Rocky Mountain Voice

Author: Kelly Sloan

Sloan: The long arm of Beijing into American politics
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Sloan: The long arm of Beijing into American politics

By Kelly Sloan | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice When Alger Hiss, a well-placed official in the U.S. State Department, was revealed to be a Soviet spy in the late 1940s, it shook Congress (and the American public) hard enough for them to take the matter of Soviet penetration of U.S. governmental entities seriously. One can hope that the arrest of Linda Sun, a top aide of New York Governor Kathy Hochul, on charges of working as an unregistered agent of the People’s Republic of China while in the governor’s office will have a similar impact on all levels of American government today.  The details unveiled in the unsealed indictment are quite extraordinary. Among many other things, Sun (allegedly – because that’s how we do things in free countries) clandestinely allowed a PRC d...
Sloan: Paging Hezbollah… the Israelis storied no-nonsense history with terrorists
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Sloan: Paging Hezbollah… the Israelis storied no-nonsense history with terrorists

By Kelly Sloan | Contributing Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Say what you will about the Israelis, no one can accuse them of lacking a degree of chutzpah when they put their minds to dealing with terrorism. Last week’s pager and walkie-talkie detonations in the hands and waistbands of thousands of Hezbollah operatives, and the subsequent massive airstrike against the organization (timed perfectly, by the way, to take place in the middle of Hezbollah’s press conference howling about the outrage of the operation – nice touch) read like something out of James Bond or a Tom Clancy novel. It was brilliant too: the psychological impact was almost as valuable as the crippling of their communications, and denying an enemy the ability to coordinate movements, relay information, and repor...
Sloan: More of the same water-carrying by media for Harris
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Sloan: More of the same water-carrying by media for Harris

By Kelly Sloan | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Donald Trump may overplay it a little with his “FAKE NEWS” schtick, but the reality of inhered left-wing bias in the media is axiomatic. If we needed a few more examples, I offer the last few weeks. It’s no secret that the mainstream media has been pretty much carrying the Harris campaign since the deposing of Joe Biden, whose foibles and steady degradation of mental acuity they had been all but covering for until it became so obvious that it would require a Truman Show-level of coordinated mass deception to employ the needed gymnastics. Since the primary-circumventing replacement of the Democratic Presidential ticket (a brilliant bit of political sleight-of-hand naturally left uncommented upon) most of the media have fallen over them...
Sloan: RFK Jr.’s Trump endorsement redefines the Kennedy legacy
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Sloan: RFK Jr.’s Trump endorsement redefines the Kennedy legacy

By KELLY SLOAN | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice We have discovered, over these last few months, that even the surname “Kennedy” is no longer adequate insulation against the ire of the current Democratic Party. Stalwart party loyalists and an unsympathetic media never much cared for Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s quixotic attempt to unseat President Biden anyway, but his withdrawal from the race and subsequent endorsement of Donald Trump proved almost too much for some of the more hysteria-prone out there. Lawrence O’Donnell, never one for sober analysis or circumspection, called RFK jr. “the Jeffery Dahmer of the animal kingdom” – presumably a reference to his propensity for dumping dead bears in Central Park and cutting up whale carcasses for ease of transport, an activity which has evide...
Sloan: The legacy of ‘free stuff’ Biden government will continue with Harris
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Sloan: The legacy of ‘free stuff’ Biden government will continue with Harris

By Kelly Sloan | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Kamala Harris finally hinted at something resembling policy on Friday when she revealed snippets of her economic program, and it was every bit as horrifying as one would imagine. It was essentially a combination of spending sprees, price controls and offers of “free” stuff – meaning paid for by someone else. In other words, it was a prescription for more of the same, only writ large.  Whether she wants it to or not – more pointedly, whether Democratic campaign advisors want it to be or not – Harris’ campaign offers largely a continuation of the Biden administration and its legacy. Which is what, exactly? Well, domestically that legacy will almost certainly be the inflation that has dominated the economy for the last three-a...
Sloan: Who loses if Harris wins?
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Sloan: Who loses if Harris wins?

By Kelly Sloan | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Poor Joe Biden. I mean, really, one has to feel at least a little sorry for the guy. One minute the entire Democratic establishment (including, of course, the media) is wallowing in despair over their fortunes this November with Biden remaining at the helm; within a matter of hours, all is sunshine and light in Democrat World, now that Biden --  once the revered elder stateman of the Democratic left, “Joe from Scranton” who could do no wrong in the eyes of the Party and the New York Times  -- has been shunted aside.  That adulatory exuberance and reverential devotion is now being showered on Kamala Harris and her new sidekick Tim Walz. Everyone, and I mean everyone, within the Democratic universe if positively giddy tha...
Sloan: U.S. foreign affairs weakness was on display
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Sloan: U.S. foreign affairs weakness was on display

By Kelly Sloan | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice There were a couple bits of good news to emerge on the foreign affairs front this past week, of which highlight the atrophy of American strength, which is starting to become unmistakable. Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter detained in Russia some 16 months ago was finally, and thankfully, released in a prisoner exchange last week, along with a handful of others who were unjustly detained, including former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, held on false charges of espionage in 2018, Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, and British-Russian dissident and journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza.  It would be ungenerous, and rather dishonest, to not give the U.S. State Department its due for arranging the release, or to ignor...
Sloan: With Biden out and Harris in, don’t toll the victory bell just yet
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Sloan: With Biden out and Harris in, don’t toll the victory bell just yet

By Kelly Sloan | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice In the pantheon of political events, Joe Biden’s belated decision to become the first sitting President since Lyndon B. Johnson to not seek re-election was about as surprising as the advent of the sunrise at dawn. Even had George Clooney not bestowed the nation with the gravitas of his august thoughts on the matter, the weight of internal opposition – not to mention the polling that was looking increasingly grim for the aging and often bewildered President – was such that the decision was destined to be made sooner than later.  It’s telling, somewhat, that Biden refused to proffer any explanation for his withdrawal during his Oval Office address. The exact circumstances surrounding his acceptance of the ultimate decision – esp...
Sloan: Here’s my first thoughts on the assassination attempt
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Sloan: Here’s my first thoughts on the assassination attempt

By Kelly Sloan | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Sometimes history, like it is said of American football, is a game of inches. An inch or so to the right, and the bullet that grazed former President Doanld Trump’s ear on Saturday would have most likely killed him. As stunned and horrified as Americans were upon hearing of the attempted assassination, it would be a much graver situation for the country had the assassin’s bullet killed the former President, and current candidate for the same office, instead of a volunteer firefighter who died shielding his family while attending a political rally in support of the candidate he preferred.  It is somewhat naturally incumbent upon the polemicist to comment on historical events of such magnitude, as analysis is hungrily sought for. But...
Sloan: What’s next for Britain?
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Sloan: What’s next for Britain?

By Kelly Sloan | Columnist, Rocky Mountain Voice Well, if anything, that was maybe even a bit worse than expected. There is no sugar-coating it, the Conservatives in Great Britain absorbed a catastrophic defeat last week in that country’s national elections.  It was a defeat of literally historic proportions – the worst showing for the British Conservative party in its history. The Tories lost 234 seats, coming away with a mere 131 in the 650-seat Parliament. As electoral rebukes go, that was a pretty clear one.  But the question lingers as to how much the results indicate a sea-change in British political alignment. Britian’s parliamentary, first-past-the-post system assigns winners, but it also does a remarkable job at concealing underlying trends.  An analytic...