The Shoe Is On The Other Foot

Posted on 28/10/2025 by Grumpa Joe
Soros, Funders of Domestic Terrorism, Form ‘Coalition’ Against Fed Investigations
Mon, 27 Oct 2025 2:13 PM PST by Daniel Greenfield

The Soros clan, along with other family foundations of the liberal elite, Knight, MacArthur, Ford, Omidyar, and the Rockefellers, have announced that they’re teaming up to fight investigations by the Justice Department.

While Alex Soros, George’s son, bragged that he would not give in, “over my dead body”, the presidents of the MacArthur and McKnight Foundations have declared that everyone needs to dust off their “crisis plans” and put their “legal teams on speed dial” ahead of a crackdown.

What are they afraid of?

The Unite in Advance coalition was formed so quickly by the big liberal grantmaking groups funding radicalism to form a ‘united front’ that it didn’t even have the time to build a site.

While Unite in Advance’s joint letter mentions the Charlie Kirk assassination and subsequent investigations of Antifa and other radical groups, an initial version of this ‘unity’ push had come out back in April with over 700 leftist groups, led by the MacArthur Foundation and, despite the claims of ‘non-violence’ included signatories like the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, where a key figure supported Hezbollah, the Soros network, which has provided money to extremist and terrorist front groups, and BLM funders like the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

The latest incarnation of what the radical leftist funders are billing as the ‘Freedom to Give’ complains that they are being portrayed as “contributing to those acts of violence” and accuses unnamed figures, seemingly conservatives and the Trump administration, of plotting to “silence speech, criminalize opposing viewpoints, and misrepresent and limit charitable giving.”

After decades of trying to censor, ‘debank’ and ban conservative groups, the funders of these efforts are suddenly hailing a “freedom to give” when the investigation risks turning their way.

It’s nice that the Knight Foundation, a major SPLC donor, and which also provided millions to fund ‘disinformation’ research which was used to deplatform and silence opposing groups, has suddenly come around to believing in the value of free speech. But only when it’s their speech.

But speech, on either side, isn’t a crime. Funding domestic terrorism however is.

The frantic calls for unity, the 700+ signatories of the April letter and the 200 plus and counting foundations that have signed on to the ‘Unite in Advance’ letter are rightly worried about their legal exposure to funding foreign and domestic terrorist groups, rioters and others engaged in criminal activities that, as Freedom Center Investigates has shown over the years, violates their nonprofit status.

Take the Climate Emergency Fund, a 501(c)(3), funding some of the environmental vandalism in America and around the world, which received a founding grant from the Aileen Getty Foundation. The Getty Foundation bragged about “Greta Thunberg and disruptive groups like Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion” which vandalized art masterpieces around the world.

Then there was the financial backing for the BLM movement from big nonprofit players like the Ford Foundation and W.K. Kellogg. And there’s the Soros backing for groups involved in the campus pro-Hamas riots and the more recent anti-ICE riots. Even the legal ‘non-violent’ No Kings protests can fall afoul of the tax-exempt nonprofit status of an organization depending on how they are being conducted.

Free speech is sacrosanct, but that doesn’t cover burning down neighborhoods, assaulting police officers, attacking Jewish students on campus or vandalizing art museums. Nor, for that matter, does it cover blocking roadways, shutting down Congress and other illegal activities that have been billed as ‘civil disobedience’ but that serve as grounds for loss of tax-exempt status.

The big lefty foundations assumed that they could not and would not be held accountable. Now they’re panicking because the Trump administration is moving to finally impose accountability.

The billionaire funders of leftist hate and violence have taken to pretending that they’re “charitable giving organizations” that contribute to “communities”, helping “new parents and elders, veterans and school children, hospitals and libraries.”

The reality is that the vast majority of their ‘giving’ is political.

You don’t go to George Soros if you’re hungry. The Open Society Foundations describe giving grants to “movements, coalitions, networks, collectives and even informal groups”.

Not soup kitchens.

