“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security… And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.” ~ Historian Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45
Brace yourself: a tsunami approaches.
While we squabble over which side is winning this losing battle to lead the country, there is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of this country.
Anytime you have an entire nation so mesmerized by the antics of the political ruling class that they are oblivious to all else, you’d better beware. Continue reading →
Uncle Sam infected by a different strain of “long Covid”
As the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) carries out widely-criticized responses to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, officials say the agency’s Disaster Recovery Fund is incapable of handling a third major storm.
While some are circulating false accusations that disaster funds have been diverted to immigrants or poured into the proxy war in Ukraine, a review of the agency’s 2024 outlays reveals a different, ongoing drain on FEMA’s coffers: Long after the end of the declared Covid-19 emergency, FEMA is still pumping out billions of dollars to pay for pandemic expenses — including, believe it or not, up to $9,000 each for funerals.
As previously detailed at Stark Realities, governments’ response to the Covid-19 pandemic was disastrous on many fronts. While the Pandora’s box of collateral damage included widespread harm to the physical and mental health of individuals, it also dealt a blow to the nation’s fiscal well-being, as the federal government recklessly showered trillions of dollars it didn’t have on people, businesses and state and local governments — with much of that money intended to offset the effects of government’s own tyrannical and counterproductive policies. Continue reading →
“Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.” ~ Václav Havel
Now might be a good time to find something that you can firmly believe in, something that is greater and better than yourself, and then hang on to it and faithfully serve it, with all your strength and hope.
October 12, 2013 ~ I’m sorry. You’re entering a world that has condemned you to slavery before you were even born. No, not the full-blown, work-in-the-fields slavery you learned about in school, but something that has most of the same effects but looks far better: they take half of your life and expect you to thank them for it.
There are actually several parts to your slavery. Today I am speaking of the part you may know best: inescapable student loans. Continue reading →
June 24, 2012 ~ In one of the most shocking articles that the New York Times has ever put out, a New York Times reporter has openly admitted that virtually every major mainstream news organization allows government bureaucrats and campaign officials to censor their stories. For example, almost every major news organization in the country has agreed to submit virtually all quotes from anyone involved in the Obama campaign or the Romney campaign to gatekeepers for “quote approval” before they will be published. If the gatekeeper in the Obama campaign does not want a certain quote to get out, the American people will not see it, and the same thing applies to the Romney campaign. Continue reading →
“Whether it’s Facebook or Twitter or X or Instagram or TikTok, whatever they are, if they don’t moderate and monitor the content we lose total control! — Hillary Clinton
“We lose total control. . .” she said.
Perhaps when you heard that you thought, “What do you mean ‘we,’ Kemosabe?” Continue reading →
Putting his philosophy of ‘Leave No Veteran Behind’ into practice…
A commanding officer presents 1st Lt. Michael Jackson with the Bronze Star Medal in 1969. ~ Courtesy Judge Jackson
Judge Michael Jackson, a combat veteran, had the power to send veterans convicted of crimes to prison. But he had a better idea about how to return them to their status of upstanding citizens.
Working as a Common Pleas Judge in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Judge Jackson, now 80, decided it was better to customize a rehabilitation program for veterans who had offended — and surround them with other veterans. Continue reading →
A student struggles to focus on her work. Professors at top universities have noticed that their students have trouble reading and focusing (stock image)
Students at prestigious colleges are finding it increasingly difficult to finish entire books because they do not have the attention span.
Some professors claim they have been forced to reduce reading assignments and lower their expectations to stop students becoming overwhelmed – even though the workload is often less intense than in previous years.
It is not that students are illiterate, they say, but rather that youngsters are not used to ploughing through lengthy texts and struggle to focus for long periods of time – often due to the distraction of social media. Continue reading →
Editor’s Note: My relationship with the Author goes back for nearly two decades and in fact, Kettle Moraine, Ltd. published two books for Neal. So, “Why” might you ask are we republishing an article that was written back in 2008? Because it fits – TODAY!
