Berlin Airlift in Reverse: U.S. Flying Baby Formula From Germany~”GERMAN FORMULA EXPRESS” COMPANY TAKING RETAIL ORDERS

May 22, 2022 John

Berlin Airlift 1948-1949 - COLD WAR DOCUMENTARY

Our series on the history of the Cold War period continues with a documentary on the Berlin airlift - the operation conducted by the Western powers in order to supply Berlin, which was under the Soviet Blockade.

GERMAN FORMULA EXPRESS TAKING ORDERS:

BY RICK MORAN

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/05/22/berlin-airlift-in-reverse-u-s-flying-baby-formula-from-germany-n1599847;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

In June 1948, the Soviet Union blockaded the partitioned city of Berlin, hoping to force the recently victorious allies to leave.

It didn’t work. “Operation VITTLES,” a military airlift of hundreds of tons of food, medicine, and other supplies, kept the Soviets from their goal. For more than a year, hundreds of planes flew in supplies to the isolated city until they finally relented.

There’s some irony in the news today about U.S. military planes flying baby formula from Germany to Indiana. Only this time, the threat isn’t from a foreign power. The threat is from the criminal incompetence of the Biden administration, which ignored the baby formula crisis for months until the media began to report on it.

Stars and Stripes:

More than 130 pallets filled with formula departed for Indianapolis on a C-17 aircraft a little after 5 a.m. Germany time as part of Operation Fly Formula. Each pallet of Nestle Health Science Alfamino Infant and Alfamino Junior formula held over 430 of the 14.1-ounce containers of formula, labels on the packaging showed.

Another 114 pallets of Gerber Good Start Extensive HA formula are expected to arrive soon, the White House said in a statement Thursday, adding that the equivalent of up to 1.5 million 8-ounce bottles of the three formulas will be delivered.

The crisis began in early February when the FDA discovered a rare kind of bacteria that may have contaminated some formula that ended up sickening four infants. It was never established that the bacteria came from the Abbott Nutrition plant in Sturgis, Mich. But there were some other problems with sanitation at the plant, and it was shuttered.

From February on, the clock was ticking on this crisis. And the Biden administration was asleep at the wheel.

All of the measures taken by the White House to deal with this crisis, including the president invoking the Defense Production Act and this latest public relations stunt to deliver a few dozen pallets of formula to America, won’t adequately address the immediate crisis.

Simply put, the Biden administration was caught flat-footed and wasn’t ready.

NRO:

There aren’t any fundamental problems with producing baby formula. How do we know? Europeans, Japanese, and Australians are producing it just fine. There’s only a baby-formula shortage in the United States, and it’s because the United States government has adopted policies that allowed what should have been a relatively minor market disruption to turn into a widespread, prolonged shortage.

Instead of allowing parents to buy foreign formula as they would buy any other good, the Biden administration is making a big show of airlifting it here with specially contracted flights. The United States of America should not be dependent on airlifts for an adequate supply of baby formula. As Eric Boehm pointed out for Reason, if foreign brands of baby formula are safe to be airlifted now, they should be available for purchase all the time. It’s clear that the 98-percent-domestic baby-formula market leaves Americans vulnerable to supply shocks that the rest of the world doesn’t face.

No “supply bottlenecks” or “disruptions” caused this crisis. The shortage isn’t the fault of the pandemic wreaking havoc on the supply chains.

The administration didn’t start addressing this crisis until earlier this month despite having a lead time of at least 2.5 months. But the media continues to run interference for the doddering old fool in the White House because they’d rather assist in Biden’s lies than do anything to make the president’s political problems worse.

____________________________________________________________

AND: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10825003/Nestle-airlifting-baby-formula-Netherlands-Switzerland-amid-crisis.html

GERMAN BABY FORMULA AVAILABLE HERE: https://germanformulaexpress.com/

BIDEN DESPERATELY HAS GERMANY AIRLIFT BABY FORMULA TO THE UNITED STATES

POLICE STATE NEW JERSEY: Cory Booker Wants Federal Licensing For ALL GUN PURCHASES!

