Contrary to the claim by columnist Brian Howey in his March 1st writing, the United States is not preparing “to switch sides to Russia”. That is a ridiculous claim.
President Trump wants the war to stop. He wants the killing of the young on both sides to end. This was a war never started when Trump was last President. It began under the US regime of President Joe Biden. Old Joe may have even given the green light to military action with his remarks on January 20, 2022. I quote: “I think what you’re going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades (Ukraine). And it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do.”
President Putin has always wanted as much of Ukraine as he could get. The fighting now has become a standoff with little movement east by Ukraine troops or west by Russian troops. And President Zelenskyy of Ukraine has become an overbearing tyrant for that country. For example, he banned all independent TV media with a collapse of all media into one state controlled one. He suspended multiple opposition political parties. He has banned the Russian Orthodox Church which has had a century’s long presence in Ukraine.
Then when President Trump thought there was an agreement for the United States to have access to Ukraine rare earth minerals which would both benefit Ukraine and the United States, Zelenskyy queered the deal when demanding more from Trump. We all saw that on national TV.
And, again contrary to Tribune reporting, President Trump did not “walk out” of the meeting with Zelenskyy. Trump threw Zelenskyy out of the White House and sent him and his entourage packing. No lunch.
All Zelenskyy had to do was agree to what had been negotiated by others ahead of the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting. This would have given the United States access to much desired rare earth minerals and other natural resources in Ukraine. This would have meant both a financial interest of the US in Ukraine and the presence of people from the United States there in significant numbers. Clearly, this would be an enormous deterrent to Russia to do anything more militarily.
President Putin is not going to give up the territory it currently occupies which reportedly contains largely Russian speaking people. This is a given. So, if fighting stops with lines as they are, the killing stops and the Ukraine-US mining agreement becomes an indirect way of stopping any further incursions by Russia into Ukraine.
One more thing — we learned that the USA has funded multiple biological laboratories in Ukraine. Why? One has to wonder if this is yet another evil action taken by Dr. Anthony Fauci. That is a whole other possible story.
Confused
It seems that Johnnie Walker in his “Sound Off” letter to the Tribune on February 27th is a little confused. He starts right off suggesting DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) should continue when President Trump wants job applicants, college applicants, and any applying for a position to be considered on merit against the requirements for whatever is being applied for rather than upon race, color, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Merit considers education and skills as the reasons for qualification.
Choosing merit over DEI does not degenerate African Americans, Native Americans, immigrants or any other identities including European Americans. Everyone starts out equal with no “group” having an advantage over another. Seems pretty straight forward and honest.
As for immigrants, no one is suggesting legal immigration is not OK. Those that came to this country in the late 1800s and early 1900s came legally. They were greeted by the Statue of Liberty as were and will be all legal immigrants. Illegal aliens are criminals according to US law and are not welcome. They need to return to home countries rather than largely be a drag on the US economy.
And concerning cutting federal government spending significantly, that has to happen or the USA will go bankrupt. It is that simple. Already Elon Musk and the Musketeers have found massive corruption and fraud in the way US taxpayer dollars have been handed out. That must be rooted out and stopped and even more spending must be cut. Yes, this will be painful, but so is surgery to fix health issues, which is what this really is.
Our country is in trouble. Left that way by the four year Democrat regime of President Joe Biden with the help of Senator Chuck Schumer and RINO Senator Mitch McConnell…. And many more.
We have one chance to make America great again. I hope we don’t blow it.
A New Day: MAHA
You know, there are days and there are days. Today, I deeply believe has been one blessed day for the United States of America. We have witnessed the swearing in of Robert F. Kennedy Jr to be the Secretary of Human and Health Services (HHS) for all of us.
Kennedy has dedicated his life to the betterment of our environment and the health of all people in our country. He has pointed out time and time again that as a country we are sick and getting sicker with every day that passes. He strongly believes it is all connected to our food supply (Big Food) and to Big Pharma and Big Agriculture. I could not agree more.
Ever since my encounter with Rachael Carson’s book, Silent Spring, in the very early 1970’s, I have done whatever was in my power to help address environmental issues. This was first when the CEO/Publisher of the Kokomo Tribune, then as a biological scientist at Purdue working on graduate level research. That was a long time ago and much has happened since. The advent of genetic engineering of crops and the use of very toxic poisons in agriculture has only gotten worse. It continues to grow.
