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Archive for December, 2020

In 2021, Watch What The Supreme Court Does With Philadelphia’s Ban On Christians Parenting Foster Children

Not just foster care providers, but religious groups of all kinds are closely following the case of Fulton v. the City of Philadelphia. Indeed, all those who care about our nation’s children should be. While this case before the U.S. Supreme Court to be decided in 2021 directly concerns the provision of foster care, by placing hypothetical arguments about non-discrimination ahead of the religious freedoms ensconced in the First Amendment — and ahead of children’s actual needs — the broader ramifications of the case threaten to force religion further from the public sphere.

In his dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2012, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote:

The majority offers a cursory assurance that it does not intend to disparage people who, as a matter of conscience, cannot accept same-sex marriage. That disclaimer is hard to square with the very next sentence, in which the majority explains that ‘the necessary consequence’ of laws codifying the traditional definition of marriage is to ‘demean or stigmatize’ same-sex couples.

Fulton v. Philadelphia demonstrates how right Roberts was to be concerned. The attorney for the city, Neal Katyal, claimed during oral arguments that a religious foster care agency, by following the prescriptions of the religion which it represents, would “stigmatize” LGBTQ individuals, especially children. Having asserted that traditional religious beliefs are bigoted and damaging, he thus argues that they must be prohibited in practice.

In particular, the city’s claim that the stigma is associated with Catholic Social Services’s provision of foster care cannot withstand even a cursory examination. Whatever feeling of harm or stigma might be involved, it would emerge from the biblical belief — which is supposed to be protected by the First Amendment — that same-sex relationships are forbidden; whether or not this teaching was applied to foster care would be essentially irrelevant. Yet the city, knowing that it can’t directly attack religion, claims that the damage occurs when a religious foster care agency conforms to those beliefs.

Taking the attack on religion a step further, Philadelphia equated religious diversity with mutual hostility: its lawyer claimed that foster care would be “balkanized” if various religious groups were each allowed to serve children in need consistent with their religious beliefs, working with supportive families seeking to partner with those agencies. Frankly, it’s quite scary to see such open hostility to free, diverse religious practice from a city government — and one could hardly seek more decisive proof that freedom of religion is, in fact, on trial in this case.

The threat here is clear, and not limited to Catholics. In Judaism, we believe it essential to raise a Jewish child to learn both our books and our observances. If applied consistently, the city’s argument would prohibit a Jewish agency from insisting upon placing a Jewish child in a Jewish home. Rather than demonstrating the First Amendment’s respect for different traditions and beliefs, Philadelphia is demanding universal conformity to state doctrine.

What is most troubling in all of this is that the city has lost sight of the ultimate goal: to serve children in need of foster care. There is a grave shortage of families willing to open their homes to foster children, and religious agencies, by working specifically within their faith communities, can expand that pool.

Plaintiff Sharonell Fulton is but one of many who are certified by Catholic Social Services and have room in their homes to care for children. The city is keeping these foster care providers on the sidelines because of CSS’s religious beliefs, offering only theoretical arguments about hypothetical harms to justify callous denial of homes to children in need.

As was clear at oral argument, no same-sex couple has been prevented from fostering or adopting by Catholic Social Services, or ever would be. Were such a couple to ever present itself to CSS, attorney Lori Windham told the court, CSS would help the couple to find one of the many other agencies that can assist them and better attend to their needs.

Based solely upon a far-fetched, theoretical claim of “stigma” that reflects hostility towards biblical beliefs, the city’s actions are therefore forcing dozens if not hundreds of actual (very non-theoretical) children to languish in group homes and institutional settings rather than being placed with loving foster parents.

The city has made its disregard for children’s actual needs quite obvious. Responding to the fact that Catholic Social Services has provided foster care to needy Philadelphia children for more than two centuries, long before the government was involved, Katyal argued that “whatever these [private] entities did before, like CSS, they never selected who cares for kids in city custody, applying state criteria.” In other words, the city claimed that whether these children are wards of the state is a more central consideration than whether they need foster care.

This is heartless, and even more fundamentally flawed. To be sure, the city has not argued that CSS provides an inferior service. It even acknowledged that CSS has been a “point of light” in the child welfare system. Yet the city also claims that closing down such an agency and preventing it from helping the more than 250 children in need of a foster home today would somehow be a net benefit for society.

So it is not merely true that Philadelphia wishes to squelch free religious practice — it is also clear that the city is far more anxious to punish the free exercise of religion than it is to serve the city’s most vulnerable children. The shocking part is that it was necessary to go all the way to the Supreme Court to ask for the obvious: that the city of Philadelphia should both respect different religious beliefs, and put the needs of children first.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values.

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Another Wave Of Portland Police Quit Amid Massive Spike In Shootings And Stabbings; Fire Dept. Responding To 10+ Homeless Tent Fires A Day

Reported By Brock Simmons | Published December 31, 2020

Yes, Virginia, Portland is continuing to slide further and further into 3rd world status. If you can believe it, the situation is actually getting worse, as we bring you the latest in Portland s***hole news.

The city is set to the the year with nearly 900 shootings. Yes, 900. Out of those, 225 people were hit, 53 ended up as homicides. In many other instances people were taken to hospitals, yet some didn’t want to cooperate with police. In other incidents there only reports of shots fired and shells found on the ground, yet no victims. This is despite the state legislature passing several new gun control laws in recent years, including “universal background checks”, “red flag laws”, and others. This goes along with nearly 70 stabbings on the year. This is the worst crime the city has seen since the early 90’s crime peak.

KOIN 6 reports:

Portland had logged about 900 shootings, compared to 393 shootings in all of 2019. On Monday, Portland police identified 33-year-old Jaron Weeks as the city’s 53rd homicide victim this year — the highest number of homicides in Portland since a wave of gang violence in the early 1990s.

Weeks was killed Christmas morning in an apartment building in the Lloyd District. A second shooting victim at the scene was hospitalized.

Two people were hospitalized in multiple shootings across Portland on Saturday night, police said. A truck rammed a patrol car, putting a Portland police officer in the hospital with a broken pelvis.The driver of the truck has not been found.

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It’s not just gun violence that has rocked the city. Trendlon Brewer, 53, was arrested last week for a series of random attacks on people with a baseball bat.

The article ends on a common theme; More police officers fleeing the city:

The PPB also faces a wave of retirements and resignations. Since the protests and riots started in June, 74 officers have left the bureau and another 25-32 are expected to leave by the end of January.

That’s out of 1,001 positions for sworn officers in Portland, and that’s on top of the already existing 100 some-odd vacancies. The bureau might be down 20% of its normal force.

48 cops retired just in the month of August.

KOIN6/Portland Tribune reveal how dire the situation is in another article:

In an unprecedented situation for Portland, a racially diverse and experienced group of police officers is taking pay cuts to get away from the city, while citing poor working conditions here.

And the city’s police recruiter tasked with boosting bureau diversity isn’t looking for replacements — because that person is gone, too.

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Chief Chuck Lovell recently announced that the Portland Police Bureau would be moving the vast majority of traffic cops and all its K-9 officers to respond to 911 calls. The goal: to deal with a wave of retirements and resignations and combat historically low response times this past year.

What Lovell didn’t say is that for the first time that anyone can remember, the number of people resigning has outstripped retirements.

While 14 officers have filed papers to retire by the end of January, nine officers have resigned since November, and seven more have filed to resign shortly.

And the number of imminent resignations may be far more. Based on requests from police departments seeking particular officers’ personnel records, “we have around 25 people that may be in the process of trying to get hired in other places,” said Assistant Chief Michael Frome, who oversees the bureau’s Human Resources Department.

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Police officers often leave smaller departments to go to places like Portland for higher pay. In this case they are leaving Portland for places like Beaverton, Bend, Hillsboro, Tigard and Boise, Idaho — where they will receive less pay.

In Boise, for instance, Chief Ryan Lee — a former assistant chief in Portland — has hired four Portland officers away from his old bureau so far. They’ll lose not only pay, but service time towards their eventual retirement.

Frome, for his part, said he doesn’t have numbers, but did say the confirmed departures constitute a racially diverse group with at least one multi-lingual officer, and he’d hire them all back if he could.

Complicating things is that the bureau has no plans to hire new officers anytime soon — so much so that it’s done away with the recruiter position that spearheads efforts to diversify the force and attract quality candidates.

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In part, that’s a result of how the bureau has shifted resources to cope with the Black Lives Matter protests that broke out in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

So why are people leaving? Frome said it’s a mix of reasons. One officer cited a desire to be near family. “Other ones say ‘I just don’t like working in Portland anymore, because the job just doesn’t make me happy,’” Frome said. “You get some (who) throw shade and say, ‘the City Council has created this horrible place for us.’ But you don’t see that from everybody.”

In general, he said, “They’re leaving because they just don’t enjoy working here anymore.”

Asked about the trend, Brian Hunzeker, the new president of the Portland Police Association, said he suspects other cities are seeing officers leave in mid-career as well. He said it’s not surprising officers are unhappy given Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty’s claim in July that police were setting fires to blame them on protesters, as well as District Attorney Mike Schmidt’s decisions not to file charges against numerous people the police arrested after declaring that protests had become riots.

Oh the irony of the DiVeRSiTy recruiter position being eliminated due to budget cuts rammed through by the city council who tout DiVeRSiTy as one of their top priorities.

Some now former Portland Police officers have penned letters citing their grievances, most of which has to do with the city council. In fact, treatment by the city council is one of the major reasons why officers are leaving, while vichy “mayor” Ted Wheeler and the now-infamous councilwoman JoAnn Hardesty politispeak their way through all the excuses and bloviations you can dream up.

Deputy Chief Chris Davis, who has facilitated the rioters, and has recently tried to bail from the sinking ship by applying for open Chief positions in Fresno and Milwaukee (he didn’t get either job) took to YouTube to explain the “staffing” situation a few months ago:

In one horrifying story, neighbors had to band together to track a stalker/peeping Tom that had been sneaking into little girls’ rooms at night. Police didn’t have the resources or manpower to respond. Portland police could only spare one detective to handle all robbery cases during the summer-into-fall riots. The neighbors eventually ID’ed the perp and he was arrested. The suspect in that case, Brandon Pirkey, was currently on release facing charges in other case. Predictably, Multnomah County Sheriff Mike Reese let him go again.

Perhaps they had the wrong guy. Or perhaps DA Mike Schmidt declined to press charges, because there are no charges from the March incident in Pirkey’s court records.

MEANWHILE, local alt rag Willamette Week has accidentally published the news, as they tell the story of one man who was trapped within the recent Red House occupation zone:

They blocked the alleys and they blocked the side street of my house. They wouldn’t allow us to move our cars because they had fully barricaded us in. They said they had basically claimed the area and we weren’t able to leave.

On Saturday last week, an individual went around and broke the Ring cameras off of people’s front doors, on their doorbells, with a crowbar.

They had sentries, essentially, that are posted up there. They had an individual with an assault rifle positioned right next to our driveway. They have people regularly back at their station, but they also patrol around the block with weapons and tactical gear and bulletproof vests. They watch us, you know, and they’re regularly standing around as we move in and out of our backyard.

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I could go out front on foot, but there were several people outside, and they were armed and they would watch us. They’d follow us around the block. And they were very suspicious that we were coordinating with the police. Like I said, they had guns up front, too, in addition to everyone inside of the zone.

Generally, they didn’t say much to us. They knew we weren’t happy that they were there, but basically we had kind of cut a deal with them that they needed to keep some distance from our property and not trespass or create fire risks and hazards next to it. And, in exchange, we were leaving them alone. That was kind of the truce that we had.

Everyone thought the cops were going to come down, so they were prepping for that. The side streets were lined with tires and wood that they were soaking in gasoline and lighter fluid in anticipation that, when the police would come, they were going to light it on fire and create a big flaming barricade to prevent them from coming in.

They had bonfires on and adjacent to our property next to the gasoline-soaked tires. We were asking them to put it out—and they refused to do so and would yell at us.

They got really hostile and told me to fuck off and that we were part of the problem, or that we were just another gentrifier. We were scared they were going to attack us in our house.

If you had a problem, or you were scared for your safety or that you were going to be attacked, you had to negotiate with the individuals or the leaders themselves, because the police would not come out proactively because of concerns about security and the situation escalating. If you wanted them to stop, you had to go down and negotiate with them yourselves.

Everyone who was directly surrounded by this was really, really scared and nervous. And people kept their mouths shut because they were worried about their safety and protecting their homes.

If you want the city to do things, you either have to get a bunch of guns and take over a neighborhood and threaten violence, or you go find Wheeler in real life or Commissioner Dan Ryan or whoever else and you surround their home and you scream at them and harass them until they give you what you want. Otherwise, they hide from you. It’s incredibly disappointing and unfortunate that that’s what the city’s decision-making has come to.

That’s right, police just stand aside and let antifa take over parts of the city, terrorizing neighborhoods, threatening citizens, and essentially holding people and houses hostage.

Oh and we haven’t even touched on the continuing homeless epidemic yet. The latest is that the city and county are working together to distribute $500 debit cards to 4,000 houseless individuals in Portland. This is your money, as it comes from the federal CARES act.

And what will they be doing with that $500? Buying new “camping” gear because they keep lighting their’s on fire. FOX 12 reports:

Portland Fire & Rescue says they have seen a huge increase in tent fires among the city’s homeless population this year.

PF&R told FOX 12 they are responding to about 10 to 11 tent fires every day.

With temperatures dipping into the low 30s, and sometimes upper 20s, it is increasingly tough for the homeless to stay warm – and sadly, two weeks ago a tent fire became deadly.

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PF&R says a lit candle caused a fire in a tent by the Interstate 405 on-ramp near Legacy Emanuel Hospital. Two people were inside the tent. One person escaped, but firefighters say a woman died after suffering burns over 75 percent of her body.

“The candle in her tent knocked over while she was sleeping,” said Scott Kerman, executive director at Blanchet House. “And we know that the people we serve who live on the streets or in tents will use candles and small fires for a lot of different reasons – for warmth and for cooking maybe. But also for light.”

Yeah, you have to wonder what they are “cooking” with candles.

Don’t let your city turn into Portland. Never elect these lunatics to power.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Brock Simmons

I like to focus on stories that aren’t getting the national attention
that they should. Stories involving corruption, investigative
research, miscarriages of justice, and gun rights are my favorite.
Proud to do my service in this socio-political information war that
we’ve found ourselves in.

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UPDATE: Arizona Citizens Investigation Discovers Thousands of Phantom Voters in State – Up to 30% of Addresses in Investigation Were Fraudulent

Reported By Jim Hoft | Published December 31, 2020

Here is a final report on the press conference last night in Phoenix, Arizona by Citizens Investigation that uncovered thousands of illegal votes in the state.