Wake up America – it is past time to roll up your sleeves. We have been telling you about these things since before the turn of the century! ~ Editor
September 04, 2008 ~ Imagine someone you know who lost a loved one in a tragic accident. Imagine that this person found out that there loved one had gone into a river and had been washed away by the current to drown. Then imagine that there had been some rafters aimlessly drifting down the river who could have helped, but they were too involved in having a good time to pay any attention.
That is about how I feel right now with the state of affairs in our country. It is rapidly on course to implode and people are too worried about their own little lives to take the time to pay attention to what is really going on. Continue reading →
Biden Uses ‘Secretive Flights’ to Import 320,000 Illegal Aliens to U.S.
Biden is operating a “secretive flights” program to fly hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens to the United States every year, according to records obtained by Todd Bensman at the Center for Immigration Studies.
The records, obtained by Bensman via a Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit, show that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) imported 320,000 illegal aliens to the United States last year through the little-known flight component of Biden’s “CBP One” mobile app.
The migrant mobile app, Breitbart News has extensively reported, has allowed about 465,000 illegal aliens to schedule appointments at the United States-Mexico border for release into the United States interior from January 2023 through January 2024… (Continue to full article)
How Can Trump Win When Democrats Have 30 Million Immigrant-Invaders To Vote Against Him? The Democrats Are Doing Every Possible Thing to Enable Immigrant-invaders to vote.
Democrats are passing laws to make sure that a non-citizen who just walked across the border has a vote equal to a United States native-born citizen. Immigrant-invaders are given federal IDs which entitle them to drivers’ licenses. Many jurisdictions automatically enroll driver license recipients on the voting list.
Two days ago California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill preventing local governments from requiring voters to present identification at the polls. The Democrat California government has made it a felony to prevent election fraud.… (Continue to full article)
Tina Toon: Kamala Lays Down the Welcome Matt for Illegal Criminals
As the so-called ‘border czar,’ Kamala had nearly four years to fix the border problem. She did nothing. Nothing at all. Now she’s full of solutions to her own border failures. Vote for Kamala so she can fix the problems she created.
Kamala in effect laid out a welcome mat to 15 million invaders—and she still has that welcoming attitude.
The disaster that is the Biden/Harris administration stopped building the wall once they were in office. They even sold off material at basement prices. Less than 24 hours after Kamala’s staged photo op, the Biden DOJ sued Alabama for removing illegals from the state’s voter rolls, unbelievable! (Continue to full article)
The Kamala Harris Mass Amnesty Plan
Vice President Kamala Harris has proved capable of implicitly but unconvincingly reversing herself on many issues , including immigration , since she became the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, which is why her decision not to repudiate her 2019 mass amnesty plan is so alarming.
In 2019, Harris distinguished herself from the 2020 Democratic primary field by promising to use unilateral executive power to grant permanent amnesty to so-called Dreamers and 6 million other illegal immigrants.
Specifically, she said she would create a “first of its kind” parole-in-place program for participants in President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — the Dreamers. Through the intricacies of immigration law, this designation could set Dreamers and all other immigrants on a path to citizenship without legislation
The Biden-Harris administration has already abused the parole power to let in millions of illegal immigrants, creating an extralegal immigration system alongside the legal system. Considering how willing Biden and Harris are to grant parole status to millions of illegal immigrants who want to enter the country, why wouldn’t Harris also grant retroactive parole status to millions of illegal immigrants already here?
Harris should be hounded by the press until she either repudiates her 2019 parole in place plan… (Continue to full article)
White House Mum Amid Outrage Over Data Showing How Many Illegal Immigrant Criminals Are Free in US
The White House has yet to comment on new data released to lawmakers showing the number of illegal immigrants with convictions for sex offenses and homicide convictions who are not in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention.
The agency provided data to Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, about illegal immigrants with criminal charges or convictions. The data, as of July 2024, is broken down by those in detention and those who are not in detention, known as the non-detained docket.