And in our food supply, the use of all sorts of chemicals in food is rampant. It seems the food production companies don’t really given a damn about our health. They want us addicted to whatever they produce.
And we see the push for more and more pharmaceuticals about every minute we watch television. The advertising is all over the place. I hope you have been listening to the possible side effects of everything promoted. As a scientist, I have from the very beginning been very skeptical of the mRNA vaccines that never were properly tested for effect and safety.
So, we now have a Secretary of Health and Human Services that is going to take a look at it all… and make drastic changes. This is really Bobby’s way of lifting us all up. He has said that every day for the past 20 years he has gotten out of bed, gotten on his knees, and prayed for God to bring him a way to make change. He has said God brought him President Donald Trump. Trump and Kennedy have joined in a mission to Make America Healthy Again.
When I saw him being sworn in, I have to admit it brought tears to my eyes. We all need to be very grateful. Thank God.
The Musketeers with Bloodhound
Brian Howey in a Feb. 10th column in the Kokomo Tribune states in his opening paragraph that the federal government is bloated, wasteful, and inefficient. Then in the closing paragraph he states that President Trump, via Elon Musk, is causing “….a constitutional crisis in the making. These are emerging dictatorial powers replacing the lawful order that has served Americans well for nearly 250 years”. Really!
America (the USA) is in deep debt to the tune of about $35 trillion dollars. The current financial course is not sustainable and has not been for years. At some point, the wall will be hit and catastrophe will follow unless drastic change occurs.
Howey writes about all the wonderful things USAID is and has been doing in the world. He does not write about all the corruption, perverted programs and organizations that USAID has been funding in the USA and around the world. Musk and the Musketeers have exposed corruption, fraud, and outright stealing of taxpayer money in billions of dollars.
Howey quotes the Washington Post… now there is sure a credible source of news. We know better. He says the Post reported Musk’s DOGE staffers accessed sensitive internal data systems, including those of the U.S. Treasury. DAAAAAA! And exactly how does one review what has been historically done without viewing records? President Trump runs the Executive Branch of which the Treasury Department is a part. He has authorized the Musk DOGE probes.
What scares the crap out of those who want to hide nefarious acts is that “Follow the Money” has taken on new meaning when the bloodhound is an algorithm-powered web crawling bot designed to drill through internal government firewalls and map out redundancy, waste, and longstanding hidden internal influence networks established over decades. This is called transparency; something many do not want.
I, for one, am all in for Elon Musk and his Musketeers. They need to keep going through every government agency that disburses taxpayer money. They need to report to the taxpayers exactly how they have been cheated and robbed…. and how the USA has gotten into $35 trillion dollars in debt.
Maybe full transparency will change the course of the USA. Maybe we will realize we cannot be the ATM for the world and that other countries must take care of themselves. Maybe we can stop the funding of domestic graft and nonsense. Maybe we can finally honestly make “America First”.
TPS Ending
Temporary Protective Status, also known as TPS, is ending the United States at least for some. It will be for more if we can get the liberal courts out of the way. That will be a challenge for US Attorney General Pam Bondi.
TPS was supposed to be just that — temporary with no path to US citizenship. It was to provide a way for the United States to host people from other countries for a time when conditions in home countries were threatening. The problem is that, particularly during the Biden administration, TPS turned into PPS, permanent protective status. Renewals of extensions came to be automatic with no end.
Under the current President Trump administration, TPS has returned to what it was intended for in the first place. Many of those who are in the United States under TPS are on their way back to their home countries. The Trump administration, for example, is ending TPS for 350,000 from Venezuela which is about half of the total Venezuelans numbering about 600,000. The remainder face ending TPS with return to Venezuela later this year.
Reportedly, about 1 million people from 17 countries currently reside in the United States under TPS. These include people from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Sudan. Trump tried to end TPS for these people in his first term but was thwarted by immigration advocacy groups through court action. Times are different now. More returns home are on the horizon.
All of this is just a part of moving out of the United States of America people who are either in the country illegally or have temporary status. It is a move to establish residence only for American citizens or people who have arrived via lawful pathways. It is for people who have followed the long path to citizenship, are temporary foreign students, or have some other legal authority under immigration law.