Mathematician Bobby Piton supplied Liz Harris, the Director of Citizens Investigation, and We The People AZ Alliance, a random sample of 3,900 questionable AZ voter names to check for residency from the latest election in Arizona. This list represented all 5 categories of voters (Republican, Democrat, etc.).

Bobby Piton testified in the AZ State hearing in late November about ghost voters and other anomalies. He was banned by Twitter during his compelling testimony. He has spent over 400 hours researching abnormalities with voter names and registrations.

Liz Harris then rounded up several hundred patriot volunteers who knocked on these doors looking to find what Piton calls “phantom sleeper” and suspicious Undefined or “U” voters. They are not eligible to vote for a variety of reasons. He estimated there are 160,000 to 400,000 of these illegal voters in Arizona. The team were able to visit 1,000 of the addresses in person and were often harassed or threatened by the residents. They found 539 voters DID NOT LIVE at these addresses. Additional results are below.

Investigation Finds Votes Cast by:

Voters that are dead, verified no longer at that address
Several with the actual name “Unknown Voter”
Registered at commercial addresses, especially Church’s Chicken
Non-U.S. Citizens who denied voting
Felons who stated they can’t vote, others in jail for years
Out of State residents who just don’t live in Arizona
Registered using Schools, car lots, and sports arena’s addresses
65 using the AZ Tabulation Center & Recorders Office as their address
Vacant lots at elderly villages (55 & over) and undeveloped properties
Wilderness addresses on Bureau of Land Management & State Trust land
Abandoned homes completely unlivable or boarded up
Street names that just do not exist in any Arizona records

Citizens Investigation held a Live press conference on Dec. 30th at the AZ State Capitol to release some findings and solicit more help (To volunteer just text 480-313-3924).

They found most AZ residents are horrified that a stranger or strangers have registered to vote using their home address. Several homeowners received multiple ballots (3, 4, 5), with one who received 20 ballots at their home. One business address received 200 ballots and another AZ address is used by 2,012 people who registered to vote. Within the first few days the Citizens Investigation had a couple hundred affidavits that 2020 votes were not associated with their registered address. Among other things, Piton found one corner lot has 1,500 registered voters and the lot next to it has 1,000. It’s beyond suspicious that 2,500 voters are registered to such a small area of land.

TheDonald.win reported on the press conference results.

The AZ voter address verification project presented their findings last night. They worked in groups of two. Each pair that presented last night checked a list of between 100 and 200 names/addresses. Many addresses didn’t exist, were businesses, schools, or churches. Five college campuses were checked, 60% or more did not even attend the college listed as the address. Many voters that could not be verified were listed at the same address. This means the 30% is not even accurate. More than 30% of addresses that were boots-on-the-ground verified by sworn affidavit were fraudulent! This is one project in one state. All swing states need to be verified!

THE NAME GAME:

The door-knocking investigation confirms what Bobby Piton has claimed about names that have increased the voter rolls beyond the actual growth of Arizona’s new residents. They found people voting who are only registered with initials, like “D.E.” for a first and last name, or “J.B.B” that cast votes. They are seeing registrations that switch up the first and middle names, or use a combination of initials, first or middle names to produce multiple registrations. These are all the same person but use birth dates only a few months apart to avoid detection.

They’ve also found an unusual amount of voters tied to the same phone number. In one instance of a verified phantom voter, one cell phone number was registered to 19 registered voters, all with different addresses. They then picked one of those 19 voters and found that home phone is the same as 15 other registered voters, none living in the same home, all with different names. This spider web verifies a mess of fraudulent registrations and votes.

ASSISTED LIVING PRECINCT:

They looked at facilities in certain precincts that could not be visited before the election because of Covid restrictions. They looked at 110 voter profiles and a strange pattern emerged. Each person had more than one tag for “Already Voted”. They were all the same dates of Oct. 15th, 20th, and the 23rd. Records then show they requested a ballot on October 29th, after already voting several times. They were then tagged again as “Already Voted” on November 25th, twenty two days after the election. Nov. 25th is coincidentally the same day the 65 voters who registered using the Maricopa County Tabulation Center address and County Recorders address are documented as requesting ballots. This is the same time Maricopa county was dragging out the counting of votes.

COLLEGE RESIDENTS:

A list of voter registration for 5 Arizona colleges that provide on campus student living were compiled. Each school happily complied with help in cleaning up these voter lists. Each college reviewed the lists and responded. It showed that 60% (or higher) of the registered voters were not residents of student housing, nor were they students of that school. This evidence has turned into a larger project that will encompass all of the AZ colleges and is ongoing.

THE CANVASSERS SPEAK:

Two female volunteers said: “The two of us canvassed 119 addresses so far. We found 29 people who had moved. We were unable to locate a new address for them. Almost all of these voters were unknown to those living at the residence. We talked to one person who was not a U.S. citizen and said they didn’t vote, yet someone cast a ballot in their name and address. We had 3 people whose relatives voted for them and signed the voter form for them. We found 5 people who moved out of State who voted in AZ, or someone voted for them. 4 people stated they did not vote, one said she was in Covid isolation – yet votes were cast for these people. One we talked with decided to vote in person at the precinct. She was told she already voted and was offered a provisional ballot, which she completed. She has no idea which ballot was counted. To recap, there were 25 voters that we could not verify any information at all on these people, even after multiple attempts to find them. 48 locations had problems that we could verify, meaning almost half of the addresses had issues.”

Another canvasser said: “I visited 326 addresses. I spoke with an actual person at 195 locations and have written 60 affidavits with voter discrepancies. One Homeowner stated she received 4 ballots in her name for this last election. There were 4 addresses with deceased people, a daughter showed the canvasser her dead fathers ballot that came in the mail. Yet a vote was still cast in her dead Father’s name. 13 addresses were vacant lots or abandoned homes. At 27 addresses the current residents said: “I’ve never heard of that person”. There were 24 names associated with one address, which was an apartment complex, but no apartment number. The complex management said if USPS can’t determine the correct apartments mail slot, the mail is supposed to be returned to sender. 11 locations had voter names of “Unknown Voter”. “

Two male canvassers said: “Over 5 days we visited 122 homes in the East valley. We completed 43 affidavits that represent 31 locations where no such person lived there.”

VOLUNTEER or HELP: To help in Arizona with voter integrity canvassing of addresses just text 480-313-3924. Training is held daily at 7AM, 11AM, and 7PM. To help fund Bobby Pitons research visit his GoFundMe page.

Jim Hoft

Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – The Good Old Days

A.F. BRANCO | on December 31, 2020 at 8:45 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-the-good-old-days/

If you think 2020 was bad, 2021 may be much worse with Biden and the Democrats in charge.

Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.

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New Years

Ann Coulter Op-ed: Happy Kwanzaa! The Holiday Brought to You by the FBI

Commentary by Ann Coulter | Posted: Dec 30, 2020 3:35 PM

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

Happy Kwanzaa! The Holiday Brought to You by the FBI

Source: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Pool

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris recently tweeted:

“Our Kwanzaa celebrations are one of my favorite childhood memories. The whole family would gather around across multiple generations and we’d tell stories and light the candles. Whether you’re celebrating this year with those you live with or over Zoom, happy Kwanzaa!”

Post some pictures, Kamala! We’d love to see your Brahmin and Jamaican grandparents sitting around the Kwanzaa candles recalling celebrations way back when they were three or four years younger. (Would that The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” would start counting Kamala’s lies!)

Kwanzaa, celebrated exclusively by white liberals, is a fake holiday invented in 1966 (when Kamala was 2 years old) by black radical/FBI stooge Ron Karenga — aka Dr. Maulana Karenga, founder of United Slaves, the violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers. Liberals have become so mesmerized by multicultural gibberish that they have forgotten the real history of Kwanzaa and Karenga’s United Slaves.

In what was ultimately a foolish gambit, during the madness of the ’60s, the FBI encouraged the most extreme black nationalist organizations in order to discredit and split the left. The more preposterous the group, the better. (It’s the same function MSNBC serves today.)

By that criterion, Karenga’s United Slaves was perfect.

Despite modern perceptions that blend all the black activists of the ’60s, the Black Panthers did not hate whites. Although some of their most high-profile leaders were drug dealers and murderers, they did not seek armed revolution.

Those were the precepts of Karenga’s United Slaves. The United Slaves were proto-fascists, walking around in dashikis, gunning down Black Panthers and adopting invented “African” names. (I will not be shooting any Black Panthers this week because I am Kwanzaa-reform, and we are not that observant.)

It’s as if David Duke invented a holiday called “Anglika,” which he based on the philosophy of “Mein Kampf” — and clueless public school teachers began celebrating the made-up, racist holiday.

In the category of the-gentleman-doth-protest-too-much, back in the ’70s, Karenga was quick to criticize Nigerian newspapers that claimed that certain American black radicals were CIA operatives.

Now we know the truth: The FBI fueled the bloody rivalry between the Panthers and United Slaves. In the annals of the American ’60s, Karenga was the Father Gapon, stooge of the czarist police. Whether Karenga was a willing FBI dupe, or just a dupe, remains unclear. The left has forgotten the FBI’s tacit encouragement of this murderous black nationalist cult founded by the father of Kwanzaa.

In one barbarous outburst, Karenga’s United Slaves shot two Black Panthers to death on the UCLA campus: Al “Bunchy” Carter and John Huggins. Karenga himself served time, a useful stepping-stone for his current position as the chair of the Africana Studies Department at California State University at Long Beach.

(Speaking of which, the cheap labor lobby certainly was right about how the GOP could easily win over “natural conservative” Hispanics. Look at how California has swung decisively to the right since Hispanics became the largest ethnic group there! Good luck winning California now, Democrats!)

The esteemed Cal State professor Karenga’s invented holiday is a nutty blend of schmaltzy ’60s rhetoric, black racism and Marxism. The seven principles of Kwanzaa are the very same seven principles of the Symbionese Liberation Army, another invention of The Worst Generation.

In 1974, Patty Hearst, kidnap victim-cum-SLA revolutionary, famously posed next to the banner of her alleged captors, a seven-headed cobra. Each snakehead stood for one of the SLA’s revolutionary principles: Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba and Imani. These are the exact same seven “principles” of Kwanzaa.

Kwanzaa praises collectivism in every possible area of life. It takes a village to raise a police snitch!

When Karenga was asked to distinguish Kawaida, the philosophy underlying Kwanzaa, from “classical Marxism,” he essentially said that, under Kawaida, we also hate whites. (And here’s something interesting: Kawaida, Kwanzaa and Kuumba are also the only three Kardashian sisters not to have their own shows on the E! network.)

While taking the “best of early Chinese and Cuban socialism” (Is that the mass murder or the seizure of private property?), Karenga said Kawaida practitioners believe one’s racial identity “determines life conditions, life chances and self-understanding.”

There’s an inclusive philosophy for you!

Sing to “Jingle Bells”:

Kwanzaa bells, dashikis sell

Whitey has to pay;

Burning, shooting, oh what fun

On this made-up holiday!

Kwanzaa emerged not from Africa, but from the FBI’s COINTELPRO. It is a holiday celebrated exclusively by idiot white liberals. Black people celebrate Christmas.

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Wallace B. Henley Op-ed: Christ’s Kingdom without Christ? Time to reset to ‘radical’ church (pt 2)

Against the backdrop of current events — especially the increasingly frenzied preoccupation with the “reset” of the global order — a sometimes puzzling statement of Jesus becomes clearer: “And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has been treated violently, and violent men take it by force.” (Matthew 11:12 NASB)

The Message paraphrase brings out an important nuance: “For a long time now people have tried to force themselves into God’s Kingdom.”

We are living through an era when people under secular banners are trying to force the coming of the benefits of Christ’s Kingdom and conformity to its high values of love, equality, respect for those unlike us, and caring for the disenfranchised and victims of discrimination.

What’s wrong with this? The answer: Without Christ and the Holy Spirit it is fleshly striving that deteriorates into judgmentalism, legalism, and terrorism.

The violence sparked by agitators, the “cancellation” of resistant people and institutions, the passion of destroyers to kill and maim in the name of their self-sanctified causes we have seen before, many times in history.

This we do not need again.

It is not revolution we need, but transformation. Revolution is force from outside-in, and transitory, requiring armies of czars to sustain it. Few phenomena reveal this as glaringly as the 18th century French Revolution, or China’s 1960s Red Guard movement.

Transformation, however, works from inward to outward. “Conversion,” an inner change of heart, is vital to the movement Christ brings to the world. It is wrought neither by sword nor czar, but by the continuing work of the Holy Spirit within the person. For radical transformation we must have the whole of the Trinity: The heart of the Father, the mind of the Son, and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

Hardly anyone understood this better than Salvation Army founder William Booth, who spoke prophetically in the 19th century when he said,

The chief danger that confronts the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, heaven without hell.

There may be much disagreement about a reset to a globalist vision and policy initiatives, but General Booth described a “reset” that is urgently needed.

In Part 1 of this series on the radical church we noted that the word “radical” refers to “roots.” Thus, the reset needed now in churches everywhere is back to their New Testament roots and recovery of their true identity.

I use here the term, “churches” rather than the “The Church” to stress the importance of locality in God’s vision for His gathered people. In the Old Testament God instructs Moses in the construction of the Ark of the Covenant and calls the lid the “Mercy Seat.” “There I will meet with you,” says the Lord. (Exodus 25:22, emphasis added)

God is omnipresent but humans are limited to the strictures of time and space. Therefore, the Omnipresent One must establish a localized point spatially and temporally where He can interact with beings bound to the local. Centuries later the Lord will show Solomon how to construct and order the Temple, and tells him, “I have consecrated this house which you have built, by putting My name there forever, and My eyes and My heart will be there always.” (1 Kings 9:3 NLT)

But Nebuchadnezzar destroys the Temple in 587 BC, it is rebuilt under Herod and dedicated in 164 BC, then demolished under Roman leaders Titus and Pompey in 70 AD.

Where, then, are God’s eyes and heart focused now?

Jesus Christ is born into the world as the Focal Point for God’s engagement with His creation and the beings made in His image that He sovereignly places there. Jesus Christ is the continuation of the Temple ministry. He is the “There” where humans trapped in locality can meet and interact with the Most High God.

Jesus Himself says as much when He is chastised by religious authorities for cleansing the Temple. “Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” He says. “

What?” they ask in surprise. “It took us forty-six years to build this temple, and you will raise it up in three days?”

“But when Jesus said, ‘this temple’, He meant His own body,” explains John 2:21-22 (NLT and paraphrase).

Suddenly John 1:14 jumps into view: “The Word became flesh and dwelt (‘tabernacled,’ or ‘pitched His tent’) among us.” And as God’s intense holiness and glory were manifested in the Holy of Holies within the Temple, so, says John, “and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

John had also witnessed Christ’s transfiguration, when the outer shell of His human body was temporarily dimmed so that His core disciples could see Him as He really was and is, in the full splendor of His Being.