The non-detained docket includes noncitizens who have final orders of removal or are going through removal proceedings but are not in ICE custody… (Continue to full article)
ICE: Over 425,000 Criminal Illegal Immigrants Not in Agency’s Custody, Including 13,099 Convicted Killers
Federal immigration authorities have revealed that more than 425,000 illegal immigrants convicted of crimes, including more than 13,000 individuals convicted of homicide, are currently on the non-detained docket of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), meaning they’re not in ICE custody and could be roaming free in the United States.
The data was disclosed in a Sept. 25 letter from ICE deputy director Patrick Lechleitner to Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), who issued a statement calling the situation “beyond disturbing.”
“The truth is clear – illegal immigrants with a criminal record are coming into our country.”… (Continue to full article)
More Than 13,000 Immigrants Convicted of Homicide Here or Abroad Are Living Freely in the U.S.
More than 13,000 immigrants convicted of homicide — either in the United States or abroad — are living freely in the U.S., outside of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, according to data ICE provided to Congress earlier this week.
The immigrants are part of ICE’s “non-detained” docket, meaning the agency has some information on the immigrants and they have pending immigration cases in the U.S., but they are not currently in detention either because they are not prioritized for detention or because ICE cannot find them… (Continue to full article)
662,000 Criminal Foreign Nationals to Be Deported Are Living Free Nationwide
More than 660,000 criminal foreign nationals identified to be deported by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement are freely living in communities nationwide.
Among them are those convicted or charged with violent crimes, including homicide, sexual assault and kidnapping, according to information released in response to a congressional request.
ICE was requested to provide information about the number of noncitizens on its docket for removal who are convicted or charged with a crime. As of July 21, 2024, there were 662,566 noncitizens with criminal histories on ICE’s national docket, which includes those detained by ICE, and on the agency’s non-detained docket. Of those, 435,719 are convicted criminals, and 226,847 have pending criminal charges… (Continue to full article)
Network Evening Newscasts Barely Mention New ICE Report on 425,000 Criminal Migrants Free in U.S. NBC Nightly News” was the only prime time network news program on Friday night to report on bombshell new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data revealing that over 400,000 illegals immigrants convicted of crimes are currently free in the United States.
Both ABC’s “World News Tonight,” and the “CBS Evening News” failed to mention any of the findings that ICE presented in a letter to Congress this week that was reported by a variety of other outlets on Friday. They simply covered Vice President Kamala Harris’ trip to Arizona’s border with Mexico and touted her policy proposals for immigration… (Continue to full article)
The Border Crisis: The Cost of Chaos
U.S. House Oversight and Accountability Committee, Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs
Adding millions of people to the country through immigration drives up the cost of housing and reduces affordability relative to wages in areas of heavy settlement.
Fiscally, illegal immigrants are a net drain — they create more in costs than they pay in taxes. Illegal immigration also increases the supply of labor impacting the wages and employment of some American workers, often the poorest and least educated.
The availability of illegal immigrant workers allows American policymakers to ignore the decades-long increase in the share of working-age less-educated U.S.-born men not in the labor force — neither working nor looking for work. They are not counted as unemployed because they are not actively looking for work.
This deterioration is linked to serious social pathologies such as crime, welfare dependency, suicide, and drug overdoses… (Continue to full article)
U.S. Immigrant Population in 2023 Saw Largest Increase in More Than 20 Years
The number of immigrants living in the United States increased by roughly 1.6 million people in 2023. That marks the largest single-year increase in the nation’s immigrant population since 2000, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of recently published data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Overall, a record 47.8 million immigrants lived in the U.S. in 2023, up from 46.2 million in 2022. The nation’s immigrant population includes naturalized U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents and lawful temporary residents, as well as unauthorized immigrants.