The MacArthur Foundation lists categories such as ‘climate solutions’ and ‘criminal justice’. The first signatory to the Unite in Advance letter is the Action for Transformation Fund which announced that it’s “moving resources to trans-led organizing”.

Other signatories include the Foundation for Systemic Change that works to “highlight ongoing economic, political, social, racial, ethnic, and environmental inequities”, the Fund for Nonviolence, which ironically helped unleash a crime wave, and iF, A Foundation for Radical Possibility, which focuses on ‘systemic racism’.

None of this is charity, it’s leftist political organizing, and the refusal by the signatories to come out and say so, or to hide behind smaller local nonprofits, is dishonest and shameful.

If these big foundations had been funding soup kitchens, hospitals and libraries, rather than political organizing and radical violence, they wouldn’t need to preemptively form a ‘Unite in Advance’ front. And the heads of the MacArthur and McKnight foundations wouldn’t be urging foundations to “stand in solidarity”, organizing for mutual defense against “threats”.

They’re not afraid of being busted for feeding the poor, but for feeding violence and hate.

Now the groups that tried to shut down their political opponents are rallying to the Constitution and the First Amendment, things they never believed in and had worked to destroy, but suddenly rediscovered just in time to become born-again patriots and lovers of freedom.

But no one is buying it.

When these leftist groups had the chance, they tried to eliminate the political opposition. Now they’re terrified of having the actual laws, not imaginary laws about ‘disinformation’, but actual tax code regulations and domestic terrorism laws, being enforced against their activities.

And wouldn’t that be a shame.



Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Filed under: Conservative, liberals, politics | Tagged: , | 3 Comments »

Burning Gas-Northern IL Corn Harvest

Posted on 26/10/2025 by Grumpa Joe

Today, I shocked Lovely by asking if she wanted to take a ride. “Yes,” she replied instantly; “where?”

What Lovely Expected to See.

“It’ll be a surprise.” She left to get into her touring clothes, and I went to put on a pair of shoes. I didn’t have a plan, but she suggested that we sit at home too much and that we should go to a park for some fresh air. Her favorite place in Illinois is Starved Rock State Park. Her deceased son, Freddie, often took her there. In the back of my mind, I thought Starved Rock would be a good destination.

I fired up the Death Star, and she said we must go to Walmart to return some clothing I bought that doesn’t fit, and then to PetSmart to get kitty litter for Jerry’s cat. “That’s not a ride,” I said, “it’s a shopping trip.”

“Oh,” she replied in a tone that suggested dissatisfaction. “Okay, okay, I’ll take you to PetSmart.”

“And Walmart too.” I put it in gear and left town by the back door to get her into a different mood. “Isn’t Walmart on Lincoln Highway?” she asked. My ploy to get her mind off of kitty litter didn’t work for a single second. We continued along my path. “I promise we will get kitty litter.” She lectured me on how, when she promises somebody something, it is the first thing she does. My intention was to check out the countryside while we had a sunny bright day and to then kill the remainder of time shopping before we returned.

We finally got onto Interstate 80 at Joliet and sped onward to Morris. I needed gas, so I pulled into a truck stop and filled up with the lowest-cost gas I have used in the past four years, $2.89/gal; that same gallon costs $3.29/ gal in Frankfort. Back on the highway, I enjoyed seeing that the farmers had harvested at least 90% of the corn and soybean crop. The small irregular fields still left with corn were probably left for last because it is a big pain in the ass to break down and set up so often for the little output. It is Sunday and not many fields were being worked. I did see one old combine chugging along taking down about ten rows of corn. The machine was so old, all the paint was worn off and I couldn’t tell what color it was. The predominant color of Illinois tractors, combines, trailers, conveyers is John Deere Green.

Back in the day when I was still in college and not yet certified as a Mechanical Engineer I worked during summers at International Harvester as a Gofer. The only color farm equipment in all of Illinois was red. Thanks to the same UAW union that nearly bankrupted the car companies, IH, combined with its poor management, went out of business. They sold off profitable products to competing farm equipment manufacturers, so there is still a smattering of red left in the agricultural world.

What Lovely Saw.

