Todd Smith

Orange County raised. USC grad. Love USC sports and Angels baseball. Seek return to traditional values and small govt.

[Todd Smith @SmithToddM]

@StallionCornell So the Tribune seeks a clarification President/Elder Oaks clarifies rightly the church does not demand apologies even after persecution mocking and desecrating things held sacred and then ignores the clarification. Thus it is a Mischaracterization here.

[Stephen Moore @StephenMoore]

Social Security is now projected to run out of money in six years.

There is only one way out of this crisis.

Let every worker under 40 invest 12% of their paycheck in a simple index fund and earn real returns on their own money.

It is yours, not the government's, and it cannot be taken away.

[Todd Smith @SmithToddM]

@Rainmaker1973 @billpostmus “From that day on so was runninG”

[Climate Realists🌞 @ClimateRealists]

Regular readers of this account would know, I’m a covert to Water Vapour forcing, rather than CO2. At present there is a media push for the next El Niño being exceptional, and yet its effect will be the result of Water Vapour forcing, not CO2. It’s a puzzling situation, that seems to be contradictory, if you are a believer in CO2 driven climate change.

I can only conclude any disastrous outcome that will come of this during the next few months or year, will be politically spun towards man made climate change, rather than a natural event.

[Library of Congress @librarycongress]

The Committee of Five—John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman—was appointed to draft the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago today.

Jefferson's draft of the document is here at the Library, and will be featured in a new exhibition opening July 3.

[Todd Smith @SmithToddM]

@BeyondTheHalo That’s a silly correlation is causation claim. 110 pitches is not a a big deal. It’s like that carton of milk goes from great to spoiled the next day because the date said so.

[Todd Smith @SmithToddM]

@BizballMaury I’m sure they’ve always been nice guys. But at 72 their perspective appreciation and outlook change and matures. They transition from infallible rock stars to realizing mortality. With age comes wisdom. Gratitude and humility are the keys to happiness. Good on them.

[Secretary Kennedy @SecKennedy]

Sheryl. Your article exemplifies the biased reporting we have come to expect from you and @nytimes. It was unfair, inimical, and inaccurate. All one needs to refute your argument is to glance at my publicly available calendar and to review my unprecedented list of accomplishments on a wide range of issues, all of which I drove. You evidently never undertook these foundational due diligences. Why let facts obscure a good story?

You fault me for missing a couple of monthly counselor meetings. However, I meet one-on-one with my counselors every day to decide policy and strategy. We schedule the monthly meetings to give the divisions a chance to keep each other informed about HHS-wide policies with which I’m already intimately familiar. Had you read my calendar, you would have seen that I have back-to-back meetings all day, every day, with both career and political staff, with my counselors and with outside stakeholders, interspersed with press conferences and other policy announcements.

I am knowledgeable and active on every issue in every division of my department, and I always make the final decisions. I meet with the principals at FDA, NIH, CDC, and my senior counselor every morning, something, I’m told, is unprecedented in HHS history. I try to get out of the office between 4:30 and 6:00 PM, so that I can spend three hours, in quiet, responding to emails. I normally work until 11 PM every night, mostly on phone calls to staff.

In order to prove your preconceived case for my disengagement, you quote anonymous employees, some of whom I fired or who quit to avoid being fired. You also deceptively quote HHS employees without identifying whether they were among those I fired, thereby depriving your readers of the opportunity to make an independent judgment about their credibility.

I came into this job to change the culture of a broken agency that has presided over the worst decline in public health in American history. Of course I fired people—lots of them! It's an easy task for even the laziest journalist, to comb that flotsam and jetsam for malevolence toward the Trump administration. And of course, this species of journalist will always be able to find disgruntled individuals among the 70,000 employees of the Department from whom to cherry pick "facts" to flesh out a preordained hit piece. All that is required for this brand of journalism is the ethical elasticity that you seem to have in spades. You had a preconceived thesis, and you set out to prove it. This is a widely accepted technique in journalism today, but I grew up in an era when it would not have been tolerated by the New York Times.

Ultimately, God puts us all on this earth to search for existential truths. I've tried to instill this mission at HHS by implementing gold standard research to end the regime of politicized science that COVID exposed to the American public. There was a time that journalists were proud to be the fearless and uncompromising champions of truth. Standards have devolved, and journalism is dead. The Times now employs propagandists. Your capitulation to partisanship further compounds your journalistic challenges; since we all are aware of your predictable bias, we at HHS are unwilling to talk to you about the topics that are important. The fact that you have minimal access to decision makers leaves you covering trivia and relying on your own capacity for invention.

Btw. When I took this job, the building was empty. About 90% of the employees were not coming to work. I changed that, but your newspaper never covers my reforms. Nor did you cover the fact that my predecessor almost never showed up for work here during his four years in office. When we came in, there were still artifacts from the first Trump administration in many of our office drawers because no one showed up for work during the Biden years. Just as Rochelle Walensky spent her entire term as CDC Director in Cambridge, Xavier Becerra reportedly spent most of his term as HHS Secretary in California. (I live in California, but I’ve only been there once in fifteen months).

His only notable accomplishments here were losing 300,000 children, referred to HHS for custody and care, to human traffickers and drug runners, encouraging transgender surgeries, and disabling the entire program-integrity apparatus, allowing hundreds of billions of dollars of theft from my agency. I have set out to find the children Becerra lost. He is now the front-runner for the governor of California. These are not invented stories; they are genuine scandals that the Times will never cover, presumably, because the malefactors are Democrats.