The U.S. has long been home to more immigrants than any other country. These immigrants hail from many places, but the most common origin nations as of 2023 were Mexico (10.9 million people, or 23% of the total), India (2.9 million, or 6%), China (2.4 million, or 5%) and the Philippines (2.1 million, or 4%).
When it comes to legal status, nearly three-quarters of immigrants living in the U.S. as of 2022 were naturalized U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents or lawful temporary residents. Around one-in-four (23%) were in the country without authorization… (Continue to full article)
Have More Than 20 Million Illegal Migrants Crossed the US Border?
Kamala Harris is visiting the US southern border for the first time since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee.
Although numbers of migrants crossing this border have dropped significantly in recent months, Donald Trump has been attacking her record – and President Biden’s – on illegal immigration.
Trump claims that “Kamala Harris has allowed 21 million illegals to pour in from all over the world.”
The Democrats blame Trump, saying he worked to block the passing of a bill that would have tightened up security at the border
Harris to Call for Tougher Border Action on Arizona Visit
Put HER in the Wire!
After Kamala Harris spoke about her policies related to the southern border during a speech in Douglas, Arizona, the National Border Patrol Council, the labor union representing the US border patrol, said that Harris “has ignored the border problem she created for over three years”.
She goes down there (???) for 20 minutes for a photo op and decides to repeat some of the things the NPBC has said before. But again, where has she been the last 3 1/2 years?
Well – she has been known as “Going Down” for her entire Pole-itical Career!!! (Continue to full article)
U.S. Soldiers ‘Fired Pepper Spray’ At Migrants Crossing Mexico Border
It comes after reports emerged in August that immigrants trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas are being shoved into razor wire and fired at with pepper balls by law enforcement officials deployed under Governor Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star.
The $11 billion program, enforced in 2021, was the brainchild of Abbott, who has said he was left with no choice because of the Biden-Harris administration’s lax response to illegal migration and border security.
Members of the Texas National Guard allegedly fired pepper spray projectiles—ball-shaped and filled with irritants—at arriving migrants, including women and children, who were not engaged in any threatening behavior… (Continue to full article)
Harris Pledges to Crack Down on Illegal Crossings as She Challenges Trump on Immigration
Harris on Friday said the US government is duty-bound to “set rules at our border and to enforce them” as she called for reform of the American immigration system.
The immigration system should work “in an orderly way, that it is humane” and “makes our country stronger,” she said during a speech at Cochise College in Douglas, Arizona, after visiting the US border wall.
She also slammed her 2024 election opponent, former President Donald Trump, for commanding his Republican allies to vote against a bipartisan immigration and border reform package that experts said was stronger than any similar legislation considered by Congress in decades,,, (Continue to full article)
As many as 27% of non-citizens are illegally registered to vote.
A new study suggests that as many as 2.7 million non-citizens could vote in the 2024 election, leading some to voice concerns about coming election results potentially not reflecting the will of Americans citizens, who are the only ones permitted to vote in federal elections.
Just Facts, a nonprofit research institute found, “that about 10% to 27% of non-citizen adults in the U.S. are now illegally registered to vote,” an overview of the study states. Continue reading →
Kamala Harris and other leftists want to stop what they consider “disinformation” – but what they really want to do is silence your ability to laugh at them and rebut their falsehoods.
Supporting the First Amendment is now a partisan issue.
Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed three bills targeting AI-generated political ads. Among other provisions, one bill bans election-related “deepfakes” months before and after Election Day. Deepfakes are AI-generated videos or other content that can be stunningly realistic. Another bill requires social media sites to remove such content. Continue reading →
Two sets of parents are suing their children’s public school in liberal California, where indoctrinating children and ignoring protesting parents continues without any sign of stopping.
Represented by First Liberty Institute, the parents from Encinitas Union School District filed a complaint alleging a teacher at La Costa Heights Elementary hid a gender identity lesson from parents and then refused to allow parents to pull their children.