President Trump promised removal of illegal aliens in addition to ending TPS. There are millions to be sent back to home countries. The herculean effort has begun.
The Crash
As one who held a private pilot license some years ago, I have to comment on the crash involving an Army helicopter and the American Airlines passenger plane. The more information that comes out, the more it is clear the Army helicopter pilot and crew are totally to blame for the 67 souls killed that night.
The helicopter was flying above the allowed height of 200 feet and the pilot was wearing night vision goggles that significantly reduces the field of vision. I don’t know if all of the helicopter crew were wearing such goggles.
The passenger plane was on final approach for a landing at Washington National airport. Its runway was originally to be runway 33, but the air traffic controllers asked the pilot to use runway 1 instead. This meant an adjustment left and then right had to be made by the airliner. Flaps and landing gear were down. The plane was going slow for the landing. No doubt the airline crew was concentrating on the coming landing ahead of them really just seconds away. The plane was on a perfect path to land when it was slammed in its side by the helicopter. The result was explosion and crash into the Potomac River. All aboard both the airliner and helicopter were dead.
We know now that one air traffic controller was doing the job of two. The controller had responsibility for both the helicopter and the airliner. A second controller was allowed to leave the tower early which created the dual job requirement. But the controller did alert the helicopter pilot at least twice about the airliner. The helicopter pilot made no change in course with a catastrophic consequence. We learned, too, that the tower was significantly under staffed with 19 present when full staff is 30. This with an airport that has a number of take offs and/or landings numbering about 800 per day; and with shorter than optimal runway lengths.
On top of that, we learned that military helicopters are all over the place in the same air space at the same time as airliners. Any baboon would be able to tell this was a recipe for disaster. It came. No such mix is safe regardless of weather conditions which reportedly were clear on crash evening.
Lessons: the volume of landings/takeoffs allowed at Washington National should always reflect the number of air traffic controllers on duty. The force was 2/3 rds of what it should have been that night. This should have meant a maximum of 533 take offs/landings that day, not 800. Who knows if this would have made the difference, but spacing of events would have been different.
Allegedly, the Army was and always does practice along the Potomac River for a “continuity of government” exercise. This is practice for an emergency event in Washington DC when critical government officials must be transported out of the area. Understandable, but this cannot be combined with normal airline traffic flow in the same area; period. This reason must have priority over normal airline traffic. The answer; stop airline use of Washington National airport for nearly all passenger flights.
There is a huge airport about 26 miles west of downtown Washington D.C.. It is Washington Dulles International airport. Dulles occupies 13,000 acres or just over 20 square miles of land. It is the fourth largest airport in the USA in terms of land area. The result: it is safe. It does not have cramped space, short runways, and all sorts of military helicopter activity. Already, there are multiple ways to get from Dulles to downtown Washington DC; but more options could be developed.
The worst happened. It seems many have warned of this possibility. No one listened.
DOGE and the Big Dog
Elon Musk and his small cadre of geniuses are causing tidal waves and they have just gotten started. The incredible stink that has come out of USAID is almost beyond comprehension. The waste of US taxpayer dollars is more than huge; it is monumentous.
Is there any wonder why major new media were so far anti-Trump when in a short period of time the news organization Reuters got $9.1 million, Associated Press some $19.5 million, New York Times three grants totaling nearly $50 million, BBC $2.6 million and finally, Politico $8 million. It goes on and on.
There were too many to count grants to organizations promoting LGBTQ and transgender programs and activities around the world. Then all sorts of crazy projects and organizations both domestically and worldwide.
President Trump has shut down USAID nearly completely. What is left will be absorbed into the State Department, but even that will be a small skeleton of what it once was.
Honestly, I do not see the case for any tax dollars going out of the United States of America to others until and only until we have taken care of our homeless folks, our veterans, those hurt by hurricanes and fires, and any who are without shelter and food. We must be America First. All that and taking care of the mountainous national debt the USA has. Only then should be thinking about sending funds out of our country to others.
The list of the handouts of taxpayer money is endless. USAID was acting like the largest philanthropic foundation on the planet with taxpayer money. That and it had favorites on the left and woke side of the political spectrum.