I enjoyed the ride, inspecting the harvest status, while Lovely mumbled about not seeing any trees. She expected a fall color tour.

Eventually, I made left turns at two junctions, and we were pointed back toward home. We exited I-80 at New Lenox and pulled into the mall to shop PetSmart and Walmart. From there, I stopped at the Rising Sun Chinese restaurant and ordered takeout to polish off the day.

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One Sided Funnies

Posted on 24/10/2025 by Grumpa Joe

Filed under: Cartoons, Government, politics, Satire | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

A Wild Seven-Year-Old’s Dreams

Posted on 12/10/2025 by Grumpa Joe

GREAT WHITE HUNTER

Those long, hot summer days on the farm challenged my imagination to the limits. Every day I had something to do, yet it felt like I had nothing to do. I call that boredom. One of my favorite daydreams was to be a pioneer. I dreamed of carving out a place to live in the wilderness. My games all centered on pioneer life.

The back acreage on the farm was very wild. Gramps had a small vineyard and an apple orchard, followed by a field of blackberries and another of boysenberries. Behind that, the farm was more primitive. My seven-year-older brother Bill has a different recollection of the farm. When he was my age, Mom and Gramps tilled the entire acreage. They kept chickens, pigs and a cow. Gramps also had a horse named Nellie. By the time I was born and old enough to recall, the neat little farmstead had reverted to nature. It was wild and very overgrown. Witness lines still defined the fields. A path coursed between them, but not much else.

The soil was extremely sandy and dry up to the edge of the woods. At that point, the terrain dropped into a wetland. The grasses that grew there were easily two feet taller than me, and the large swarm of Mosquitos and bugs attacked me each time I went exploring. The forest folded around the wetland. A creek wound its way out of the grasses and disappeared into the forest, dividing the property. The geological map of the area indicates that the creek is intermittent, meaning it dries up during the summer. I never saw it completely dry, but often I could jump across the flowing water. Most of the time, crossing the stream meant finding a log jam to balance on as I stepped from log to log. It was never really deep water, but who wanted to get wet. If I came home with wet socks and shoes, Mom would know and lecture me on the dangers of being in the woods alone.

Once across the creek, I climbed a sandy knoll and came out of the woods into a sandy lea. The forest again surrounded the opening. It was in this clearing that I explored the fringes near the trees. I often picked up items of interest as I walked. One time, I picked up a funny-looking grey stone. The surface looked chiseled. I didn’t think much of it at the time so I dropped it into my pocket and forgot about it.

As I explored the woods and the clearings, I was always on the lookout for animal tracks. Yet, in all the years I spent on the farm, I never spotted a wild animal. I found tracks in the sand every time I explored in the back. Deer tracks were abundant, and once I found some huge, wide prints that I imagined were from a bear. Most likely, they were from a large dog.

Later, I pulled the stone from my pocket and looked at it more closely. Every day, I looked at the stone. Finally, I realized that I had found an arrow point. That really got my juices flowing. My play shifted from pioneering as a settler to that of the Indian. I hunted the forest for slender Sassafras trees, which I fashioned into a bow and some arrows. The best I could find were sassafras trees. They were very straight, but brittle. When I put tension on the stem to bend it into a bow, it would snap. Gramps watched me, and noticed my frustration. He disappeared for a short time, and came back with willow stems that were the right size. They were very flexible. He helped me make a bow. Making the arrows is another story. Finding stems that are perfectly straight without a bend or a kink is very hard. I did the best I could to make arrows from both sassafras and willow. I stripped all the leaves and the bark from the stems, then notched the heavy end to fit the string. The bow and arrows took me several hours to make. I could hardly wait to test them. My arrows didn’t have a flint stone tip or a feathered quill. When I shot one, it cartwheeled or flew sideways till it dropped. Playing this way taught me that the Indians knew a lot more about making bows and arrows than I did. It didn’t occur to. me that they spent generation after generation perfecting the art on a daily basis. Nor did it dawn on me that when the weapon is the primary means to secure food, the hunter tries harder to succeed. My attempts to make a bow and arrows went on and off that summer, and a few summers after that.