AFN first reported on the controversy in June. That was when California Family Council, a conservative pro-family group, released a detailed article that described the ongoing fight of one of the parents, Carlos Encinas. Now a co-plaintiff in the lawsuit, the father described how his fifth-grade son was forced to watch a read-along video for “My Shadow is Pink,” a transgender-themed children’s book. Continue reading →
Lorena Benson, 15, a sophomore at Athens Drive High School in Raleigh, delivered a speech to the Wake County school board this week that quickly went viral.
The teenager’s speech was posted on X and garnering more than 250,000 views.
The teen claimed her Honors English class recently read a story detailing sexual encounters between two cousins that made her extremely ‘uncomfortable.’ Continue reading →
The team was known as the Redskins from 1937-2019 but dropped its name ahead of the 2020 season (initially going by the Washington Football Team for two seasons) following years of social pressure – with many Native Americans finding the word to be racially insensitive.
However, during a recent appearance on the Pat McAfee Show, former Colts coach Chuck Pagano referred to Washington as the ‘Redskins’ and doubled down when his former punter reminded him that that franchise ‘is not in the league.’
‘They should go back,’ Pagano said. ‘That’s why I said it.’ Continue reading →
Not only a Tribute to the amazing talent of Toby Keith – but the necessary remembrance of what we MUST stand for! Frankly – I am pissed off and fed up with the insanity that has taken place in AMERICA.
It is time to lock and load and Stand Up for OUR Rights! ~ Jeffrey Bennett, Editor
“Dustoff inbound” was the message crackling over the radio that troops wounded in Vietnam most wanted to hear.
…and I was there as well – as a Patient Protector with the 498th Dustoff Unit! – Jeffrey Bennett, Editor
The message using the “Dustoff” call sign meant that an unarmed UH-1 “Huey” helicopter air ambulance with a red cross painted on the nose was coming for them no matter the weather, no matter whether the landing zone was “hot,” no matter whether there even was a landing zone – some 8,000 hoists while the aircraft hovered were conducted during the war.
To honor those who flew more than 496,000 Army medevac missions from May 1962 through March 1973, the House last week passed the Dustoff Crews of the Vietnam War Congressional Gold Medal Act. Continue reading →
I’ve used this title a couple of times in the past, that’s the reason for the subtitle ‘reprise.’
It means, I want to revisit this topic again. The sub-subtitle comes from my hours and hours in rehearsals, both musical and theatrical, when the director comments…
I’ve totally checked out of the “political scene” without really “checking out”, in that I still care about what happens to this fine country of ours and its people but I no longer worry about the final direction it takes, as I will deal with that in my own good time and way. I’ve just had to stop worrying so much, mainly for my health.
Our American brethren had better stop this mad flirtation the country is having with socialism, the red-headed step-child of communism, if they know what’s good for them. It’s like a child – you give an inch, they take a mile, and no nation can implement “just a little bit of socialism” without it eventually metastasizing into a full-blown totalitarian communist state, as has been witnessed across the span of history. For those who deny this fact, I offer Canada, which just a very few short decades ago was one of the freest nations on earth but now is insanely socialistic/communistic and authoritarian as all hell.
We see it branching out and growing all throughout our own system at all levels of government, threatening every last vestige of American freedom and liberty and our founding virtues and principles, especially as it pertains to Christianity.
Anne Frank
How they miss the danger signs from the Marxist-Maoist ideology and all the harm it promises to deliver is one of the great mystifying questions of the ages.
Since WWII, it seemed that everyone has been so focused on the Holocaust, they fail to understand that Joseph Stalin murdered so many millions more people than Hitler could ever imagine murdering. Elie Wiesel’s ‘Night‘ and ‘The Diary of Anne Frank‘ brought the Holocaust into America’s living rooms, making it a part of their education, where its victims were no longer mere numbers or names on a memorial, but real people with faces, families, dreams, hearts and souls, who were sorely abused and murdered. And Hitler and the Nazis were basically turned into every American’s personal enemy.