USAID is largely now gone. DOGE will move on to the Defense Department, Medicare fraud, and other departments. What eventually results will the saving of billions of taxpayer dollars.
The big dog has come off of the porch!
DEI Out!
Let me see, the Kokomo Tribune editorial of February 1st advocates the filling of Indiana State agency jobs based upon color, religion, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. (the hallmarks of DEI) rather than on selecting the best person for the job based upon merit qualifications; that is, job requirements
As I recall, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. advocated for a color blind (and by implication, DEI blindness) society based upon merit and achievement. Reverend King said, “I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”.
Every job has qualifications for the performance of certain work. The qualifications have nothing to do with DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion). They are objective requirements that must be completed for optimal job performance. They do not depend upon one’s color, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. Applicants must be evaluated based upon the ability to complete the job requirements. Period. The person best fitted to completing job requirements should be the one obtaining the job.
This is vitally important for jobs funded by Indiana taxpayers; state agency jobs. It is the responsibility of state government to see so. There can be no DEI consideration, no political favoring, no nepotism, or anything else except measuring an applicant’s perceived ability to do a job against the requirements for a job.
Seems pretty straight forward to me and in the best interest of taxpayers. In short, the KT editorial position is way off base.
Hanson and Illegal Aliens
[Article by Victor Davis Hanson, Classicist and Historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University for the Daily Signal]
I want to talk about illegal immigration. You know, this is the point in our history that we’ve never been before. We have not a porous border, but no border at all. We’ve had somewhere between 10 to 12 million illegal entrants since the Biden administration began.
There is no real corpus of immigration law. It’s been destroyed. We’re at a historical period in our country, where 55 million people, never such a large number of people born ourside the United States, that are residing here. In terms of percentages, almost 16% of the population was not born in the United States.
That’s an enormous task of assimilation, integration, and civic education, and we just haven’t been doing any of that. So, what are we going to do? Well, this first thing is : We need to stop “catch and release”. We need to make entrants, legal entrants, go back to their country if they’re applying for refugee status. You cannot come here, and then say you’re a refugee. You must ascertain that and prove that at the consulate overseas.
We’ve got to finish the walls. It’s a 2,000-mile border, and we’ve never quite been able to continue. We’ve got a wall of fence or somehow obstruct the entire 2,000-mile border. That will save manpower. It will save time and cost, and it will have an enormous deterrent effect.
The next couple of things are a little bit tricker. I think that whatever your status is, if you are sending money back to a foreign country from the United States that is singled out as a source of illegal immigration — Mexico, Latin America, for example — then the United States government should put a 10% to 20% tax on all the remittances. That would earn us up to maybe somewhere around $20 billion (per year). And that would also deter Mexico, to take one example, that depends on remittances as its largest source of foreign exchange — greater than tourism, greater than its oil revenues. And yet, so often the American taxpayer — state, local, and federal — through generous subsidies, free up the cash so that the illegal resident can send it back for social necessities that the Mexican government itself is responsible for, so we’re subsidizing everybody but ourselves.
I think it’s very important that we start looking at the countries that are the source of illegal immigration in terms of security. A Sudan, a Syria, terrorist countries that support, countries that support terrorism like Venezuela, the Middle East, especially Iran, Russia, as well.
Why would we let them send people here that we have no background checks, have not adjudicated their status? So, we should have a travel ban, an immediate deportation, and immediate consequences for the mother country that knowingly sends these people here. And that, too, would be a deterrent.
We’ve got to also look at anchor babies.
The 14th Amendment didn’t really ever say, as sometimes is alleged, that if you’re born in the United States, then you’re an automatic citizen. It says if you’re born in the United States, and not subject to the laws of another country. All the people coming, in some sense, are subject to the laws of another country. So, we have to redefine that, either through legislation or renewed attempt in the courts.
Europe, the Left always looks for guidance — 17 European countries don’t even allow it. And the other 13 or 14 have restrictions that qualify it. So, we’re the only country in the world that gives unqualified citizenship to people who happen to be born here and then anchor the entire family.
Why not also put a 10-20 year ban on people who have been detained here illegally and stop them from applying for a green card or legal readmissions for 20 years? That would be a powerful deterrent.