May 22, 2022 John

POLICE STATE NEW JERSEY

READ ABOUT IT: https://www.westernjournal.com/red-al... STOP BOOKERS PLAN: https://www.beatbookersbill.com Cory Booker is up to his old schemes again, this time bringing down the gun control hammer hard to require a federal license for every firearm purchase you make. These licenses would require training classes and secure storage, can be denied for any reason, and would be limited, all at the discretion of the Attorney General.

Trio of Democrats unveil federal gun licensing bill

A gun control proposal by Sens. Cory Booker, Richard Blumenthal, and Robert Menendez would require all gun owners to be licensed by the federal government, and that's just the start of the unconstitutional infringements on our 2A rights contained within the newly introduced legislation.

Joe Biden Is the Equivalent of 9/11 for the American Economy

May 22, 2022 John

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2022/05/20/joe-biden-is-the-equivalent-of-9-11-for-the-american-economy-n1599568;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Joe Biden’s tumultuous year and a half of pretending to be president has seen the fall and rise of many things in the United States: gas prices, of course, are rising through the roof, along with prices on pretty much everything else. But for the stock market, it’s a different story altogether. Yahoo Finance reported Friday that U.S. stocks have just endured their longest losing streak since 2001; in other words, Joe Biden’s presidency has had an effect on the U.S. economy that is equivalent to 9/11.

This is not in any way to diminish the untold suffering that resulted from the attacks. Nearly 3,000 people were brutally murdered. There is no equivalent for that and no mitigation of its horror. The analogy between then and now is not in that but in the fact that the economy is suffering to a degree that we have not seen since the immediate aftermath of that terrible day.

According to Yahoo Finance, the major stock indexes were “heading for steep weekly losses as concerns over the resilience of corporate profits in the face of inflation resurged this week.” Luckily, Old Joe’s Commie pals threw us a lifeline: “the S&P 500 traded lower, erasing earlier gains after China’s central bank unexpectedly cut a benchmark interest rate to offer some relief to borrowers in the country still grappling with a widespread COVID-19 outbreak.”

Nonetheless, “the index dropped more than 1.5%, bringing it on an intraday basis lower by more than 20% from its recent record close from Jan. 3. If the losses hold through market close, the S&P 500 will have entered a bear market.” Well, of course, we will. That is as certain as Joe’s next teleprompter gaffe.

Meanwhile, the news from the other indexes was no better: “the Dow shed more than 400 points or 1.4%, and the Nasdaq dropped more than 2% during intraday trading. Treasury yields sank, with the yield on the benchmark 10-year note sinking to just above 2.8%, and U.S. crude oil prices edged up to more than $112 per barrel.” And this has been going on for a while: “the losses Friday for the major U.S. stock indexes extended a slide seen earlier this week. As of Thursday’s close, the S&P 500 was on track for a weekly loss of 5.4% — its biggest since January. And the index was also on track to post a seventh straight weekly loss or its longest losing streak since 2001. The Dow and Nasdaq paced toward weekly losses of 5% and 6.2%, respectively.”

The longest losing streak since 2001. What happened in 2001 that made stocks take a nosedive? According to CNN Money, that fateful year “began with a bang. The Nasdaq surged a record 14.17 percent on the second trading day of 2001 after the Federal Reserve surprised investors with a half-percentage point rate cut. That was the first of 11 attempts by central bankers to revive consumer and business spending. Stocks continued to rise in January only to tumble by April. They gained sharply through May before gradually declining through summer.”

But then came 9/11, and suddenly the economic picture was drastically different: “the Dow industrials fell more than 1,300 points in the first week after the markets reopened following the terror attacks, its worst week since the Great Depression. By Sept. 21, the major indexes had fallen to three-year lows. But less than 10 weeks later, the major indexes erased their post-Sept. 11 losses, vindicating investors who called for patriotic buying after the attack.”

Will the American economy similarly rebound now? It could, but there is no chance of such a recovery while Joe Biden and his henchmen have their knees on our collective economic windpipe. It is the Biden administration’s profligate spending, an uncontrolled increase of the money supply, and relentless commitment to green fantasies and socialist internationalism that have gotten us in this fix, and there is no end in sight.