Finally, you criticize me for spending time with the Indian tribes in Alaska. I consider that part of my job. I run the Indian Health Services, and I’ve had unprecedented success in transforming IHS from a backwater to a top priority for this department. I’ve made more trips to Indian country and to Indian health clinics and hospitals than any HHS secretary in history, and I’ve brought Indians into high positions on the sixth floor for the first time in agency history. This is another success story that the Times will never cover.

[Todd Smith @SmithToddM]

@QuestioneveryC @TonyClimate That’s still not the case.

https://t.co/aN5IifSSgd

[Mike Netter @nettermike]

𝐃𝐄𝐌𝐎𝐂𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐒 𝐊𝐈𝐂𝐊𝐄𝐃 𝐄���𝐒𝐀𝐘𝐋𝐈 𝐎𝐅𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐌𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐄 — 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐖𝐄𝐃 𝐖𝐇𝐘 𝐎𝐍 𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐕𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐎

California state Republicans have a habit of getting silenced right before they expose something. Bill Essayli, California state legislator and Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney, was removed from the state Elections Committee by Democrats in Sacramento. His offense: 𝐟𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐯𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐈𝐃.

After they removed him, he went to the California state voter registration website and started recording.

“𝘐’𝘮 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘣𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘢 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘰 𝘷𝘰𝘵𝘦. 𝘖𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘱𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳’𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦, 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦’𝘴 𝘢 𝘣𝘰𝘹 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘢𝘺𝘴, 𝘐 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘦. 𝘐 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘦. 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶’𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘦𝘥.”

Both fields. Driver’s license: “𝘐 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘦.” Social Security: “𝘐 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘦.” Click both boxes and you are registered to vote in California—with no identity verification, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐧𝐨 𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐢𝐦𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐬.

Essayli asked the question Democrats do not want asked:

“��𝘩𝘺 𝘥𝘰 𝘸𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘵 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘰 𝘷𝘰𝘵𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘧𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘪𝘮𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘴? 𝘞𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘧𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴. 𝘞𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘤 𝘵𝘰 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘦 𝘷𝘰𝘵𝘦, 𝘪𝘵’𝘴 𝘴𝘦𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘷𝘰𝘵𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺.”

Democrats’ answer was to remove him from the committee before he could ask it in an official proceeding. The video answers the question for them: they built the system this way. The checkbox exists. The pathway exists. The legislature that controls it removed the man trying to close it.

California is running a $1 billion voter assistance program while simultaneously running a voter registration website that lets anyone claim no ID and proceed. One state, two systems: maximum access for unverified registrants, maximum punishment for the legislators who notice.

𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐤𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐢𝐦 𝐨𝐟𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠. 𝐇𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐧 𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐰𝐚𝐲.

[Wesley Hunt @WesleyHuntTX]

Hey Jasmine…

Black pilot here.

I think you missed the plot.
Then again, that’s becoming a pattern.

I graduated from West Point.
I went through Army flight school.
I learned to fly the AH-64 Apache.
I deployed to combat and flew 55 combat missions over Baghdad.

Nobody handed me a cockpit because of my skin color.

Nobody lowered the standards for me.

Nobody looked at me and said, “Let’s check a diversity box.”

That’s what people like you don’t seem to understand.

Suggesting that Black pilots, Black engineers, Black doctors, or Black leaders need special preferences to succeed is not empowering, it’s insulting.

I didn’t want a different standard.
I wanted the same standard.

And when you’re flying into combat, the American people don’t care what race the pilot is.

They care whether the pilot is qualified.

Merit isn’t racist.
Excellence isn’t discriminatory.

And reducing every achievement to skin color says far more about your worldview than it does about mine.

[Save Standard Time @SaveStandard]

And now the time has come to stop the Sunshine Protection Act! Permanent Daylight Saving Time is worse than clock changes. Natural health follows the sun with permanent Standard Time.

[Todd Smith @SmithToddM]

@MattRockwood @LDS_Dems You think it makes a difference one way or the other to those who say we’re not Cristian? It doesn’t. It is self evident Listing the Church correctly was good. I believe others will no longer include the Christian qualifier as it should have been. It remains a non issue

[Todd Smith @SmithToddM]

@danuapfan @SteveAustinWI Of course he’s list some range. He’s 72. Nearly everyone does.

[Todd Smith @SmithToddM]

@plasmarob Sure arranged marriages are the way of a loving parent. 😂

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

General Omar Bradley called it the most dangerous mission of D-Day. He was not wrong.

At 6:30am on June 6, 1944, 225 Army Rangers approached a 100-foot sheer cliff face on the Normandy coast called Pointe du Hoc.

Their mission: climb it.

The cliff was vertical. The Germans were at the top with full visibility of everyone below. As the Rangers fired grappling hooks upward, the Germans cut the ropes. Shot the men hanging on them. Dropped grenades over the edge onto the climbers beneath.

The Rangers kept climbing.

It took roughly 40 minutes. Men fell. Men were shot off the ropes. The ones behind them grabbed the ropes and kept going.

They reached the top.

Then came the gut punch: the massive 155mm artillery guns they had been sent to destroy were gone. The Germans had moved them inland before the invasion. The entire mission had been sent to destroy guns that weren't there.

Most commanders would have regrouped and called it done.

The Rangers fanned out. Two miles inland, they found the guns, hidden in an orchard, already aimed at Utah Beach and loaded to fire. They destroyed every one with thermite grenades.

Then they dug in. Cut off, with almost no ammunition, no reinforcements, and no resupply, 225 men held Pointe du Hoc against relentless German counterattacks for two full days.

When relief finally arrived, only 90 Rangers could still stand and fight.

Their names are carved on a memorial in Normandy. Most Americans today cannot name a single one.

[Sowell Economics @sowelleconomics]

“The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates.”

- Thomas Sowell