How the horrors of communism and 160 million dead in prisons or on some gulag plantation field can be so easily forgotten is terrifying to any sane person in and of itself. The communists not only sought to break the bodies of their targets – their “enemy” – or simply shatter their minds, but they strived to smash their opposition’s – those dissidents – souls, to erase them and absolutely everything about them in regards to their faith, family, nation, will, self-respect, identity. They worked to destroy everything that made a once free individual person a human being. They sought and still seek today, to destroy Western civilization and erase the idea that man is created in the image of God.
I must warn You that I have included some Extremely Graphic and Descriptive “adult only” bits within this piece, but they serve a purpose in the end. However, there’s enough substance to this piece to allow for it to be edited as seen necessary. ~ J.O.S. Continue reading →
Several Chicago Public School teachers are alleging that school administrators ordered them to pass all migrants to the next grade whether they had passing scores or not, and even when the kids did not speak English.
The shocking revelations come after more than a year of migrants flooding Chicago by the tens of thousands and the subsequent enrollment of thousands of migrant kids, many of whom do not speak English, and some who had very little or even no schooling prior to arriving in the Windy City. Continue reading →
Brace yourself: a tsunami approaches.
As the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) carries out widely-criticized responses to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, officials say the agency’s Disaster Recovery Fund is incapable of handling a third major storm.
October 12, 2013
“We lose total control. . .”
Editor’s Note:
September 04, 2008
Biden is operating a “secretive flights” program to fly hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens to the United States every year, according to records obtained by Todd Bensman at the Center for Immigration Studies.
The Democrats Are Doing Every Possible Thing to Enable Immigrant-invaders to vote.
As the so-called ‘border czar,’ Kamala had nearly four years to fix the border problem. She did nothing. Nothing at all. Now she’s full of solutions to her own border failures. Vote for Kamala so she can fix the problems she created.
Vice President Kamala Harris has proved capable of implicitly but unconvincingly reversing herself on many issues , including immigration , since she became the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, which is why her decision not to repudiate her 2019 mass amnesty plan is so alarming.
The White House has yet to comment on new data released to lawmakers showing the number of illegal immigrants with convictions for sex offenses and homicide convictions who are not in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention.
ICE: Over 425,000 Criminal Illegal Immigrants Not in Agency’s Custody, Including 13,099 Convicted Killers
More than 13,000 immigrants convicted of homicide — either in the United States or abroad — are living freely in the U.S., outside of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, according to data ICE provided to Congress earlier this week.
More than 660,000 criminal foreign nationals identified to be deported by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement are freely living in communities nationwide.
NBC Nightly News” was the only prime time network news program on Friday night to report on bombshell new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data revealing that over 400,000 illegals immigrants convicted of crimes are currently free in the United States.
Kamala Harris is visiting the US southern border for the first time since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee.
Harris on Friday said the US government is duty-bound to “set rules at our border and to enforce them” as she called for reform of the American immigration system.
A new study suggests that as many as 2.7 million non-citizens could vote in the 2024 election, leading some to voice concerns about coming election results potentially not reflecting the will of Americans citizens, who are the only ones permitted to vote in federal elections.
Supporting the First Amendment is now a partisan issue.
Represented by 
Lorena Benson, 15, a sophomore at Athens Drive High School in Raleigh, delivered a speech to the Wake County school board this week that quickly went viral.
The team was known as the Redskins from 1937-2019 but dropped its name ahead of the 2020 season (initially going by the Washington Football Team for two seasons) following years of social pressure – with many Native Americans finding the word to be racially insensitive.
I’ve used this title a couple of times in the past, that’s the reason for the subtitle ‘reprise.’
I’ve totally checked out of the “political scene” without really “checking out”, in that I still care about what happens to this fine country of ours and its people but I no longer worry about the final direction it takes, as I will deal with that in my own good time and way. I’ve just had to stop worrying so much, mainly for my health.