Could the stock market recover? Sure, if Biden suddenly became an America-First president and focused on relieving the plight of the American people rather than the Ukrainian people and if he abandoned his schemes to destroy the economy chasing more green delusions and worked to restore the energy independence the nation had achieved during the Trump administration. But that’s about as likely as Old Joe reading a message off his teleprompter without saying something silly and/or incoherent.

The next milestone will be when the stock downturn becomes the worst since the Great Depression. Watch for that one soon. And then what will we see in America? Breadlines? Hoovervilles? Food riots? In Joe Biden’s America, during the presidency that Nancy Pelosi gushed was “perfect,” all this and more is in the offing. Old Joe Biden’s presidency will long be remembered for its many milestones, and wrecking the strongest economy on the planet will stand as one of the foremost.

Biden Administration Continues to Violate the Taylor Force Act

May 22, 2022 John

BY HUGH FITZGERALD

SEE: https://robertspencer.org/2022/05/biden-administration-continues-to-violate-the-taylor-force-act;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

The Bidenites have ignored the Taylor Force Act ever since they took over in Washington. That is the act, passed overwhelmingly by Congress in 2018, that prohibits the American government from giving aid to the PA as long as its “Pay-For-Slay” program is in operation. That “Pay-For-Slay” program provides generous subsidies to imprisoned terrorists for their lifetimes, and also to the families of terrorists who were killed while committing their attacks.

Even though “Pay-for-Slay” remains in place, and Mahmoud Abbas has defiantly proclaimed that he will continue to fund the program “even with my last penny, ”the Bidenites have sent hundreds of millions of dollars in economic aid to the PA. A report on this continuing scandal is here: “How the Palestinians Pay Terrorists as Biden Pumps Millions of Aid Dollars Into Their Government,” by Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon, May 16, 2022:

The Palestinian Authority allocates hundreds of millions of dollars to terrorists and their families even as the Biden administration pumps U.S. taxpayer funds into the Palestinian government, according to a non-public State Department report issued to Congress and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The report, published on May 10, details how the Palestinian government runs afoul of a U.S. law that bars it from receiving American aid dollars until these terror payments, known as the “pay-to-slay program,” are stopped. The PA in 2019, the most recent reporting period available, allocated over $150 million to convicted terrorists. Another $191 million was paid to the families of terrorists who were “martyred” while conducting attacks against Israelis and Americans. There is no sign these payments will end, with Palestinian leaders voicing support on the international stage for the program.

The PA has not terminated payments for acts of terrorism against Israeli and U.S. citizens to any individual, after being fairly tried, who has been imprisoned for such acts of terrorism and to any individual who died committing such acts of terrorism, including to a family member of such individuals,” the State Department concluded. The PA makes these payments in cash as part of an effort to obfuscate its actions and stop the international community from holding it accountable for awarding terrorists and their families, according to the State Department’s findings.

The report comes as the Biden administration pushes to increase U.S. aid dollars to the PA, which were terminated during the Trump administration as a result of the “pay-to-slay” program. More than $360 million in U.S. funding was given to the PA in 2021, potentially in violation of a bipartisan law known as the Taylor Force Act, which prohibits the American government from giving the Palestinians aid as long as they pay terrorists. The Biden administration maintains that the aid programs do not violate the law, though it is unclear what safeguards have been put on the funding to ensure it is not used to pay terrorists and their families. The State Department confirmed that no “economic support funds” were withheld as a result of restrictions in the Taylor Force Act.

Unembarrassed to be violating the Taylor Force Act, the Bidenites now have the chutzpah to ask for even more money for the PA. The Bidenites say the aid it gives the PA does not violate the law, but even if every dollar sent by the Americans is allocated for schools or hospitals, that merely frees up other money that was to be spent on those schools and hospitals, but now will be spent on those imprisoned terrorists and families of dead terrorists. There is no way to give the PA money without helping it fund its “Pay-For-Slay” program.

The Biden administration is strongly opposed to the prisoner payment system and has consistently engaged the Palestinian Authority to end this practice,” a State Department spokesman told the Free Beacon. The U.S. Agency for International Development’s “assistance in the West Bank and Gaza is implemented consistent with U.S. law.”