Jesus Christ is the continuing “meeting place” between God and humans, the “locality” during His incarnation where God’s eyes and heart are continually focused.

Now Jesus’s statement to Simon Peter at Caesarea Philippi becomes clearer, when He gives to the church represented in Peter and all others who make the confession, “You are the Christ (the Messiah), the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:16)

The “keys” signify the authority given to Christ’s church to stand against the powers of “Hades,” or Hell. This is a transmission of the same authority that had been localized in the Jerusalem Temple, then localized in the incarnate Christ, then localized and globalized in the worldwide church.

Therefore, churches now must undergo a reset that begins with the ontological and proceeds to the functional.

More about this in Part 3 of this series.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Wallace Henley is a former pastor, White House and congressional aide, and author of more than 25 books. His newest is Two Men From Babylon: Nebuchadnezzar, Trump, and the Lord of History, published by Thomas Nelson.

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Religious persecution in India, China will increase in 2021: report

A woman wears a protective mask as she passes a church on February 8, 2020, in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. The number of those who have died from the Wuhan coronavirus, known as 2019-nCoV, in China climbed to 724. | Getty Images

Though religious persecution in China and India is expected to increase in 2021, exposure to the Bible is increasing in North Korea, the world’s most repressive country, according to the annual Persecution Trends survey from Release International.

In its latest report, RI, an international Christian watchdog organization for persecuted Christians worldwide, said that persecution is “thriving” in China and will likely increase in the new year. RI cited the recent passage of tough new laws controlling religion, the shuttering of numerous churches, and the increasing number of registered churches forced to install CCTV cameras and put up posters proclaiming communist ideals and beliefs.

However, the Chinese Communist Party has “bought the silence of the international community” through increased dependence on trade, it said.

“The government of President Xi Jinping is increasing its ‘clean up’ of anything that does not advance the communist agenda. They appear to believe that they can achieve this by systematic opposition,” the group warned.

Corroborating other reports, RI said that China has been exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic to tighten restrictions on underground believers. Earlier this year, it was reported that amid the outbreak, impoverished Christian villagers in China were ordered to renounce their faith and replace displays of Jesus with portraits of Chairman Mao and President Xi or risk losing their welfare benefits.

“The Chinese government is trying every way to take advantage of the virus by increasing the crackdown against Christian churches,” said RI partner Bob Fu, of ChinaAid. “It has accelerated particular campaigns, such as the forced removal of crosses.”

The group also predicted that in India, intolerance toward Christians and other religious minorities will continue to grow during 2021, largely due to growing Hindu nationalism. RI noted that incidents targeting Indian Christians have risen steeply since 2014, when Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power. It cited statistics revealing Christians suffered 225 incidents of religiously motivated violence during the first 10 months of 2020, compared to 218 incidents in the same period in 2019. Many of these attacks were by vigilante mobs.

In September 2020, Hindu extremists incited mobs of up to 3,000 people to attack Christians in three villages in Chhattisgarh state.

Thomas Schirrmacher, the newly-appointed head of The World Evangelical Alliance, which represents over 600 million evangelical Christians worldwide, previously told The Christian Post that Hindu supremacism is the driver of much of the persecution in that country.

“Elections are won by the prime minister with this topic: ‘India is for the Hindus,’ and suddenly Muslims and Christians find themselves in a country that clearly wants to get rid of them,” he said. “They promote the idea that an Indian by nature is a Hindu. So if he is not a Hindu, he has been stolen, and must be re-converted.”

“This idea was not on the market 10 years ago, and has led to an increase in discrimination and killings of Indian Christians and other minorities,” he said, adding that Christians in Western countries must “speak up” for those persecuted for their faith.

The report was part of RI’s annual Persecution Trends Survey, which was published in the recent edition of Release International’s Voice magazine. In addition to China and India, RI predicted Malaysia, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt and Nigeria will also face increased persecution in the coming year. Interestingly, the group said that RI partners have been able to double their distribution of Bibles to Christians in North Korea throughout 2020, despite COVID restrictions. According to Open Doors USA, North Korea is ranked No. 1 on its list of countries where it’s most difficult for Christians to live.

“This has been the most creative year we have witnessed in the underground church to date,” the group said. A previous report found that the percentage of North Korean citizens who are exposed to the Bible is steadily increasing every year despite extreme persecution.

Before 2000, only 16 people claimed to have seen a Bible. After 2000, up to 559 North Korean defectors said they had “seen a Bible,” even though religious literature is banned in the isolated country.

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BREAKING: Georgia’s Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Elections Holds Hearing on Voting Machine Irregularities AND IT’S DEVASTATING! – LIVE-STREAM VIDEO

Reported By Jim Hoft | Published December 30, 2020

Members of Georgia’s Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Elections and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing to study Georgia’s Election Laws, and their past and present impact on the current Election cycle. They will also consider the committee report from the December 3rd meeting. The hearing comes after a senate subcommittee held a hearing last week at the capitol to discuss perceived voting irregularities in November’s presidential election.

On election night election officials ran 15,000 ballots five times and got five different answers. They could NEVER duplicate the results from the Dominion voting machines!

The first witness from Coffee County is devastating.

She just blasted the corrupt Secretary of State.

Jim Hoft

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Georgia’s Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Elections

Portland police forced to beg for community’s help in curbing out-of-control violence

Reported by SARAH TAYLOR | December 30, 2020

The Portland Police Bureau is asking for the community’s help in ending a spike in violence across the city. According to Fox News, at least 850 shootings have been reported in Portland as of Dec. 24. The outlet noted that there were at least 59 reported shootings in December alone.

“As of Christmas Eve, this year’s shootings had surpassed last year’s by more than 116%, with 393 shootings reported in all of 2019, statistics show,” Fox pointed out. “At least 53 murders have been reported in Portland as of Dec. 24 — the highest yearly total the city has seen in nearly 30 years.”

Portland Police Bureau Chief Chuck Lovell in a Dec. 16 video appealed to the public and insisted that the public needed to lock arms and “do everything we can together to break the cycle of violence.”

“Gun violence has plagued our city at twice the rate of last year,” he said. “On average, someone is shot in Portland roughly every two days.”

“We’ve come together to mask up, to stay home to keep others safe. We have come together to do our best to stop the spread of a deadly disease,” he continued. “Violence is also a disease that kills and our community is suffering the consequences.”

“We cannot lose sight of the fact these are human beings who have died,” Lovell added.

According to a report from KGW-TV, Portland Police Bureau Lieutenant Greg Pashley reported that there were at least 225 victims of gun violence in Portland in 2020 alone.

“The number of bullets that must have been flying around our neighborhoods, city streets, sidewalks — it’s awful,” Pashley said.

The bureau is now asking for a a community-wide effort and action to help put a stop to gun violence across the city after its gun violence reduction team was disbanded over the summer. The team was dismantled after activists and gun control activists said that the bureau was guilty of racism in “stopping people of color disproportionately to others,” the station reported.

Pashley later said that “[s]ocial services, government organizations, non-government organizations, church based [organizations]” are of utmost importance “so that people feel as if they have support and options other than to act out violently.”

Sgt. Kenneth Duilio — who worked on the now-disbanded gun violence reduction task force for approximately 19 years — said that many of the killings are gang-related.

“They’re all connected,” he said. “And some of these connections don’t just go back, like, for a few weeks or a few months. They go back years and years.”

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Two Minnesota Legislators Say COVID-19 Deaths Inflated, Demand Audit

Reported by DAVID KRAYDEN, OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF | December 29, 2020

MN State Rep. Mary Franson (L) and MN State Sen. Scott Jensen (R) join Mark Steyn

Two Minnesota legislators said Tuesday that coronavirus deaths in the state are being deliberately inflated and a national audit is required to determine how many people are actually dying from another cause.

“I enlisted some people that are really good at understanding data … to go through those death files and what I found was shocking because I was just hoping that it was a myth, but indeed, Minnesota is classifying some deaths as COVID when clearly, they should not be,” Republican Minnesota State Rep. Mary Franson told Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

“We should not have people dying in motor vehicle collisions, suicides, drownings, et cetera and being classified as a COVID death,” said Franson, adding that the presumed death toll is one of the chief reasons “our state is locked down. Our kids are now going to have to wear masks while playing basketball and hockey.” (RELATED: US Could Reach ‘Herd Immunity’ By Spring, Fauci Says)

She noted that people in the state are only allowed to eat at restaurants “but it’s got to be outside. Today in Minnesota, we’ve got a blizzard. People are losing their livelihoods, we have the greatest transfer of wealth taking place right now — and we need an audit.”

Republican Minnesota State Sen. Scott Jensen suggested health care dollars are affecting the official COVID-19 death rate.

“When the Department of Health and the CDC [Centers for Disease Control] decided to change the rules that had been in place for 17 years by encouraging the diagnosis of COVID-19 in situations that we never would have otherwise, they were abandoning their long-held commitment to precisely identifying the inciting or the initiating event that would lead to a sequence of events that would lead to a person’s demise,” Jensen said.

“What we saw subsequently was … enhanced payments to hospitals for Medicare patients and then we saw … the old adage — follow the money — and we saw if hospitals could somehow hit 161 admissions with COVID-19, then they would be eligible for a $77,000 per admission payment through the CARES Act,” he said.

“I don’t think there’s any questions that reverse incentives have been created.”

Dr. Deborah Birx, the former White House coronavirus task force response coordinator, suggested in May that some official COVID-19 statistics, including deaths, might have been inflated by up to may be inflated by up to 25%. (RELATED: Top Senate Dem Slams Pelosi Over Delays On COVID-19 Relief Deal)

White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx speaks during a White House Coronavirus Task Force press briefing at the U.S. Department of Education July 8, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

At that time, two-thirds of Americans also expressed doubt over the official coronavirus numbers. A poll found that 40% of Republicans believed the coronavirus death toll was inflated, while just 7% of Democrats believed the number of deaths were being over-counted.

Coronavirus deaths have reached record levels in the U.S. throughout December.

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease Director Dr. Anthony Fauci warned in November that the U.S. would experience a COVID-19 surge within a surge during the Thanksgiving holiday.

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President Donald Trump’s Campaign Makes Last Ditch Effort To Toss Out 50,000 Ballots In Wisconsin

Reported by BRIANNA LYMAN, REPORTER | December 29, 2020

US-politics-DEMONSTRATION-TRUMP / Photo by JOSE LUIS MAGANA/AFP via Getty Images)

President Donald Trump appealed his recent loss in the Wisconsin Supreme Court to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, seeking to toss out 50,000 votes and possibly change the election outcome in the state. The campaign is arguing that 50,000 ballots were counted despite the fact that they were allegedly invalid. The campaign says more than 28,000 votes were counted from people who didn’t provide identification and instead used the state’s “indefinitely confined” status to vote. The campaign also alleged some 6,000 ballots were incomplete or altered which is forbidden by state law.

The campaign is seeking an expedited review of the case ahead of Jan. 6 Congressional review of the Electoral College votes. Jim Troupis, the president’s lead attorney in Wisconsin, said that the Wisconsin Supreme Court didn’t address the merits of their claims in an official statement. (RELATED: Trump Demands ‘List’ Of Republicans In Congress Who Say Biden Won)

STERLING, VA – DECEMBER 13: Supporters gather outside Trump National Golf Club as U.S. President Donald Trump departs following a round of golf on December 13, 2020 in Sterling, Virginia. (Photo by Al Drago/Getty Images)

“Regrettably, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in their 4-3 decision, refused to address the merits of our claim. This ‘Cert Petition’ asks them to address our claims, which, if allowed, would change the outcome of the election in Wisconsin.”

“Three members of the Wisconsin State Supreme Court, including the Chief Justice, agreed with many of the President’s claims in written dissents from that court’s December 14 order,” he continued.

Trump lost the state to President-elect Joe Biden by roughly 21,000 votes. Trump’s campaign filed a suit that sought to invalidate more than 221,000 absentee ballots in Dane and Milwaukee counties for purportedly failing to meet requirements to obtain an absentee ballot. The suit also requested the Republican-led state legislature to appoint pro-Trump electors to the Electoral College.

However, the state Supreme Court rejected the suit, ruling the claims were filed too late and one claim lacked merit. However, three dissenting conservative justices argued that the lateness was moot, and the questions about the legality of the votes demands an answer.

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Kylee Zempel Op-ed: To Democrats, ‘Unity’ Means Doing Everything They Want And Shutting Up About It

The only thing worse than listening to a screaming toddler is seeing his smug, tear-stained but smiling face after his parent gives in to his irreverent outburst and rewards him for his tantrum. That’s all I could think about as I walked the streets of Madison, Wisconsin, Saturday night after several news outlets called the presidential race for Joe Biden.

A hopeful energy pulsed through State Street, the bustling pedestrian mall of restaurants and storefronts bookended by the university and the Capitol. I walked past business after business boarded up tight in anticipation of a fiery post-election purge, but instead, front doors were propped open on the uncharacteristically warm November night as groups of friends chattered and shopped and drank in merriment. No sirens or chanting interrupted my pleasant patio dinner date.

I breathed easier than I would have under different circumstances, I’ll admit. Had the media called the race differently, I likely wouldn’t have left the apartment and I certainly wouldn’t have neared downtown. Underneath that peaceful veneer, however, remains the gross reality that things are calm only because the snotty toddler got his way.

Unity Is a Joke

These are the infantile adults that were told “no” in 2016 by the half of the country they most despised and spent the next four years screaming that everything was unfair and that those who disagreed with them were racists, sexists, bigots, and homophobes. Instead of biting and hitting, they looted and vandalized, and the equally childish media covered for them.

They promised to “impeach the motherf-cker,” canceled dissenters, and maligned anyone who wanted to “Make America Great Again.” They smeared mask rebels and churchgoers as grandma-killers and squawked in our faces that boys are girls, silence is violence, and all women are inherently trustworthy, straight white men be damned. Only now that they think they’ve won do they have any interest in faux “unity.”

In a recent editorial, the Washington Examiner posited, “Biden has a historic opportunity to heal the country’s wounds, and if he wants an admired legacy, he will start now to fulfill the promise of his Delaware speech and bring uniter’s, not dividers, into his administration.” Conservatives who fall for this “unity” schtick are hopelessly naïve.

While things might be quiet now, all hell is sure to break loose again the moment things don’t go in the way of the tantrum-throwers. This is because the wrong side won — or at least the fact that they believe they did proves the point. The toddlers got what they wanted. Their abhorrent behavior was reinforced with their most prized reward: the end of the Trump presidency.

Now rather than watching the thugs tear down and set ablaze our livelihoods, we’re stuck looking at their smug faces instead. It was always going to be one or the other: Elect us and we’ll destroy the country, or elect Trump and we’ll destroy your property.