In other words, we would announce sometime in February and say, “We want all of you to know, all 12 million who came here during the Biden administration, to take the first iteration of cohort, you have 30 days to go back. If you do not go back to your country, and you are detained, arrested here in the United States, you will be deported, but you will not be given any chance to get a green card for 10 to 20 years,” depending on how the courts or legislation adjudicates it.
And finally, I think it’s time to look at how we deport people. The first 500,000 who have committed a crime, it will be no problem. There’s unanimous consent. They should be deported immediately. They’re wreaking havoc on the American population.
The next iteration, the 1.5 to 1.7 million people who have already gone through the system, they’ve been adjudicated, they fail to show up for the court hearings. Or they left detention when they were facing deportation. Those would be the next group that would face deportation.
The third group of people, as I said earlier, from terrorist countries or terrorist-supporting countries; no one is going to sympathize with their residents here.
The fourth group is a little tricker, but I think we could pretty easily find hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of able-bodied residents who are on public assistance and who have not been here five years. If you haven’t bee here five years, you came during the Biden open-borders era. You were on welfare of some sort, and you’re able to work. You should go back home.
That would leave a large group of people who have been here five years. They’ve never committed a crime. They’re not on public assistance. And they want to get a green card, not citizenship, a green card.
I think if we had won public opinion and support by deporting the most egregious offenders, say 10-12 million, then I think in a bipartisan fashion, we could work out a system for the law-abiding, the productive, and the long-residing American residents and allow them to pay a fine to recapture legality and stay in the United States.
It’s going to be a tough road to restore border security, because the prior administration didn’t believe in it. But I think now that the White House, the Senate, and the House are in Republican hands, it’s absolutely possible. It can be done rather quickly.
Thank you very much. I’m Victor Hanson for the Daily Signal.
Exit Day
Exit day is coming soon for all uninvited “guests” to the United States, also known as illegal aliens. As of now, the estimate is illegal aliens number something between 15 and 20 million persons; it could be more. Tom Homan will be the newly appointed Director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency under President Donald J. Trump. His work is cut out for him.
The southern and northern borders of the United States are to be closed to illegal crossing the day Trump is sworn in as the 47th President of the United States of America. Trump has promised existing immigration laws will be followed. Illegal aliens will be deported back to their country of origin. The United States cannot afford the hugely negative economic and social impact of the millions. Only legal immigration will be permitted.
In Indiana, our state Attorney General, Todd Rokita, deserves credit for steps he has taken involving illegal aliens. Rokita identified Indiana’s “Sanctuary Cities” and has held them to account with threatened legal action. In case you did not know what cities chose to be “Sanctuary” cities, they were Gary/Hammond, South Bend (Notre Dame), West Lafayette (Purdue), and Bloomington (Indiana University). Who would have guessed? Those would be good places for ICE to look.
There are others, though, that would be illegal alien hot spots. Those include Logansport, Delphi, and Frankfort. Logansport, for example, has said the population of that city has increased by about 30% in the past three years. The result has been a strain on schools, the hospital, housing, and various social services. And Logansport is not known for being an economic growth city. What it does have, though, are two meat processing plants: Tyson and Indiana Packers. In years past, there were already claims at Indiana Packers that illegal aliens were employed there causing wages to be kept down.
No doubt, there are other state hot spots for illegal aliens. Likely, Indianapolis is yet another good bet. As far as I know, there has not been any reporting of an estimate of illegal aliens transported to Indiana by the federal government under Biden’s policies.
We do know, too, that at one point our military Camp Atterbury housed more than 7,000 Afghan refugees; most of whom have left Indiana for guess where: California. There is another population of refugees in Indiana most of us know little or nothing about. Indiana is home to the largest Burmese refugee population in the United States with the majority, about 30,000, living in Indianapolis. Refugees are, by law and under International Treaty, residents in the US legally. However, refugees are not U.S. citizens, do get government financial assistance when arriving, and are a continuing drain on social services.
So, all policies involving immigration and/or refugees must be carefully analyzed and revised. This can only happen if we have US Senators and Congressional Representatives willing to do so. The United States cannot continue to be the destination of all around the world who want to come in. There are enough problems with our own homeless citizens, veterans, and destitute others that deserve U.S. resources over non-US citizens.
Lastly, maybe all foreign aid should end until we get our own country back on the right track. We are financially broke now and must face the fact.