The RPI Challenge

I have been writing about the controversial funding of the Global Disinformation Index by the congressionally-creating and federal funded National Endowment for Democracy. I recently disclosed that, after my Hill column ran, NED contacted me to say that it was stopping any further funding of the GDI. However, major questions still remain on the NED’s funding of this highly flawed scoring system that targeted conservative and libertarian sites. This is an effort to deter advertisers from...

Autocrats only understand one word: no, no, no. No you will not take my country, no you will not take my freedom, no you will not take my future… A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never be able to ease the people’s love of liberty. Brutality will never grind down the will of the free.”—President Biden Oh, the hypocrisy.To hear President Biden talk about the Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, you might imagine that Putin is the only dictator bent on expanding his military empire...

According to the January report of the Consumer Price Index, price inflation increased by 0.5 percent last month. This follows a 0.1 percent increase in December. The total increase over the last 12 months is 6.4 percent. The official government statistics, which are manipulated to understate the true rate of price inflation, show even greater increases in some costs. Over the last 12 months, food prices increased by 10.1 percent, energy prices increased by 8.7 percent, and shelter costs rose...

One would think that the United States military staging an unprovoked “plausibly deniable” covert attack on a nation with which it is not at war would be at least considered newsworthy. That the attack did grave damage to a country with which the US is closely allied would seem to make the aggression even more unthinkable. And, perhaps worst of all, that the attack was set up by the nation’s chief executive using a political bypass that avoided congressional oversight and adherence to the war...

Reacting to China's announcement that it will be putting forward a proposal for a political settlement to end the war in Ukraine, the US ambassador to the United Nations said that if China begins arming Russia in that conflict this will be a "red line" for the United States.“We welcome the Chinese announcement that they want peace because that’s what we always want to pursue in situations like this. But we also have to be clear that if there are any thoughts and efforts by the Chinese and...

Nikki Haley announced yesterday to her handful of fans that she is running for president of the United States. Less Than 1k Tuning Into The Nikki Haley Announcement pic.twitter.com/kxnU7yo3Da — The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) February 15, 2023 Haley swears that she is a legit contender, though her speech made it sound more like she is running for the board of Raytheon. Noticeably absent from her speech, in which she declared Russia and China as “enemies” of America, was any mention of...

I will be speaking today in Colorado on the “Rise and Fall of the American Fourth Estate.” The speech explores the legal and political history of the free press in our democracy — and its rapid decline in the age of advocacy journalism. This week, a poll was released that shows just how much ground has been lost by this generation of journalists. Gallup and the Knight Foundation found that 50 percent of Americans believe that the news media lies in order to promote an agenda. Only 25 percent...

Goodbye Disinformation Board, Hello Disinformation Index. Less than a year after many celebrated the disbanding of the Biden’s Administration Disinformation Board, it appears that the Administration has been funding a British group to rank sites to warn people about high-risk disinformation sites. The Global Disinformation Index (GDI) has released its index and every one of the high-risk sites turn out to be . . . wait for it . . . conservative or libertarian sites. HuffPost or Mother...

President Biden on Thursday acknowledged that the three unidentified objects he ordered the US military to shoot down were likely harmless weather balloons. “The intelligence community’s current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation, or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research,” Biden said. Following the panic caused by the Chinese balloon that floated over the United States, US fighter jets...

Last Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee meeting provided some much-needed insight into how corporate personnel at Twitter (before Elon Musk’s takeover) had essentially turned the company into an adjunct of the federal government and its intelligence agencies. Present to testify were high-ranking company personnel who oversaw Twitter during the covid panic and in the early days of the Hunter Biden laptop controversy. Specifically, they were former employees Yoel Roth, Anika Collier Navaroli,...

International conflict cries out for statesmanship. It calls for the kind of leadership that rises above the passions of the moment, takes the long view, considers the legitimate interests of all, and looks for creative solutions. The temperament of statesmanship is prudence and restraint. This type of leadership requires not only relevant experience but a historical perspective, critical distance to the present, and imagination. There also can be no statesmanship, no diplomacy, without...

Hysterics at the Chinese balloon overflying the US – taken to volume 11 – through scrambling a hush-hush Raptor jet (F-22) to ‘pop’ it, and then bally-hooing the ‘pop’ as Raptor’s first ever ‘air-to-air kill’, may be a source for quiet derision around the world, yet paradoxically this seemingly trivial event may cast a long shadow over the US war-timetable for Ukraine. For it is the US political calendar that may yet determine what happens next in Ukraine – from the western side. Seemingly...

In 1935, Major General Smedley Butler’s seminal book “War Is A Racket” warned of the dangers of the US military-industrial complex, more than 25 years before the outgoing US President Eisenhower implored the world to “guard against” the same thing. One of the most decorated soldiers in US military history, Butler knew what he was talking about, famously writing that war is “…conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.” While he lamented the loss of his fallen...

On Saturday, President Biden sent a USG fighter aircraft to shoot down… something over the Yukon in Canada. This is the third such alleged shootdown. The second one is said to have occurred on Friday over Alaska, according to the stenographic media. It “reports” what the government wants you to know—and in the case of the attack of the weather balloons, they want you to know virtually nothing—except it is the sinister behavior of those darn spy-obsessed commies in China. The “object” over the...

Twenty years ago this spring the US government was finally successful in lying us into war with Iraq. Administration after administration had sanctioned and bombed and even invaded the country, but finally 20 years ago next month the Bush Administration unleashed “shock and awe” to flatten a country that did not and could not threaten the United States.After eight years of battle in Iraq perhaps as many as a million innocent people died, either directly or indirectly, from Washington’s...