For this reason, the relative peace in our cities now is a bad omen. This cultural calm is a reminder that, like the short-sighted parent capitulating to her toddler, the electorate traded long-term stability for short-term quiet. We didn’t bring an end to the fearmongering and the incivility; we put the uncivil fearmongers in power, and they have sinister plans for their political opponents.

Political Religion Makes All of Life a Holy War

This all goes back to the infantilization of the left, and it’s not surprising. There’s a reason shop-owners were afraid of spurned Biden supporters but relaxed when they remembered the frustrated Trumpsters had no intention of acting out.

When Trump supporters heard the unwelcome news that Biden would ostensibly be the president-elect, they were bummed. Some were mad, others were suspicious, and others felt defeated and discouraged — but they dutifully returned to their daily grinds, clocking in for work, caring for their families, and carrying on their commitments to their churches. That’s because, for so many on the right, politics is an add-on. Family and faith, however imperfectly, inform civic values, but politics is no replacement for those superior institutions.

For many on the left, that isn’t the case. For those who have chosen to worship at the feet of progressivism as religion, this election was life or death because it was central to everything else.

For a population who has pushed off marriage, disposed of its children, abandoned church, and relinquished its independence to the nanny state and its individualism to identity politics, to lose an election is to lose it all. All battles therefore become moral, meaning victory by any means necessary — including stealing and destroying and sometimes even killing — is justified.

Don’t Let the Leftist Toddlers Get Their Way

That leaves us quite a divided America. How can we ever hope for unity when one side holds theother hostage? Give us what we want, or else. That’s no way to start a mutually beneficial negotiation.

So conservatives are left with a choice. Will we continue caving in to the boisterous toddler until it becomes an unruly and insufferable adult? Or will stand our ground and endure the tantrums until the left tuckers itself out on its own fickle rhetoric and runs its own cities into the soil? Don’t relish the present quiet; realize what it stands for.

Presidents come and go, and if Trump does finally lose re-election after all the legal battles run their course, so be it. The worst thing for our country isn’t a Biden presidency. It’s giving the leftist toddlers what they want.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Kylee Zempel is an assistant editor at The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.

Photo Fibonacci Blue/Wikimedia Commons

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Friend and Foe

A.F. BRANCO | on December 30, 2020 at 8:45 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-friend-and-foe/

The Democrats and the Media exalt whistleblowers but only when they work against President Trump.

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A National Popular Vote Won’t Fix The Electoral College, But Smaller Government Will

The most popular argument against the Electoral College is that it violates the fundamental principle underlying democratic society: political equality, or, commonly phrased as “one person, one vote.”

Indeed, because all states are assigned at least three electors regardless of their population size, the Electoral College gives small states a disproportionate number of electors per capita. As a result, a person who receives the largest number of votes does not necessarily win the election, as was the case in the presidential contests of 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016.

In the wake of the 2020 election, there have been renewed calls to abolish the Electoral College and replace it with a national popular vote. The Washington Post editorial board, for example, writes, “The Electoral College, whatever virtues it may have had for the Founding Fathers, is no longer tenable for American democracy.”

The logic underlying this argument is the following: the actions of the president, and the federal government, directly affect millions of people, and thus citizens, not states, should choose the president.

Why does a voter in Wyoming have four times as much say over who is to lead the country in the next four years than the resident of California, if all men are created equal? Furthermore, critics usually argue the Electoral College leads candidates to focus their efforts on a few swing states — like Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — while neglecting other regions of the country.

Yet, while it is true that in the current system presidential candidates don’t spend their energy and focus on all states equally, in a system with the popular vote, the “tyranny of the minority” would be even worse. Indeed, could well be enough to win the popular vote of highly dense, urbanized cities in states like California and New York while losing in elections in a vast majority of the country.

But as Dan McLaughlin writes in National Review, “The Electoral College, however, dilutes the influence of “hyperpartisan enclaves that are out of step with the nation,” be it California today or the American South in the 19th century. Thus, thanks to the Electoral College, candidates have to appeal to a geographically broader base that’s more politically, socially, and economically diverse.

Federalism and the Electoral College

The Electoral College is therefore a mainstay of America’s federalist system of governance, centered on the protection of certain rights reserved to the states as entities and resting on the principle of a division of power. America is a union of states, and the president is, in essence, the officer of the states rather than of the American people.

Likewise, an argument can be made that the states, and not the people per se, are sovereign. After all, the U.S. Constitution was ratified not by the American people, but by delegations from 13 states. In an electoral system with a national popular vote, the executive branch would represent the interests of a few highly populated states, disregarding the interests of all other states, shredding the federalism the Founders thought it so necessary to bestow upon the American republic.

The debate about whether the Electoral College should be abolished, however, misses a larger and more important. When the United States was founded, it was not assumed America would ever possess such a massive federal government combined with an imperial presidency, an anemic and gridlocked Congress, and eroded state rights, as we have today.

As George Will points out in a recent column in The Washington Post, “Congress is not even certain of the components of, and hence cannot meaningfully control, the agglomeration of bureaucracies it has created.” Indeed, only three executive agencies existed in 1789. By contrast, today, as the Modernization of Congress report puts it, “While there is no official inventory of federal agencies, one recent count puts the current total at 278 distinct agencies.”

If America were a truly centralized country where the federal government had vastly more power than it already does, elections by popular vote would make sense since the actions of the president would directly affect citizens. This is not the case, however, for a nation such as ours.

In a decentralized federal republic, the fact that states, and not people, elect the president does not necessarily violate the principle of equal representation because national elections do not have as much impact on the lives of the citizens as do those on local and state levels. Indeed, this is why elections on state and local levels are determined by popular vote, since, in decentralized society, they matter more for the majority of ordinary citizens than the federal ones.

Why We Must Decentralize

Unfortunately, a worrying trend is that in today’s America, as we move away from our federalist system and power becomes increasingly concentrated in Washington, D.C. and the executive branch, in particular, presidential elections matter far too much to many people. For the Electoral College to reflect the underlying social dynamics of the nation when it was established, we need more decentralization and localism, when states, and not citizens, elect the president of the union.

Through every constitutional means available, the American people must quickly begin a course to limit executive power, end the imperial presidency, reduce the size of the federal government, give more power to the states, and decentralize decision-making away from Washington. Of course, some tasks can only be performed by the president and the federal government, such as representing the states on the world stage. Otherwise, in spheres that can be managed by states and municipalities, the central government should not be involved.

The Electoral College was created for a decentralized country with a federal system. Modern America, unfortunately, has been steadily moving away from federalism as envisioned by the Founding Fathers. Abolishing the Electoral College is next to impossible in the current political climate since that would require a constitutional amendment, and initiatives like National Popular Vote Interstate Compact are probably unconstitutional.

We Need More Federalism, Not Less

More federalism, therefore, is the only way to address this growing disconnect between the Electoral College and the type of a country it was crafted for. As James Madison notes in Federalist No. 10:

By enlarging too much the number of electors, you render the representatives too little acquainted with all their local circumstances and lesser interests; as by reducing it too much, you render him unduly attached to these, and too little fit to comprehend and pursue great and national objects. The federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular to the State legislatures.

Decentralization and dispersal of power underlie the U.S. Constitution, striking a balance between the rights of states and the federal government, with the Electoral College serving as one of such compromises.

Abolishing the Electoral College would expand the power of the federal government — especially in administering elections — potentially turning states into mere administrative departments of the Washington bureaucracy. Since one of the prime rationales for the existence of the Electoral College is state representation, if the Electoral College is abolished in the name of direct democracy, consistency would require that the Senate, and thus states’ representation, are removed too, with disastrous consequences.

To make the Electoral College relevant again, we need to decentralize federal power and localize the process of decision-making, making politicians closer and thus more accountable to their constituents. Instead of changing the Constitution to abolish the Electoral College, it would be much easier — and much better for the health of our republic — to reduce the size of the federal government so that the Electoral College operates in the environment it was designed for.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Sukhayl Niyazov is an independent author whose work has appeared in The National Interest, Human Events, Global Policy, Law and Liberty, Areo, and Merion West.

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What Big Tech Didn’t Want You To See On The Federalist In 2020

Reported by Joy Pullmann | DECEMBER 29, 2020

Leftist media has skewed U.S. politics for decades, but Big Tech’s amplified influence over global discourse and governments is new. While Congress passed no legislation related to this political and national security emergency, we the people were held captive in lockdowns during a major election while crucial public information was filtered, hidden, and surveilled by unaccountable companies with no allegiance to the United States and obvious disdain for hundreds of millions of its inhabitants.

This is a huge social problem. Regaining our freedom to speak and to share and compare information may be the first task towards redressing our grievances against those who claim to govern us. For how can consent of the governed be truly granted when the people’s ability to inform their consent is manipulated? It cannot.

To regain our self-governance, then, we all need to develop new habits of information-gathering and -sharing. As a tiny part of and precursor to more of that effort, here is an accounting of Federalist work that Google, Facebook, and Twitter tried to keep people from seeing in 2020.

You will notice it fits the pattern of big tech censorship that big tech claims isn’t censorship: it all goes one way politically. All of it also comprises election-meddling by effectively promoting misinformation and disinformation on key voting issues.

Just Plain Hiding the News They Can’t Use

In June, a foreign think tank, NBC, and Google colluded in an attempt to demonetize The Federalist in retaliation for our coverage of Black Lives Matter rioting. The tech giant demanded we end our commenting section, and continues to refuse to allow it back. Google-owned YouTube also continues to shadowban Federalist content and choke our engagement.

In July, Google claimed it had “mistakenly” made it impossible for people to find a slew of conservative news sites, including CNSNews.com, The Washington Free Beacon, Breitbart, Twitchy, RedState, PJ Media, The Blaze, Townhall, LifeNews, PragerU, and The Daily Wire.

After the election, Instagram slapped a warning label on a post in which President Trump honored Pearl Harbor Day. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, put an automatic “fact check” on Trump’s post that claimed Joe Biden won the election, although Trump’s post included nothing about the election results. Instagram later removed the “warning.”

In October, “Twitter suspended U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan for a post celebrating the success of the U.S. southern border wall keeping violent criminals from reaching American communities,” reported The Federalist’s Tristan Justice.

The online publisher banned Morgan, a public official, from communicating the elected president’s publicly stated priorities, telling him in an automated message the post violated the publisher’s “hateful conduct” policies. Morgan had written: “@CBP & @USACEHQ continue to build new wall every day. Every mile helps us stop gang members, murderers, sexual predators, and drugs from entering our country. It’s a fact, walls work.” If this is hate speech, all conservatives are criminals.

Evidence of Biden Family Corruption

Infamously, Twitter and Facebook tampered with the 2020 election in October by immediately and actively suppressing public knowledge of a federal corruption investigation into Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, related to information found on a Delaware laptop.

Yesterday, the computer store owner who turned the laptop over to federal investigators sued Twitter for defamation. Twitter’s ban was predicated on alleging the laptop containing “hacked” material, even though, as The Federalist documented, Twitter regularly allows the circulation of hacked and hoax information. The laptop owner says he did not hack it, he owns it, and that Twitter claiming otherwise has significantly damaged his reputation and employment.

In October, Twitter openly admitted it was pre-emptively choking the story on their platform even before deploying their Chinese- and Democrat-funded “fact-checking” organizations to explain away what are obviously politically motivated, selectively enforced, anti-truth information operations designed to help Democrats control the United States.

Twitter also pre-emptively blocked The New York Post’s subsequent reporting on its Hunter Biden laptop scoop, despite those containing additional corroborating details, and although witnesses and additional evidence also surfaced to independently corroborate the story. Twitter banned members of Congress and the president’s campaign from posting information about the story. It kept the Post locked out of its Twitter account for weeks following the breaking story in the run-up to the election.

Lest we all become too dulled to this successful attempt to control the nation without the people’s consent because we’re all used to leftists refusing fair play and equal treatment, we all need to remember that enough Biden voters to swing the election decisively to Trump said they would have changed their votes if they knew about this corruption story. Big tech bias is not a trivial issue. It is the difference between a fair election and a corrupted one, between self-rule and a corrupted oligarchy.

Evidence of Election Tampering and Errors

From May 2018 to October 2020, Twitter and Facebook restricted posts from President Trump at least 65 times, according to a media study. They did this precisely zero times to Joe Biden (or Hillary Clinton), and it’s not because he’s the most accurate politician alive.

In June, the anti-Trump bias ridiculously caused Twitter to put a warning label on an obvious parody video about a “racist baby.” More seriously, at the same time Twitter repeatedly throttled as “false” President Trump’s claims that mail-in ballots are an insecure voting method. That is absolutely true and it made the 2020 election ripe for fraud, abuse, and contested results.

On election night, Twitter flagged a post from President Trump that said: “We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!” Twitter claimed this was “disputed and might be misleading” and banned users from sharing the tweet. Later it was shown that Pennsylvania indeed counted post-election ballots against its own law forbidding that.

On Nov. 4, Twitter slapped a “warning label” about “disputed information” in a tweet from Federalist Cofounder Sean Davis, whose “offending” tweet accurately summarized the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling that ballots brought in after election day would be counted.

On Nov. 9, Twitter put a warning label on a quote from and link to an affidavit of sworn testimony alleging election fraud tweeted by Federalist Senior Contributor Ben Weingarten. “This claim about election fraud is disputed,” Twitter claimed, preventing people from retweeting it without adding their own comments. It later removed the choke without explanation.

In December, Federalist Senior Editor Mollie Hemingway explored the disqualifying errors in a “fact-check” done by one of Facebook’s partners of allegations of election fraud in Georgia. Facebook used the same fact-check she fisked to pre-emptively ban her article from its platform.

COVID-19

Big communications companies rabidly policed discussions about COVID-19 in 2020. Big tech seemed especially pouncy about information related to face masks. This included Amazon’s Nov. 24 ban of a book by former New York Times reporter Alex Berenstein’s book discussing the scientific evidence that mask mandates are ineffective.

It extended to repeated bans and chokes on Federalist content about masks, many by a supposed Facebook “fact check” that didn’t fact check any Federalist articles. It was just a generic fact check applied against anyone questioning the efficacy of cloth masks and generic mask mandates, even when such individuals cited scientific evidence from reputable sources.

Former White House Coronavirus Task Force advisor Dr. Scott Atlas was banned from publishing references to scientific studies on masks. CNN anchor Jake Tapper and CNN commentator Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a professor of neurosurgery, cheered Twitter on. Google-owned YouTube infamously pulled down a June interview of Atlas.

Weirdly, in April Facebook had blocked DIY cloth mask-making sites while banning the sale of medical-grade masks and sanitizer. Yet just a few months later Facebook’s blocking activities supported the use of makeshift masks made out of any material and blocked information, including from The Federalist, pointing out that all masks are not equally effective at virus and other particle filtering. Perhaps pointing out that research has found that gaiter-style or scarf masks actually may increase virus transmission may get this article banned too.