Each time I uncovered an arrowhead, my interest in making bows and arrows renewed. The year after I found my first arrowhead, I came upon another one. This time, I picked it up much closer to the house. The new one was easy to identify because it was more complete and had grooves at the base for tying it to the shaft. It was in excellent condition. Only the tip of the point was missing.

Indians were skilled at tracking animals, so I began to do the same thing. Whenever I found deer tracks, I followed them until I got lost in the brush. It wasn’t long before a pattern emerged, and I knew exactly where to find tracks. Even with all of my tracking and traipsing through the woods I never spotted a living animal on the farm.

Years later, after Mom and Dad retired to the farm. Dad told me that he saw deer come up into the yard to eat apples from the trees in the orchard.

Filed under: Aging, Biography, Characters I knew, family | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

We Are In Deep Shit

Posted on 30/09/2025 by Grumpa Joe

American Telephone and Telegraph was the company responsible for wiring America. Today, the company that it evolved into is AT&T. I remember as a kid and as an adult that the old landline service was pretty good. If things didn’t work we went next door to the neighbor to use their phone. We called the number shown on our monthly bill and asked a friendly lady for help. Soon, a repair truck would appear in the neighborhood and a technician buried his head in a panel of multi-colored wires. Eventually, our phone rang and the man said our phone was fixed.

Fast-forward to today. The cell phone that I bought two weeks ago doesn’t work; it tells me that it has been blocked from the internet, and I should contact the company. At first, I didn’t get nervous. I just drove down to the AT&T store where I bought it. Luckily, the same agent I dealt with was there. We started out with great enthusiasm until him I told him what the problem was. His face turned stoic. “Did you lose it or report it stolen? That is what happens when a phone is lost or stolen.” How? My phone hasn’t left my sight. He gave me a phone number to call and said to ask for “Advanced Tech Support.” Okay, I kept a landline just for this purpose, so I could call the company and ask for help.

I called the number he gave me. A deaf and dumb operator (AI robot) begins asking how she can help. I asked her to speak to an Advanced Tech Support agent. She repeated the question. This time, I tell her my phone is blocked. She responds, “Go to AT&T online.” Like an asshole, I did that. The first pages are all verification of my account. I give all the info I can remember. The screen is stuck on a blank box asking for a passcode. I pump in the passcode I remembered from when I opened the account for my land line. It wasn’t recognized. The screen won’t advance without the information. Now, what? Frustrated, I search the pages for the word “service”. I finally find it in very small letters at the very bottom of the page. To get there I passed through page after page of smiling young ladies spieling about the new I phone 17 in super shiny colors. I wondered if there was one color that performed better than the others. In between the sexy colors I saw boxes explaining various usage plans, and pictures of smiling faces. I wasn’t smiling. I dialed the number for service and another robot answered. She repeated the same questions I got from my first attempt.

Eventually, I outwitted the robot by shouting and screaming until she transferred me to a real human. Except it wasn’t a human, the robot placed me into a line to get to a human. After listening to music for too many minutes, a real human did finally answer. The connection was scratchy at best and I had to keep asking the agent to repeat. The best way to describe this conversation is by relating that I had better conversations with my buddies when we held tin cans connected with string against our ears. The so called agent wasted precious minutes trying to get into my account to help me. One would think that giving someone at the phone company a phone number is information enough to do that. She insisted on name, address, city, country, zip code, last four digits of my Social Security number and the pass code. After struggling with four versions of my pass code she finally turned the page too get to the real stuff like the IMEI number which is nineteen characters long. I had to repeat it three times. In the middle of the third attempt my landline went dead. WTF? Then it began ringing. I stumbled to the kitchen to get the phone but it too suddenly stopped ringing. Both of the handsets had dead batteries.

Technology is wonderful when it works, but when it doesn’t, the world becomes a very dark place.

Artificial Intelligence is so stupid that it will be generations before it comes even close to replacing humans. Notice the picture of the man holding a hammer with a bent wooden handle.

Filed under: Aging, Sarcasm | Tagged: , , | 5 Comments »

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