what we’ve seen in Manhattan is, we’ve seen the crime rate go up and we’ve seen citizens become less safe,” DeSantis said.
But it’s not just DeSantis who sees this as a politically motivated vendetta that could cause far more harm to the American system than good. The New York Times reported that some Democrats and legal experts have their own doubts as well:
Charging former President Donald J. Trump in connection with a hush-money payment to a porn star would catapult Mr. Bragg onto the national stage. Already he faces second-guessing, even from putative allies, about the strength of the case and the wisdom of bringing it.
The Times continued:
…Bragg has been in a difficult situation. Rebecca Roiphe, a professor at New York Law School and a former prosecutor in Manhattan, said that even though investigators do not target individuals for political reasons, politics does come into play in that “there is always a question of whether it is [in] the public interest to bring a certain charge or not.”
If he does not bring a case even though there is clear evidence to prove it, Ms. Roiphe suggested, he could violate the longstanding principle that no person is above the law. But if he does indict Mr. Trump, who has begun a third presidential campaign, the choice could also be “incredibly destabilizing and harmful,” Ms. Roiphe said.
Meanwhile, many Republicans will be getting very “involved” in this potential outrage. Speaker of the House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy has already accused Bragg of “abusing his office to target President Trump.”
He also is threatening to defund Bragg and is investigating whether federal funds were used by Bragg to pursue Trump.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