Social media bans on mask information from The Federalist included the well-read Oct. 29 article that quoted and linked to high-quality studies from reputable sources, “These 12 Graphs Show Mask Mandates Do Nothing To Stop COVID,” which was also throttled on LinkedIn.

YOU ALL MIGHT WANT TO TRY TWO NEWER SOCIAL MEDIA SITES. https://mewe.com/ and https://parler.com/

Spygate

In October, Twitter began publicly testing stronger information controls, which resulted in it warning users who tried to tweet a Federalist article breaking new information about the Spygate scandal. Spygate, of course, is the Obama administration’s documented and so far unpunished use of federal surveillance and policing powers to baselessly persecute, prosecute, and hamstring their political opponents.

The article Twitter impeded reported handwritten notes from Obama CIA Director John Brennan that showed President Obama was made aware months before the 2016 election that the Russian government may have been influencing Hillary Clinton’s false collusion smear against Donald Trump. Sean Davis reported more in that piece for The Federalist:

There is no evidence the FBI ever took any action to ensure that Russian knowledge of Clinton’s plans did not lead to infiltration of that campaign’s operation by Russian intelligence agents. The CIA referral, specifically its reference to a ‘CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion cell,’ suggests that the Obama administration’s anti-Trump investigation may not have been limited to the FBI, but may have included the use of CIA assets and surveillance capabilities, raising troubling questions about whether the nation’s top spy service was weaponized against a U.S. political campaign.

Seemingly Random Acts of Censorship

In September, Facebook employed abortionists to “fact-check” two videos from Live Action explaining why abortion is never medically necessary. Numerous obstetrics professionals and a national OB-GYN organization supported Live Action’s statement as accurate, but that didn’t matter to Facebook, which choked Live Action’s page.

In November, Instagram and Facebook’s sweeps caught up an innocent and completely apolitical local charity that used Facebook to coordinate donors and volunteers. Oathkeepers Causeplay may sound like it’s a conservative group, but it’s not (and even if it were, there’s nothing wrong with being conservative). It’s a group of people who dress up like TV and movie superheroes and other characters to cheer up disabled and sick children.

The act of random censorship hurt sick kids by depriving the charity of funds and volunteers. It also scared people away from associating with the charity — which, again, not only did nothing “wrong” but actively does good — out of fears they’d also lose their Facebook-mediated access to friendships and social activity. Good job, Facebook.

Also in October — see a pattern here? — Facebook users who searched for the Christian group Let Us Worship were given a warning message falsely claiming the group was affiliated with QAnon. “This is a peaceful movement from across the political spectrum and they are suppressing it by linking us to Q,” the group’s founder, Sean Feucht, told The Federalist. Facebook claimed the mislabeling was a glitch. Yet nobody shut down their traffic over their inaccurate statements despite the harm they caused others.

Again in October, Facebook demonetized the satire website Babylon Bee for making a Monty Python joke in a headline. Facebook claimed the Bee’s silly headline “Senator Hirono Demands ACB Be Weighed Against A Duck To See If She Is A Witch” “incited violence,” and refused to alter its decision after a review. In a self-parody that is impossible to top, Snopes and Twitter also frequently “fact-check” and throttle the clean satire site. I guess humor is now too conservative to allow.

It wasn’t just 2020, either. This has been going on for years. In fact, you might say Twitter, Google, Facebook, and others have been perfecting their ability to shut down non-leftist discourse and project public opinion cascades. In retrospect, earlier tech bans on speech look like dress rehearsals for the 2020 election bleep show.

In 2018, for example, The Federalist published a theologian’s story about how Facebook banned him from expressing Christian views about teaching young children about LGBT sex and gender identities. Earlier that year, Project Veritas released undercover video of a former Twitter employee verifying the company’s practice of “shadowbanning,” called that at the time because the practice was covert. In 2019, Google banned a conservative think tank from buying online advertising because a scholar affiliated with the think tank had critiqued multiculturalism.

Punishing the Conservative Base While Monetizing Them

Once a website’s content has begun to be flagged as “false” even if it is not, search engines and social media increasingly throttle traffic to the entire site, not just the flagged content. This further serves leftist information control by making publications reluctant to challenge what the unelected tech arbiters of reality have decided we must see and say. This means Google, Facebook, and Twitter ultimately don’t want you to see anything from The Federalist. They also hope you don’t notice.

“[S]tories from right-wing media outlets with false and misleading claims about discarded ballots, miscounted votes and skewed tallies were among the most popular news stories on” Facebook directly after the election, reported The New York Times. Facebook responded with deeper cuts into the reach of information from right-leaning outlets and greater amplification for articles from leftist media:

employees proposed an emergency change to the site’s news feed algorithm, which helps determine what more than two billion people see every day. It involved emphasizing the importance of what Facebook calls ‘news ecosystem quality’ scores, or N.E.Q., a secret internal ranking it assigns to news publishers based on signals about the quality of their journalism.

…The change was part of the ‘break glass’ plans Facebook had spent months developing for the aftermath of a contested election.

Unnamed sources told the New York Times Facebook is working on ways to control information while still keeping users, and that the tools it has developed for this mostly affect right-leaning content. The company may also make permanent some information control mechanisms developed specifically for the 2020 election. But they have to be careful about this, the NYT reported, because when people notice the information control they stop using Facebook so much.

Right-leaning information is consistently among the most popular content on Facebook and YouTube. This means people who consume right-leaning information provide Facebook and Twitter millions of dollars because their time spent on site lures advertising. This allows Facebook to put competing information outlets out of business by siphoning away all advertising revenue while not paying for the content creation that draws the eyeballs, reinforcing their information monopolies.

Nice little racket. Tailor-made for people who don’t believe Americans ought to be allowed to make their own decisions.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her newest ebook is “The Family Read-Aloud Advent Calendar,” and her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” A Hillsdale College honors graduate, @JoyPullmann is also the author of “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books.

Photo Timothy Krause / Flickr

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Mitch McConnell Urges Senate To Override Trump’s NDAA Veto

Reported by ANDERS HAGSTROM, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT | December 29, 2020

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell urged his colleagues to vote to override President Donald Trump’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Tuesday.

Trump vetoed the NDAA last week, and the House of Representatives has already voted to override the veto with a two-thirds majority, making the Senate the final hurdle for approving the funding. The NDAA passed the Senate originally with a 84-13 majority on December 11, but the grounds have shifted somewhat.

Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has vowed to filibuster any attempt at an override on the NDAA bill until McConnell allows a vote on the $2,000 COVID-19 direct relief payments. Trump called for the increase from $600 to $2,000 last week, a proposition Democrats have endorsed but many Republicans have not. (RELATED: The Numbers In Georgia Point To Two Tossup Races)

“McConnell and the Senate want to expedite the override vote and I understand that,” Sanders told reporters Monday evening. “But I’m not going to allow that to happen unless there is a vote, no matter how long that takes, on the $2,000 direct payment.”

The House voted in favor of the increase to $2,000 on Monday, leaving McConnell and the Senate as the final obstacle. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer attempted to pass the $2,000 increase by unanimous consent during Tuesday session, but McConnell blocked the move.

Trump originally objected to the NDAA because Congress refused to include provisions in the bill that would dismantle Section 230, the law that governs how internet companies moderate third-party content. Trump also objected to provisions in the bill seeking to rename military bases currently named after Confederate figures.

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WOW! Georgia Judge Who Also Is Stacy Abrams’ Sister BLOCKS Elections Officials from Challenging Voters Who Live Outside of Registered District!

Reported By Jim Hoft | Published December 29, 2020 at 10:17am

Sisters Judge Leslie Gardner and Stacey Abrams

They will do ANYTHING to cheat and steal an election.

Judge Leslie A. Gardner blocked the Muscogee County Board of Elections and Registrations from keeping more than 4,000 “targeted voters” from casting ballots in the U.S. Senate runoff election on Jan. 5. The voters in question allegedly live outside of the jurisdictions in which they were registered — which would be illegal votes in GA!

U.S. District Court Judge Leslie A. Gardner is the sister of Stacey Abrams.

This move by Judge Gardner is promoting illegal votes in GA.

FOX 8 reported:

A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order that prevents the Muscogee County Board of Elections and Registrations from keeping more than 4,000 “targeted voters” from casting ballots in the U.S. Senate runoff election on Jan. 5.

The order came late Monday from U.S. District Court Judge Leslie A. Gardner, who is based in Albany. Gardner is the sister of Georgia voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams.

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Majority Forward, a nonprofit voter registration and turnout organization, petitioned the court in the Middle District of Georgia to stop two challenges to voters who were believed to live outside of the jurisdictions in which they were registered. Gardener’s decision impacts voters in Muscogee County and also voters in Ben Hill County.

The order last for eight days, which would carry it through the Jan. 5 election day. Early voting started in the two runoffs that will likely decide control of the U.S. Senate two weeks ago. More than 2 million Georgians have already voted.

Jim Hoft

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A GREAT “FEEL GOOD” REPORT: ‘If We Can’t Work, He Can’t Work!’: Fed Up Restaurant Owner Stands Up to California Health Gestapo

Reported by Shane Trejo | Dec 28, 2020

A California restaurant owner blocked in a public health bureaucrat with his truck earlier today after the government thug gave him a citation for operating his business against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s unconstitutional edicts.

The owner of the Breda & Barley restaurant in Covina, a suburb of Los Angeles, used his truck to block in a public health official who fined him for serving customers in an outdoor setting. A viral video shows the restaurant owner telling a police officer about the situation.

“If we can’t work, he can’t work,” he said.

“When I go to the bank, do I tell the bank the health department said it’s okay? The health department said I don’t have to pay you. The health department said I can’t make a living… Is that what I tell the bank? What do I tell my employees?” the restaurant owner added.

The video can be seen here:

Big League Politics has reported on the tyranny in California where left-wing bureaucrats have exploited media-generated pandemic hysteria to enact totalitarian social controls, prompting a backlash from constitutional sheriffs:

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco is pushing back against California Governor Gavin Newsom’s latest round of COVID-19 lockdown insanity.

People are getting fed up with surrendering to fear. Patriots are beginning to stand up to left-wing COVID tyranny.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – In A Handbasket

A.F. BRANCO | on December 29, 2020 at 8:45 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-in-a-handbasket/

The Georgia run-off election is America’s only hope against insane liberals taking over America.

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David French Joins NYT, New Yorker In Bashing Christians On Christmas

So much for peace on earth and goodwill to men. America’s legacy media elites used the Sunday before Christmas for extra Christian-bashing, with white evangelicals the preferred targets.

Writing in The New Yorker, Michael Luo complained that “white evangelical Protestants, once again, overwhelmingly supported President Trump in the election,” and that “churches, particularly conservative ones, fought lockdown orders and rebuffed public-health warnings.”

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof interviewed leftist pastor Jim Wallis, with the conversation quickly turning to accusations that “White evangelicalism has destroyed the ‘evangel.’” At The Dispatch, Time columnist David French concluded that much of the scorn white evangelical Christians receive is deserved. He says the world often “rejects Christians because Christians are cruel.”

Yeah, well, merry Christmas to you too.

To be sure, Christians should humbly accept correction if it is deserved, even when the word of reproof is delivered by pagans. But the above writers’ broad indictments against American evangelicals do not withstand scrutiny. Although each criticism has particular errors, they are united by two shared mistakes. The first is a failure to account for differences of denomination and devotion. Lumping Pentecostals, Presbyterians, and prosperity-gospel preachers together is sloppy, as is neglecting to distinguish between those who are committed churchgoers and those who are only nominally evangelical.

It might be said that these varieties of white evangelicals have in common an overwhelming political support for Donald Trump, but this retort only highlights the second error shared by these writers: the assumption that voting for Trump was necessarily immoral.

It is easy to pick out Trumpian words and deeds that are not compatible with the gospel. It is also easy to do the same with his Democratic opponents and their policies. Asserting that voting for Trump is a moral stain on evangelicals, without weighing the alternatives, presumes what is in question. This error is shared by each writer (and Kristof’s interview subject), but each finds some unique ways to express it.

Luo, for instance, unfavorably compares the response of today’s Christians to the pandemic with Christians’ response to past plagues. But although he is correct that reckless churches should be rebuked, he makes no effort to distinguish between the reckless and those cautiously meeting in person, or to value preserving the gathering of believers. Nor does he quantify how many churches are foregoing precautions, or show how many of these congregations fall under the “white evangelical” category.

He suggests that, to eliminate risk, Christians should forgo all in-person meeting, and he dismisses the religious liberty claims that have been raised against capricious government restrictions on churches. But if the casinos, strip clubs, and abortion clinics are getting better treatment than churches, then anti-Christian discrimination has replaced public health policy.

Furthermore, even from a secular public health perspective, eliminating church services would do more harm than good, as churchgoing seems to have been essential to helping many Americans make it through the difficulties of this year. We are physical beings, not disembodied minds who can live in the cloud indefinitely.

Meanwhile, Kristof and his interview subject Wallis presume that technocratic welfare-statism is the obvious way to care for the poor and oppressed, so they dismiss anyone who disagrees with them as bad Christians. This complacent assumption of moral and political rectitude precludes them from understanding those they condemn.

Thus, although Kristof recently wrote a column of questions about Christians and abortion, he seems to have ignored the many responses explaining its paramount importance as a political issue for conservative Christians. His indifference is particularly notable at Christmas, because Luke’s advent narrative emphasizes the humanity of both the unborn John the Baptist and of Jesus. And if the unborn are human, then Christians cannot support the party of abortion on demand.

Kristof and Wallis’s reflexive acceptance of the left’s shibboleths of the moment also leads to ridiculous anachronisms such as declaring Jesus a “person of color.” This conceptual colonization of first-century Israel by modern American racial concepts is odious and misleading—“person of color” makes no sense in that context.

It is, indeed, worse than the depictions of a blond, blue-eyed Jesus (are there many of those?) that Wallis complains about. Portrayals of Jesus and other biblical figures in local style and appearance have been a common, if inaccurate, artistic practice across centuries and cultures.

Race is also central to French’s condemnation of his fellow white evangelicals. In his telling, they are guilty of “some outright racism” but perhaps even more of being seduced by a “Christian nationalism” that “will always minimize America’s historic sins and the present legacy (and reality) of American racism.” French is, for instance, upset that more white evangelicals do not believe that racism is an “extremely” or “very serious” threat to “America and America’s future.”

But even if white evangelicals are wrong in their assessment of the depth and danger of America’s racial problems, this is not enough to condemn them as cruel. It is, in fact, precisely the sort of issue on which Christians may reasonably disagree.

Furthermore, the data French cites does not account for crucial factors such as whether respondents are regular churchgoers or merely culturally evangelical. In addition, French ignores education and class in his analysis, even though the study he relies on emphasizes the importance of these factors in understanding the politics of white evangelical subgroups.