The Bidenites can try to appeal to Mahmoud Abbas to end the “Pay-For-Slay” program all they want, and can express just how “strongly opposed” they are to the program, but none of that has any effect on the Palestinians. The only thing that will work is exactly what the Taylor Force Act does: cutting off all American aid to the PA as long as “Pay-For-Slay” continues. There is no other way.

The Bidenites, whatever their claims about “Pay-For-Slay,” are just as determined not to cut off their aid to the PA as the PA is to keep “Pay-For-Slay” going. What is it that makes the Bidenites so eager to give hundreds of millions of dollars each year to the corrupt regime in Ramallah that has been praising the rioters on the Temple Mount, and the recent spate of killings of 19 Israelis, the regime that threatens to “cut off” all ties to Israel because the Jewish state dares to fight back against those who would do it harm?

No, the USAID is dead wrong when it claims that “assistance in the West Bank and Gaza is implemented consistent with U.S. law.” The Bidenites have been ignoring the Taylor Force Act, simply stating with maddening chutzpah that the aid they give the PA is “consistent with U.S. law.” No, it isn’t, and their claim, without even an attempt to justify it — as if none were needed — is infuriating. This is the Bidenites’ way: we say it is so, so it must be so. Ipse dixit. If they keep repeating this falsehood, they’re hoping it will be accepted. Certainly, the “progressive” Democrats who are delighted to keep funding the PA will raise no objections.

Let’s be clear: the Taylor Force Act says that the American government must not give aid to the PA as long as it continues to support its “Pay-For-Slay” program. The law is unambiguous. The Biden Administration suggests that the money it gives to the PA is not money that is spent by it to support the “Pay-For-Slay” program. But this is nonsense. Money is fungible. If the Americans gave the PA $360 million dollars in 2021, even if they were to specify that it must be used “for humanitarian aid,” that simply freed up $360 million from elsewhere in the PA’s budget, which is spent on “Pay-For-Slay.”

Republicans in Congress disagree with the Bidenites’ assessment.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), for example, says the Biden administration cannot guarantee that the PA is not using U.S. funds as part of its terror financing program. Since the PA moved to a cash system, it is even harder to track which tranches of money are being used to fund “pay to slay.”

Of course, the Bidenites cannot guarantee where the money they send to the PA is spent.

“The Biden administration is ideologically committed to elevating the Palestinian government and pouring money into Palestinian territories,” Cruz told the Free Beacon. “They’ve been doing this while they clearly knew that the same Palestinian government was inciting terrorism and using fungible money to reward terrorism against Israelis and Americans. It’s disgraceful and unacceptable.”…

“Disgraceful and unacceptable.” Of course. But when has that ever stopped the Bidenites?

Rand Paul Says We’ll Borrow From China to Pay Ukraine

May 22, 2022 John

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2022/05/20/rand-paul-reveals-the-shocking-truth-of-where-the-aid-money-for-ukraine-is-really-coming-from-n1599547;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Old Joe Biden’s presidency has not been bereft of accomplishments. He has erased America’s Southern border, brought in well over a million unvetted migrants, drastically reduced America’s prestige and influence worldwide, destroyed the energy independence the nation achieved during the Trump administration, and has overseen catastrophic rises in gas prices and, indeed, in prices overall.

And now, amid a baby formula shortage and a time when Americans are suffering from an economic crisis that threatens to be larger than any such downturn since the Great Depression, we are sending $40 billion to Ukraine. According to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Biden’s handlers aren’t going to come up with that money simply by firing up the printing presses and afflicting the American people with more inflation; instead, we’re borrowing it from Communist China. What could possibly go wrong?

As PJM’s Athena Thorne noted a week ago, Paul has been a staunch opponent of the Ukraine aid package, saying: “Reserving the right to object, my oath of office is to the U.S. Constitution, not to any foreign nation. And no matter how sympathetic the cause, my oath of office is to the national security of the United States of America. We cannot save Ukraine by dooming the U.S. economy.” He pointed out that “gasoline alone is up 48 percent, and energy prices are up 32 percent over the last year. Food prices have increased by nearly 9 percent. Used vehicle prices are up 35 percent for the year, and new vehicle prices have increased 12 percent or more.”