French’s article, like the others, is mostly an impressionistic interpretation of white evangelicalism in America. By their reckoning, white evangelicals have become reckless plague-bearers with no regard for the poor and oppressed, and their cruelty rightly earns them the world’s opprobrium.

There may be some individuals who match this grim depiction, but as a general description of tens of millions of evangelicals, it is obviously untrue. Look around the country and evangelical churches are holding services with masks, distancing, and lots of hand sanitizer. Evangelicals, both individually and corporately, are caring for those in need in their communities and around the world, and treating people of all races with dignity and respect.

In this Christmas season, French, Kristof, and Luo should stop building evangelical strawmen to burn in effigy. Instead, they, like all of us, should contemplate and rejoice in the miracle of God become man to save His people from their sins.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Nathanael Blake is a Senior Contributor at The Federalist. He has a PhD in political theory. He lives in Missouri.

Photo poida.smith / Flickr

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5 Big Things We Learned About Our Elites In 2020

For as difficult as the past year has been, from politics to the pandemic, it has at least helped to illuminate and clarify certain things about the state of our country.

Above all, 2020 has illuminated and clarified the relationship between America’s elites—in government, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, corporate America and the corporate press—and everyone else. In short, our elites believe, contra Thomas Jefferson, that most people were born with saddles on their backs while a favored few were born booted and spurred to ride them, legitimately.

We like to think we live in a country where everyone, rich and poor alike, is equal before the law. But we know now, thanks to the exigencies and emergencies of 2020, that isn’t true—or at least it’s only true sometimes, when the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to weigh in and enforce equal treatment.

But left unchecked, as many of our leaders were over the past year, we all know what they will do. In no particular order, then, here are the five big things we learned about America and its elites in 2020.

1. Democrats Don’t Care About Science—Or Religious Liberty

This year we learned Democrats aren’t the “party of science,” and in fact don’t care about science at all—especially if it gets in the way of their policy agenda or the exercise of emergency powers.

Lost in the media coverage of these and similar cases was the disturbing fact that these governors weren’t basing their pandemic-related restrictions on science or data. When a Los Angeles judge earlier this month struck down an outdoor dining ban issued by county health officials, he noted that the county hadn’t presented any scientific evidence justifying the ban or even done a basic cost-benefit analysis on the effects of shutting down more than 30,000 restaurants.

“It’s not rational to make a decision without doing everything you’re supposed to do, and you haven’t,” the judge said. “You’re imposing restrictions but there’s no reason to believe it will help with ICU capacity.” In all these cases, science had nothing to do with the attempted shutdown. Power and prejudice did.

2. Lockdowns For Thee But Not For Me

Speaking of Newsom, he became the poster boy for elite hypocrisy when he was photographed at a fancy Napa Valley restaurant with a bunch of wealthy and powerful friends right after imposing harsh pandemic-related lockdowns on much of the state.

He wasn’t alone. All over the country, elected officials—almost all of them Democrats—were spotted flouting their own pandemic rules and restrictions. My colleague Tristan Justice catalogued some of the most high-profile instances.

There was Austin Mayor Steve Adler telling residents to stay home—and threatening them with more restrictive measures if they didn’t comply—while he was vacationing in a Mexican resort town.

There was Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, who boarded a flight for Houston to visit his daughter for Thanksgiving right after telling residents to “avoid travel if you can.”

On and on, all over the country. The mayors of Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York, D.C., all of them Democrats, all of them caught flouting their own lockdown orders.

We can conclude two things from this. The first is that our ruling elites, despite their grave intonations and warnings, don’t really believe the coronavirus is very dangerous or that their lockdown orders are necessary—at least not for them. The second is that they hate you and think you’re stupid.

3. Lockdown Elites Don’t Care If Small Businesses Die

The elites’ hypocrisy went beyond their personal behavior. It also affected the pandemic policies they supported and imposed. Especially in blue states and cities, elected officials opted for pandemic restrictions that disproportionately harmed small businesses and working families, while giving generous carve-outs and exemptions to special interests.

Nothing illustrated this better than a viral video by a distraught restaurant owner in Los Angeles, who was justifiably upset over an outdoor dining ban that shuttered all bars and restaurants but exempted the film and television industry. Angela Marsden, owner of the Pineapple Hill Saloon and Grill in Los Angeles, had spent tens of thousands of dollars to create an outdoor dining space that complied with Centers for Disease Control and county health guidelines in an attempt to save her business, only to have the rules changed on her without warning.

The real slap in the face, though, was an outdoor dining area for a television production set up not 50 feet from her restaurant. The two dining spaces were nearly identical. The only difference is that she, a small business owner, wasn’t powerful or important enough to get an exemption.

4. Silicon Valley Wants You to Shut Up

Another disturbing revelation in 2020 was that Big Tech doesn’t care about free speech or the free exchange of ideas, and will, given the right circumstances, censor what you can read and share on their platforms according to criteria they invent out of thin air.

We saw this over and over again, not only with COVID-19 commentary and reporting but with coverage of the presidential election and the many instances of fraud and illegal electioneering that were documented in the days and weeks after the vote. Twitter and Facebook in particular were aggressive in their censorship of any opinions or information that challenged their chosen narratives about the pandemic and the election.

Again, science and data and verifiable facts didn’t factor into these decisions. Experts like former White House advisor Scott Atlas were censored by Twitter for sharing studies that showed the ineffectiveness of masks. Amazon did the same thing to former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson’s booklet on the ineffectiveness of masks.

On election night, Twitter repeatedly censored President Trump but not former Vice President Joe Biden. Facebook “fact-checkers,” some of them funded by China and Russia, repeatedly flagged content critical of Democrats.

Most infamously, Twitter and Facebook conspired with corporate media before the election to impose a blackout on coverage of the Hunter Biden scandal, including an unprecedented move by Twitter to suspend The New York Post’s account for breaking the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop and emails. This was done rather straightforwardly to shield voters from the Biden family’s corruption. After the election, the FBI confirmed that it is in fact investigating Hunter Biden.

5. Elites Are Okay With Chaos and Violence From the Left

Another glaring instance of elite hypocrisy in 2020 was the reaction to riots and looting in American cities throughout the spring and summer. Because Democrats and corporate media agreed with the ideology and politics driving this violence, and approved of groups like Black Lives Matter (BLM) that were fomenting it, they excused it. Over and over, reporters and commentators characterized violent riots and urban unrest as “mostly peaceful protests,” sometimes even while showing images of burning buildings and mayhem in the streets.

By contrast, peaceful and orderly protests of pandemic lockdown orders in the spring were reported as dangerous and threatening, not because they were actually dangerous or threatening but because the protesters were mostly conservatives and Republicans who thought governors and mayors were overstepping their authority. At the same time, these same outlets downplayed or simply refused to report on the many instances of violence, including shootings, perpetrated by Antifa rioters and BLM demonstrators across the country.

When armed groups began showing up at these BLM “protests” to protect property and businesses from being looted and burned down, major outlets like The New York Times pretended the gunplay and violence started with the right, not the left. Biden’s deputy campaign manager even went on air and accused Trump of “inciting violence,” as if the mere fact of Trump presidency justified widespread violence and rioting.

We learned from all this that the left is prepared to burn down cities to seize power, and will make excuses for rioters and looters as long as it serves their political and ideological agenda.

That’s of a piece with everything else we’ve learned about our elites in 2020. They don’t really care about the things they claim to care about. They don’t care about science or data or even keeping us safe during a pandemic. They don’t care about small businesses or working families or getting kids back to school. They don’t care about free speech or the free exercise of religion or anything else that hinders their power—and they certainly don’t care about you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

John is the Political Editor at The Federalist. Follow him on Twitter.

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Biden Turns His Back Against Those Banking on Student Loan Forgiveness Order: ‘I’d Be Unlikely To Do That’

Reported By C. Douglas Golden | Published December 28, 2020 at 7:22am

One way to keep anyone interested in politics is free money. Granted, such a thing doesn’t really exist, but — and this is particularly true when it comes to liberals — if you promise people you’ll transfer enough of someone else’s hard-earned wealth to them, their ears will remain perked-up.

This was especially evident in the 2020 election cycle when millennial and Gen Z voters weren’t particularly thrilled with Joseph Robinette Biden as the Democratic Party nominee. It wasn’t just that he came across as a cadaver-in-waiting who made strange references to record players and didn’t know where he was on not infrequent occasions, he also didn’t seem to be the kind of left-wing candidate that would fit the moment.

Polling showed both groups had a negative opinion of Biden as late as September, which didn’t bode well for voter excitement — even if younger voters preferred Biden to President Donald Trump.

And yet, according to an analysis by Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, millennial and Gen Z voters pushed Joe Biden over the top in key swing states and had a high voter engagement rate. Why, you might ask?

I’m not saying that it was necessarily a September proposal floated by Democratic leadership that stated the president and secretary of education could cancel up to $50,000 in student loan debt via executive order, but let’s face it — younger voters were pretty certain that with Biden in the White House, student loan forgiveness was going to be a top priority.

Well, at least when it comes to that executive order proposal, it seems younger voters may soon be feeling a bit of buyer’s remorse.

According to The Washington Post, Biden was speaking with a select group of columnists last week when he said he’d be unlikely to pursue any kind of executive order that involved forgiving student loans, inasmuch as he’s going to be very careful not to test the limits of rule by fiat.

“Biden also said that, as a president who wants to avoid inflaming a closely divided Congress, he plans to tread lightly when it comes to using his executive power — a declaration that no doubt will cause some heartburn on the left, where such caution is considered naive,” The Post’s Karen Tumulty wrote.

Upon his inauguration, Biden says he plans to issue executive orders to undo some of what Trump has done. He will instruct the United States to rejoin the 2015 Paris climate agreement, to protect immigrant ‘dreamers’ whose parents brought them to the United States as children, and to reinstate environmental regulations that Trump did away with.

TO READ THE REST OF THIS REPORT, GO TO https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-turns-back-banking-student-loan-forgiveness-order-unlikely/

C. Douglas Golden

Contributor, Commentary

C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal for four years.

@CillianZeal

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Three Important Reports Beginning with; NYT: Fauci admits to deceiving the public about herd immunity because he wanted more people to get vaccinated

Reported by LEON WOLF | Monday, December 28, 2020

In a startling interview with the New York Times, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the government’s coronavirus taskforce, admitted that he did not level with the American people about how many people would need to be vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity because he didn’t think the public was ready to hear his true thoughts, which he feared might discourage people from getting vaccinated.

The Times article catalogued Dr. Fauci’s changing position on how many Americans would need to be vaccinated, which he initially stated would be 60-70 percent. As noted by the Times, about a month ago, Fauci’s tune began to change and he suggested that the figure was actually 70-75 percent. Last week, in an interview with CNBC, he upped that figure (again) to “75 to 80-plus percent.” In the interview with the Times, he changed his estimate yet again and suggested that the figure actually may be “close to 90 percent.”

According to the Times, in the telephone interview, “Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.”

In other words, Fauci’s advice to the American public on one of the most critical aspects of the coronavirus pandemic, has not consisted entirely of his honest opinion, formulated by the best science, but rather on what he thinks the country is ready to hear.

Dr. Fauci went on to even more expressly admit that he had fudged his public pronouncements in order to encourage people to take the vaccine. According to the Times, Dr. Fauci was ready to raise his estimates “weeks ago” but refused because “many Americans seemed hesitant about vaccines, which they would need to accept almost universally in order for the country to achieve herd immunity.”

Blithely continuing to explain how polling, rather than science, informed his public pronouncements, Fauci went on: “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent. Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so Iwent to 80, 85.“

Moreover, Fauci went on to explicitly state that his future pronouncements might still be based on his feeling of what the public thinks, not what the science says: “We need to have some humility here. We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.”

Why won’t he say 90 percent? According to the Times, the answer is that “Doing so might be discouraging to Americans, he said, because he is not sure there will be enough voluntary acceptance of vaccines to reach that goal,”in light of the fact that “sentiments about vaccines in polls have bounced up and down this year.”

Fauci doubles down after being confronted over startling admission that he deceived the public about herd immunity

Reported by CHRIS ENLOE | December 27, 2020

Dr. Anthony Fauci is defending startling comments he made last week in which he admitted he was not completely honest about the number of Americans who needed to get the coronavirus vaccine before the American population can achieve so-called herd immunity.

Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a key member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

What’s the background?

Fauci admitted in an interview with the New York Times that he moved the goal posts on herd immunity percentages partly based on public polling data to covertly encourage more Americans to get vaccinated.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Fauci stated publicly that 60-70% of the American public would need to be inoculated with a vaccine to achieve herd immunity. But Fauci slightly increased his percentages as the pandemic raged on, suggesting in his interview with the Times that achieving herd immunity would require 90% of the American public to receive the vaccine.

The Times reported:

In a telephone interview the next day, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.

“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Fauci told the Times. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ʻI can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”

“We need to have some humility here,” he added. “We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.”

What did Fauci say on Sunday?

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Fauci denied that he was not being straight with the American people.

“The reason I first started saying 70, 75, I brought it up to 85 — that’s not a big leap to go from 75 to 85 — it was really based on calculations and pure extrapolations from measles,” Fauci said. “Measles is about 98 percent effective vaccine. The COVID-19 vaccine is about 94, 95 percent.”

“When you get below 90 percent of the population vaccinated with measles, you start seeing a breakthrough against the herd immunity,” he continued. “So, I made a calculation that COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, is not as nearly as transmissible as measles. Measles is the most transmissible infection you can imagine. So, I would imagine that you would need something a little bit less than the 90 percent. That’s where I got to the 85.”

When show host Dana Bash confronted Fauci over his admission that public polling played into his public statements, he initially denied that — then admitted that polling did contribute “a bit.”

“I want to encourage the people of the United States and globally to get vaccinated, because, as many as we possibly get vaccinated, we will get closer to herd immunity. So, the bottom line is, it’s a guesstimate,” Fauci said.

Dr. Fauci Admits He Has Treated The American People Like Children

In an interview last week with The New York Times, Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted something that many of us have suspected for some time: The media-anointed, all-knowing guru of COVID has been fudging the truth in order to encourage what he views as better behavior from the American people. Put simply, Fauci has been acting less like a public official and more like a parent keeping certain truths from his children.

This quote, which has been rightfully making the rounds, really tells the whole tale. Asked why he changed his mind about how much vaccination would result in herd immunity, Fauci said, “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent … Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85. We need to have some humility here …. We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.”

This is a problem. Fauci is clearly admitting that he was not simply telling the American people what he believed to be true, he was instead trying to manipulate us into behaving how he wants. And it’s not the first time. Back in March, Fauci told Americans not to wear masks. He now claims he did so largely because he feared a shortage. So, once again, instead of just giving us the unvarnished scientific truth, as he understood it, he told us only what he thought it was good for us to know.

Sen. Marco Rubio was quick to point out how obvious it has become that Fauci has been operating more as a public relations flack than a scientist for some time now, tweeting:

Rubio is correct that it is not just Fauci who has failed to be straight with us. For months it was clear that in-school learning was not only safe, but hugely advantageous for children compared to remote learning. But teachers unions, politicians on the left, and the media refused to acknowledge it. They refused to listen to science because it wasn’t about science, it was about power.

It was also about power when social media giants like Twitter and Facebook censored posts that contained accurate scientific information that questioned the efficacy of lockdowns. This happened when Dr. Scott Atlas was banned from Twitter literally for posting scientific studies. Twitter thought that we were not prepared for that information, that it might make us less vigilant, or something. Meanwhile, the very big tech sector that is silencing lockdown doubt is also the lockdown’s biggest financial beneficiary.

The bottom line is that we are not being told the truth by our public officials or the media; they are trying to manipulate us, not inform us. How a society chooses to deal with and respond to a pandemic that lasts months on end is inherently a political choice. It is not a matter for experts to simply decide and then lie about the science to compel adherence to their plan.

Enough is enough. The American people are not children to be guided with half-truths to the decisions that their betters deem best for them.

If you have the sense that you are not getting the whole story, and that you have not been getting the whole story for some time now, it is because you aren’t. It was only under pressure from Republican elected officials that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo released the contact tracing data that showed restaurants only caused 1.4 percent of the virus spread in his state. Even so, he closed the restaurants anyway, because this isn’t about science, it’s about power.

It needs to be made completely clear to Fauci and every one of our public officials that the American people expect to be told the accurate truth, not whatever unelected officials think is best for us to know. With more officials moving the goalposts to suggest that even after the vaccinations we might not get back to normal, we need the real science, right now.

We need, not what Fauci thinks is best for us, not what Joe Biden thinks is best for us, not what Andrew Cuomo thinks is best for us, just the truth. Then, and only then, can we decide how to proceed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

David Marcus is the Federalist’s New York Correspondent. Follow him on Twitter, @BlueBoxDave.

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Ann Coulter Op-ed: Is There a Vaccine Against Pandering?

Commentary by Ann Coulter | Posted: Dec 23, 2020 4:48 PM

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

Source: AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

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It now appears that the greatest threat to black Americans isn’t COVID, it’s being pandered to death.

As the distribution of vaccines got underway last week, the Centers for Disease Control was trying to ensure that black people would get the vaccine before the elderly (too white!), while the media were focused on rationalizing black people’s opposition to taking the vaccine at all.

— NPR’s “Weekend Edition”:

Scott Simon: “Help us understand why many black Americans may be skeptical of a vaccine.”

Liz Walker: “Well, Scott, you know, black people have been traumatized by a betrayal of the system forever for generations. … We have all now talked about the experiment that used people with syphilis in Tuskegee. We all know about Henrietta Lacks.”

— ABC’s “Good Morning America”:

Zachary Kiesch (voiceover): “From the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, where scientists deliberately infected men and withheld treatments, to Henrietta Lacks, a young black mother of five who, in 1951, unknowingly had cells taken from her that biomedical research led to breakthrough cancer treatment.”

— MSNBC’s “The Reidout”:

Joy Reid: “And then the other piece is, when it comes, particularly in our community, black people, they might be like, I don’t trust science, the science. We — Tuskegee experiments, etc. There’s just not a lot of trust. And it was developed during the Trump era.”

Yes, because black people have a long track record of trusting the government …

A New York Times/WCBS-TV poll found that 70% of African Americans believed that “the government deliberately makes sure that drugs are easily available in poor black neighborhoods to harm black people.”

A CNN/Essence poll found that 88% of African Americans think the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. was part of a “larger plot.”

A survey of more than 1,000 black church members by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference showed that 35% believed that AIDS was a form of genocide, and another 30% were unsure.

Although vaccines are one of Western medicine’s greatest inventions, I think people should be free to refuse to take the COVID vaccine for any reason, such as, off the top of my head, they’re young and healthy.

But liberals don’t! Anti-vaxxers are one of the media’s most despised groups — provided they’re affluent white women.

When people like Jennifer Biel and Jenny McCarthy opposed mandatory vaccinations, they were universally reviled for hawking scientific nonsense. Los Angeles Times: “Jenny McCarthy: anti-vaxxer, public menace.” The New York Times headline: “When Did We Start Taking Famous People Seriously?” Even “Saturday Night Live” ridiculed McCarthy for her anti-vaccine stance.

But now that it’s African Americans who are reluctant to take the COVID vaccine, they’re treated like children. Who can blame them? It’s because of Tuskegee and Henrietta Lacks!

I know about Tuskegee, but what did the bad white doctors do to Henrietta Lacks? Answer: Johns Hopkins Medical School provided this poor black woman with the most advanced treatment available for her aggressive cervical cancer — gratis.

Her rapidly reproducing tumor cells were then studied around the globe, advancing cancer research by leaps and bounds. But apparently, it was a violation of Mrs. Lacks’ “black body” for her cancer cells to be used to benefit mankind. Maybe she wanted to display them on her mantle!

But the runaway winner for patronizing black people is … director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci! This media darling recently announced: “So, the first thing you might want to say to my African American brothers and sisters is that the vaccine that you’re going to be taking was developed by an African American woman. And that is just a fact.”

Wha …? So far, we’ve got vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, and soon may have one from AstraZeneca.

Pfizer’s CEO is a Greek businessman. The company has no black women in its executive leadership.

Moderna’s chief executive is Frenchman Stephane Bancel. The president of the company is the translucently white Dr. Stephen Hoge.

AstraZeneca hasn’t had its vaccine approved yet, but it’s a British-Swedish company, and the chief executive is Frenchman Pascal Soriot.

Each one of these companies had hundreds of people working on a vaccine, so who’s the “African American woman” who single-handedly “developed” it?

She’s a government bureaucrat with the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett. The NIH, you see, “worked with” Moderna during the vaccine approval process. Corbett made the invaluable contribution of accusing doctors of allowing black people to die of COVID, calling the pandemic a black “genocide” and condemning “systematic oppression” of black people. Among the oppressors was one … Anthony Fauci, whom she directed to “check” his “privilege.”

How could we ever have come up with a vaccine without her?

First, it was racist not to put black Americans at the head of the line for the vaccine. Once again, black people have to go to the back of the bus!

Then the CDC decided minorities would get it first, before the elderly. True, those over 70 make up the lion’s share of COVID deaths, but they’re mostly white, so screw them. Oh wait — black people are getting the vaccine first? You see! They’re using us as guinea pigs!

Just tell me when black people get the vaccine, so I’ll know what the explanation is.

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Opinion, Political

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Today’s TWO Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Porkulus

A.F. BRANCO | on December 24, 2020 at 9:30 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-porkulus/

Pelosi and the Democrat’s priorities seem to be everyone and everything but Americans who are hurting.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Privilege Alert!

A.F. BRANCO | on December 28, 2020 at 9:30 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-privilege-alert/

AOC feels she’s essential and therefore needs to be put in front of the line ahead of the elderly.

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Hungary passes constitutional amendment defining marriage as between man and woman, bans gay adoption

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban delivers a speech in front of the National Museum during Hungary’s National Day celebrations on March 15, 2019 in Budapest, Hungary. Hungary’s National Day celebrations commemorate the 1848 Hungarian Revolution against the Habsburg monarchy. | Laszlo Balogh/Getty Images

The eastern European nation of Hungary has passed a constitutional amendment that will preserve the definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

The Ninth Amendment to the Fundamental Law of Hungary, the country’s equivalent of a constitution, was passed in Parliament last week by a margin of 134-45. The amendment, which was backed by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, will amend Section L paragraph (1) of the Fundamental Law to read: “Hungary protects the institution of marriage as the association between a man and a woman and the family as the basis for the survival of a nation. The foundation of the family is marriage and the parent-child relationship. The mother is a woman, the father is a man.”

“The main rule is that only married couples can adopt a child, that is, a man and woman who are married,” said Justice Minister Judit Varga, Reuters reported.

Varga, who sent the amendment to Parliament last month, said it will also work to provide “all children with an education based on the values of the Christian culture of Hungary and guarantees the undisturbed development of the child according to their gender at birth,” Hungary Today noted.

“The Fundamental Law of Hungary is a living framework that expresses the will of the nation, the form in which we want to live,” Varga wrote in the justification section of the bill. “However, the ‘modern’ set of ideas that make all traditional values, including the two sexes, relative is a growing concern.”

“The constant threat to the natural laws of the forms and content of human communities, to the concepts arising from the order of Creation that harmonize with them and ensure the survival of communities, and, in some cases, the attempt to formulate them with a content contrary to the original raises doubts as to whether the interests, rights and well-being of future generations can be protected along the lines of the values of the Fundamental Law,” she added.

The passage of the Ninth Amendment comes less than a year after Parliament voted in favor of a measure that defines gender as “biological sex based on primary sex characteristics and chromosomes.” Like the measure preserving the traditional definition of sex, the Ninth Amendment faced strong pushback from LGBT advocacy groups.

“This is a dark day for Hungary’s LGBTQ community and a dark day for human rights,” said David Vig, director of Amnesty Hungary. “These discriminatory, homophobic and transphobic new laws — rushed through under the cover of the coronavirus pandemic — are just the latest attack on LGBTQ people by Hungarian authorities.”

The government of Hungary, led by Orban, has worked to uphold the influence of Christianity on its laws and culture as much of the rest of Europe continues to become more secular. Orban previously described Christianity as “Europe’s last hope.”

Hungary was one of the 31 other countries that joined the U.S. in signing the Geneva Consensus Declaration, which asserts that “there is no international right to abortion.” Rather than rely on immigration to counteract the country’s declining birth rates, the Hungarian government implemented pro-family policies designed to incentivize people to have children.

The United States tried and failed to pass the Marriage Protection Amendment, which would have enshrined the definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman into the U.S. Constitution, in 2006. At the time, several states had passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage in response to a Massachusetts Supreme Court decision finding a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

Less than a decade later, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the constitutional amendments, declaring that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right in the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision. Of the 29 countries that have legalized same-sex marriage, more than half of them are in Europe.

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Rick Warren: COVID-19 has ‘revealed a fundamental weakness in the Church’

Many churches across the U.S. are scrambling in the wake of COVID-19 because they’ve focused solely on worship instead of other aspects of ministry, Pastor Rick Warren of the California-based Saddleback Church has said.

“COVID revealed a fundamental weakness in the Church,” the pastor recently told Relevant magazine in an interview. “Most churches only have one purpose: worship. And if you take worship away, you’ve got nothing. They’re in a hurry to get back to worship because that’s all they’ve got.”

But the 20,000-member Saddleback Church is built not on one purpose, but on five,” Warren explained.

“You take one circle out, we’ve still got four other circles. We’ve got ministry going on. We’ve got mission going on. We’ve got fellowship going on. We’ve got discipleship going on. Those all stand on their own.”

As a result, removing worship didn’t shut the church down, The Purpose Driven Life author contended. In fact, Saddleback’s seen over 16,000 people come to Christ since March — and is continuing to see about 80 new conversions a day.

“We’re in revival,” he said.

When the pandemic first hit, Saddleback’s leadership “looked around and made a list of all the different problems that COVID was creating,” and then met those needs.

“For instance, the first one was food,” Warren said, adding that Saddleback partnered with every school district in Orange County to develop “food pantry pop-ups.” Now, the church is the largest food distributor in Southern California,” having served over 3.5 million pounds of food to over 300,000 families.

“We teach our people that every member of the church is a minister,” Warren said. “Everybody’s a missionary too. You’re a witness. Those people already know how to share their faith. When people would pull up they’d talk to them about the Lord.”

“Of those 16,000 people who have come to Christ, over 12,000 of them have come through personal, one-on-one witnessing by my members. Not led to Christ by my sermons. By one-on-one evangelizing.”

Though California’s strict limits on church attendance during the pandemic have angered churches across the state, Warren stressed that he doesn’t believe places of worship are being discriminated against.

“They might have a discrimination case if theaters weren’t closed, football games weren’t closed … But they are,” he added. “We’re not being discriminated against. This is a safety issue. Regal Cinemas closed down 650 theaters. Disney laid off 28,000 people. We’re not being discriminated against.”

Suggesting that “some churches are willing to gamble the health of their people,” Warren said he is not.

“The good shepherd prays for his sheep, cares for his sheep. One day I will be responsible. I don’t want to be a super-spreader. I’m not doing this out of fear; I’m doing this out of love. You wear a mask for love your neighbors, yourself.”

Researcher Warren Bird, president of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, previously told The Christian Post that as the COVID-19 pandemic fades away, the churches that “do small groups well” will most likely be “stronger” than those that do not.

“In light of the pandemic, so much of church health today depends on a vibrant, small group system underneath the big gatherings, whether they’re in person or online,” he said.

“Much like in the pandemic, the churches that are most threatened are those with preexisting health conditions,” Bird explained. “The churches that are going to have the hardest time re-surfacing will be ones that depended solely on the Sunday morning gathering. They will have a hard time re-gathering, rebuilding momentum, and reestablishing their mission as a church.”

As many as one in five churches could permanently close due to shutdowns stemming from the pandemic, David Kinnaman, president of the prominent Christian research organization Barna Group, recently said.

As time passes, Kinnaman said that “we’ll look back at this pandemic as a fundamental change to the way Americans” handled church attendance.

Exponential CEO Todd Wilson recently said that “what is church” is “going to become “one of the key questions coming out of COVID,” as the digital way many are currently worshiping is “more of a missionary impulse for evangelism.”

“Personally, I’m predicting it’s going to become more of a debate, not less, as we move into the future,” he said. “It seems like the new normal is going to involve greater digital than pre-COVID. … All of a sudden, churches are going to think about, ‘Why do I even have a physical building? Why do I need it? Why not be completely digital?’”

“At some point, we’ve got to go through that question of, ‘What, physically, is church?”

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Hope, Family, Warm Traditions, And Our Redeemer: The Meaning Of Christmas In Our Hardest Years

Christmas is the most wondrous day of our calendar in any year of our lives.

The bright lights, smells, and smiles discernible even to an infant quickly grow into a sense of hope, awe, and mystery as young boys and girls crane their necks on the car ride back from papa’s house to look out the window for a sign of that bright red nose in the sky. As time moves on, our hopes turn to the company of friends and family, and our awe to the sacred mysteries of God made man for our sake.

Our experience of Christmas changes as we grow older. While the fortunate ones spent childhood ignorant of the troubles between men and maybe even their own families, over the years our broken world comes into focus, and hopefully we come to understand that Christ came among us not to sing carols, but because we have gone astray.

This year has been America’s worst in a long while. We’ve seen our churches boarded up by those who think God merely a hobby. Our elderly have died alone under the orders of those who think it’s better for their health this way. Our livelihoods have been shattered, and even that fleeting innocence of childhood has been taken from masked boys and girls not allowed to go to school or play on public swings.