And so dooming the American economy does seem to be exactly what Biden’s handlers are doing. Paul said Wednesday: “I think it’s important to know that we don’t have any money to send, we have to borrow money from China to send it to Ukraine. And I think most people kind of get that, and many Republicans will say that when it’s a new social program, but if it’s military aid to a country, they’re like we can borrow that, that’s a justified borrowing.”

He pointed out that the Republicans who voted to send this aid to Ukraine were undermining the argument that Biden was responsible for the current skyrocketing inflation: “The problem is that it all leads to inflation, so it kind of hurts the Republican argument that Biden’s spending and Biden’s debt leads to inflation, except for when it’s bipartisan spending and that doesn’t really count.”

Indeed. The Ukraine aid vote is more evidence that there is just one big political party in Washington, with two major factions that see eye-to-eye on most everything, differing only in minor matters of priority and procedure. “This is the bipartisan consensus right now on Ukraine,” Paul continued. “Republican and Democrat leadership are exactly the same. So they get together. But in order to get together to get this, it’s guns and butter, you look at the $40 billion, it’s a lot of guns, but in order to get the gun they had to give out a lot of butter and so there’s a lot of spending going to European countries for food throughout the world. What we’ve done is given away the farm to make us weaker.” Yes, and there will come a time when the bills will have to be paid.

Meanwhile, the principal beneficiaries of all this are the Communist Chinese, who will come out of the Russia-Ukraine conflict considerably strengthened and facing a drastically weakened Russia (no matter what the outcome of the war is), and the United States which has had its resources depleted under the auspices of the reckless, feckless, America-Last Biden regime. Will the money the U.S. will have to pay back to China go to fund an invasion of Taiwan or some other global adventurism?

Whatever happens, it is difficult to see how any of this can end well for the United States. The administration continues to pursue relentlessly inflationary policies that are now threatening to bring the entire economy to a standstill. Do Biden’s handlers have any regard for the American people at all? Or are they so determined to pursue their internationalist socialist fantasies that they don’t care if they bring economic disaster upon the nation and plunge millions of Americans into poverty? After all, those who cannot support themselves will be forced to rely on the nation’s social safety net and will become more inclined to vote for the party that will keep that safety net as capacious and comfortable as possible. So for the elites, there’s just no downside.

Loudoun County School Board Moves to Block Investigation of Sexual Assaults it Covered Up

May 22, 2022 John

BY MATT MARGOLIS

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/05/21/loudoun-county-school-board-moves-to-block-investigation-of-sexual-assaults-it-covered-up-n1599694;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Loudoun County, Va. made the national spotlight last year after a ninth-grade girl was raped in the girls’ restroom and the school board actively tried to cover it up.

The school did not report the 15-year-old girl’s assault to the police, choosing instead to handle the case in-house because the assault was one of two committed by a “gender-fluid” boy wearing a skirt. When the victim’s father confronted the school, he was arrested.

Upon taking office, Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares ordered a grand jury investigation into multiple allegations against Loudoun County Public Schools, and now the school board is desperately trying to stop it.

According to a local report, the Loudoun County School Board is seeking a temporary injunction to halt the special grand jury, claiming Youngkin exceeded his power by ordering it.

This move by the school board is curious, considering they previously agreed to cooperate with the investigation.

“Loudoun County Public Schools stated publicly they would cooperate with the special grand jury,” Miyares spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita said in an email to WTOP News. “Asking for an injunction is just the latest in a series of efforts to prevent the citizens of Loudoun from learning the truth about conditions existing in Loudoun County public schools that promote criminal activity, proving this investigation is warranted and necessary. This injunction is a waste of taxpayer money and the investigation will continue.”

This reversal is by no means the first time LCPS has tried to avoid accountability for covering up sexual assaults in their school. Earlier this year, LCPS refused to release an investigative report on their handling of the two sexual assault cases, under the guise of protecting the families involved.

It seems obvious that Loudoun County Public Schools is still aggressively trying to cover up its own misconduct because protecting itself is a much higher priority than protecting its students.