But for those children whose innocence is injured too early, Christmastime still can bring wonder. The smell of the tree and of mom making cookies fills many houses. Even for those in broken homes or those who don’t celebrate, Main Street and the park downtown are filled with bright lights, there are candles in windows, and sometimes still carolers and Christmas concerts in the road.

This year was a hard one. Many of my friends suffered more hardship than I, although loneliness and anger stalked us all. And since the moment Halloween ended and All Saints Day dawned, I’ve been excited for Christmas with what feels like the hope of a young child. Christmas, and all the traditions it welcomes.

Our best celebrations of the coming of our Lord swirl like a Christmas globe around nostalgia. It calls up the music our parents and grandparents played to ring in the season, special ornaments and decorations passed down through family, familiar hymns sung by millions before us, and those candles our ancestors lit to let Mary and Joseph know there is room in this home for the heavenly child.

When we’re older, we have to make the cookies our mothers once made, but with some written instructions, a bit of a mess and maybe a call home, it can be done. Family might be more spread out now, but if they are our friends and neighbors can fill our tables. And even if it’s been a hard, hard year, we can remember what this life is about, surrounded by the artifacts and traditions of generations past.

On Monday night, an older Hindu friend who’s had to work two jobs making less than he did in 2019 in order to not have to leave his adopted home told me he’d set up his Christmas tree too. “My children are American,” he said. “They love all the holidays.” We spoke of the lights, smells, and music in the air in December and January, and how they fill us with a warmth and sense of comfort much needed at the end of this year. “Soon,” he said, “it will be a new year.”

This year, let us remember the good times we’ve had and the good times to come. Even while saying goodbye to some too soon, we’ve also welcomed new lives into our families and among our friends.

Although for many there might be less under the tree or fewer at our table, our faith in God remains strong. And the songs, traditions, and tales passed down from those who celebrated Christmases past in trenches, basement shelters, empty homes, and sometimes without even a home, just as the Holy Family, can keep us warm wherever we find ourselves.

“She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn,” the Gospel of Luke tells us. The child was indeed holy, the Son of God, and he saved his people from their sins. Merry Christmas.

ABOUT THE COMMENTATOR:

Christopher Bedford is a senior editor at The Federalist, the vice chairman of Young Americans for Freedom, a board member at the National Journalism Center, and the author of The Art of the Donald. Follow him on Twitter.

Photo The Architect of the Capitol/Flickr

Photo John Brighenti/Flickr

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MN Senator/Physician Blows Whistle: The Bizarre, Non-COVID Types of Deaths Being Blamed on COVID

Reported By Michael Austin | Published December 21, 2020

In a video released on Friday, two Minnesota lawmakers called for a full audit of all death certificates marked as COVID-19 deaths.

In the video, state Rep. Mary Franson and Sen. Scott Jensen revealed their own findings after look over thousands of “death certificate data points” and found that the number of COVID deaths was being inflated by roughly 40 percent.

According to Rep. Franson, the investigation uncovered various un-COVID related deaths being counted as COVID deaths, including a freshwater drowning and a vehicle fatality, among others.

Back in April, Jensen had criticized the Minnesota Department of Health for following federal guidelines outlining when doctors should characterize a death as due to COVID-19, the Star Tribune reported.

READ THE REST OF THIS REPORT AT https://www.westernjournal.com/mn-senator-physician-blows-whistle-bizarre-non-covid-types-deaths-blamed-covid/

Michael Austin

Michael Austin graduated from Iowa State University with a bachelor’s in English before joining The Western Journal. He has written for various entertainment sites and volunteered in PragerU’s influencer program.

@mikeswriting

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Family Who Lived in Camper Thanks Secret Santa for $50K Gift: ‘It Changed Our Lives’

Reported by AMY FURR | 21 Dec 20208

A family in Driggs, Idaho, is finally back on their feet thanks to a secret Santa’s generous gift that helped them through the past year. In November 2019, the anonymous donor surprised the Crow family with health insurance for one year and $50,000 to help them finish building their house, according to EastIdahoNews.com:

“Erica and Brad had been living in their camp trailer inside a shop for a few years. Brad had been working on building their home when he fell and fractured his leg bone,” the outlet said. Brad’s accident led to several more health challenges such as a staph infection, the loss of his leg, and a hip replacement.

Reporter Nate Eaton recently caught up with the Crow family as they sat inside their finished home.

“There were a lot of days that we thought that the trailer and the shop was gonna be where we were gonna stay for quite some time. Honestly, if we hadn’t gotten the Santa gift, the secret Santa gift, we probably would still be in the trailer,” Erica told him.

“It was a humongous help for us. We are incredibly grateful for it… I don’t even have words right now,” she continued.

Brad also expressed his gratitude for the gift that helped his family through the past year.

“We just really want to thank secret Santa and the people that were involved with this. It changed our lives,” he said.

The community also stepped in to assist, according to Erica, who said they believe there are other people more deserving than them.

“But it has been incredibly humbling to have people, not just in our community but from around the world that have shared their love and concern for us and wanted him to get better and our lives to be better and we are so very grateful for it,” she noted.

Following their interview, YouTube users were excited to learn that the Crow family finished their home.

“Great to see them all together. Stay strong!” one person said.

“This is the follow up I was really hoping for and asked a couple of times for. It really touched a chord with me last year,” another commented.

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Society

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Schumer, Pelosi, Sanders And ‘The Squad’ Support Trump’s $2,000 Payment Demand

Reported by SCOTT MOREFIELD, REPORTER | December 23, 2020

House Speaker Pelosi And Senate Minority Leader Schumer Hold Media Availability On Capitol Hill

Key Democrats came out in support of President Donald Trump’s last-minute demand that $2,000 in direct payments to Americans be included in the coronavirus stimulus bill. Trump declared in a video posted Tuesday that he would not sign the recently passed bill in its current form, instead demanding the extra payments along with the elimination of several items he considered “wasteful.”

Responding to Trump’s video Tuesday night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi supported the idea while also pointing out that the president never called for a specific payment amount during months of negotiations.

“Republicans repeatedly refused to say what amount the President wanted for direct checks,” Pelosi tweeted. “At last, the President has agreed to $2,000 — Democrats are ready to bring this to the Floor this week by unanimous consent. Let’s do it!”

“That’s great!” Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders responded, including Pelosi’s tweet. “I first introduced a bill to provide a $2,000 direct payment with @SenKamalaHarris & @EdMarkey 7 months ago. Now, Mr. President, get Mitch McConnell and your Republican friends to stop opposing it and we can provide working class Americans with $2,000. Let’s do it.”

Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote that an amendment to include the payments is “ready to go.”

To which Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded, “I’m in!”

Schumer had initially seemed to support passing the bill as-is, but appeared to change his mind.

Other “Squad” members publicly echoed their support for the idea. (RELATED: CNN’s Michael Smerconish Calls Trump’s Push For $2,000 Stimulus Checks ‘The Most Effective Thing He’s Done’ Since The Election)

After months of negotiations, Congress on Monday passed the sweeping $2.3 trillion package that includes $900 billion in coronavirus stimulus as well as $1.4 trillion to fund the government through October. If he changes his mind, Trump has until December 28 to sign the bill.

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People are fleeing New York in droves, and now the state could lose a House seat — or two

Reported by PHIL SHIVER | Wednesday, December 23, 2020

More residents left New York over the last year than did residents from any other state, new population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show. According to early census figures, a net total of 126,355 people packed their bags and ditched the Empire State between July 2019 and July 2020, marking a 0.65% percent drop. That’s the most by any state in the nation by both number and percentage.

Following close behind New York, in terms of percentage loss, were Illinois (0.63%), Hawaii (0.61%), and West Virginia (0.58%). Meanwhile, the big population gainers over the past year were western and southern states such as Idaho, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Texas, South Carolina, and Florida.

The New York Post noted that while the state has been losing residents since 2016, this year’s drop was significantly higher than in years past.

The Empire Center, a fiscally conservative think tank located in Albany, said if the numbers are confirmed when the census is certified next year, the 2010s will become the first decade since the 1970s during which New York experienced an overall population decline.

“The 2020 estimated New York population represented a net decline of 41,326, or 0.21%, from the official decennial census count in 2010,” the group wrote, noting that the state’s usual population boost from foreign immigration has not been able to keep up with the resident exodus over the last decade.

“New York’s sagging population total is due mainly to an outmigration flow of 1.4 million people to other states since 2010,” it said.

To make matters worse, the population decline in New York is not merely an embarrassment for the blue state, but also comes with serious political consequences.

USA Today reported that due to its population loss compared to the rest of the country, New York will “certainly” lose one House seat — and perhaps two — when a congressional reapportionment is conducted in 2022.

New York is currently tied with Florida with 27 House seats, the third most of any state following California (53) and Texas (36). But Florida is expected to surpass New York during reapportionment. The Sunshine State surpassed New York in 2014 as the third most populous state, and the gap has continued to widen since then.

For years, critics of New York’s Democratic policies have argued that the increasing expanse of government and economic woes such as soaring property taxes are driving residents out of the state. But in 2018, ignoring those concerns, Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo blamed the population decline on bad weather.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Stage Left

A.F. BRANCO | on December 23, 2020 at 8:45 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-stage-left-2/

The 2020 election fat lady has not sung yet due to the overwhelming election anomalies and fraud.

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Dear Democrats: Stop Treating Black Men Like We’re Stupid Or Lose More Votes

Democrats spent the weeks before the 2020 election ridiculing black men considering voting for President Trump as sellouts who could derail Joe Biden’s presidential bid. Biden himself said as much with his “you ain’t black” comment.

Some Biden supporters went even further. One professor claimed black men just wanted proximity to the patriarchy and power structures white men have maintained for generations. Once the media announced Biden crossed the 270 electoral vote threshold, the left’s approach changed from proactive intimidation to a retrospective explanation for the fact that exit polls indicated 19 percent of black men voted for Donald Trump.

One Democratic candidate for Congress said one in five black men voted for Trump because “they hate Black women.” The same outlets that declared white Trump voters in 2016 were misinformed, ignorant racists claimed black Trump voters—including the 9 percent of black women who voted for him—were self-loathing victims of “disinformation” campaigns.

Former President Barack Obama joined the chorus in a recent interview with The Atlantic. His entire analysis of the increase in black male support for Trump was that black men were attracted to “the bling, the women, and the money” that characterize both Trump’s public persona and hip hop culture. Hearing such a simplistic and dismissive explanation from someone as politically savvy as Obama was disappointing but terribly predictable. Therein lies the problem.

Today’s Democratic Party relies more on marshaling votes based on identity rather than ideas. That clearly didn’t work for many black men.

Stop Treating Black Voters Like We’re Stupid

Some black men may have been influenced by rappers who publicly endorsed Trump, but it is deeply insulting to assume black men in general are less attuned to their own political interests than any other group is.

One of those interests is public safety. Democrats can’t make the case for why the black father whose one-year-old son was fatally shot in the chest should be in favor of defunding the police. This tragedy is no anomaly. More than 400 children have been killed in street violence all across the country in 2020, and large cities have seen significant increases in shootings and homicides compared to last year.

Democrats have convinced black residents in the cities with the highest rate of violent crime—almost all run by Democrats—that they should be more afraid of the Boogaloo Boys than the Bloods and the Crips. It’s not hard to imagine some black voters being skeptical of such an obvious reality inversion.

Black fathers also care about their children getting a quality education. President Obama hasn’t made the case for why low-income black students shouldn’t have the same types of education options as his children. In 2008, he stated he was enrolling his daughters in private school because DC Public Schools weren’t going to meet their educational needs.

Yet one of the first things he did upon entering the presidency was attempt to defund the program poor DC families use to give their children access to private schools. With an average voucher of $9,531, the grant is less than one half of what DC’s traditional public schools spend per student and one-quarter of the tuition of Sidwell Friends, the school the Obama girls attended.

President Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos increased funding for the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program and publicly support charter school expansion. In contrast, Biden has pledged to eliminate the voucher program once in office and his supporters in the National Education Association oppose charter schools that are extremely popular with black parents.

Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza can’t go into a black barbershop in Atlanta and satisfactorily explain why the men there should support her organization that is committed to “disrupting” the nuclear family. Asking that question, as well as why BLM removed the language from their website, would seem like a natural response to an organization that claims to care about the lives of black people.

Garza also can’t explain why a dad who coaches his daughter’s track team should get behind the Equality Act—a bill Biden has pledged to sign—which would allow a biological male who identifies as a girl to compete against his daughter at a high school track event where awards and college scholarships are on the line. When Flo-Jo, the fastest woman in history, posts a world record in the 100-meter dash that wouldn’t even land her among the top 6,000 men’s times, I think any father has a right to question the impact this law would have on fairness in girls’ sports.

Earn Our Votes, Don’t Just Assume Them

The pitch to black voters from Biden’s surrogates was straightforward: “You may not be excited about him, but we need to get Trump out first and get to policy specifics later.” For a certain segment of black voters, that wasn’t enough.

Some black voters have always been conservative but others considered Trump’s record on the pre-COVID economy and other important issues more important than his tweets, brash persona, and frequent accusations of racism. That is why conservatives should treat black voters like people—rational individuals with deeply held values and specific interests—not indistinguishable components of an amorphous melanated blob.

That doesn’t mean Republicans should run from issues involving race. Leftists incorrectly attribute disparities in social and economic outcomes to systemic racism, but there should be substantive conservative responses to allegations of racial arrest quotas in New York City and unconstitutional stops and searches in poor black neighborhoods in Baltimore. Failure to do so will embolden Democratic politicians to continue their attempts to whip voters in the booth the same way they whip votes in Congress.

A smart, self-interested Democratic Party would ask itself whether Trump’s increase in non-white support may indicate a larger trend underway. Unfortunately, the party’s intellectual wing and its allies in corporate media are among the most incurious and condescending people in this country.

If self-hatred and selfishness are the best explanations party operatives can come up with, they’ll get even less of the black male vote the next election cycle. Instead, they should take time to explain to black voters why Democrats think government bureaucrats and special interest groups should have more influence on where children go to school than their parents do.

They should also have to explain why celebrities and multi-millionaire donors living in gated communities support paying bail for violent criminals who go back to terrorize working-class neighborhoods. And the ultimate question is why the party that claims to oppose all systemic racism and value black lives vigorously promotes abortion policies that disproportionately reduce the black population—a goal shared by today’s white nationalists as well as Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizards of the past.

All of these questions deserve honest, thoughtful responses, not empty platitudes and predictable euphemisms. The lack of answers to this point shows that black men don’t need to defend their choices. Democrats need to defend their ideas.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Delano Squires is the creator of the blog Truth, No Chaser, and has also written about race, religion, relationships, and culture for Black and Married with Kids, The Root, and The Grio. He holds a B.S. in computer engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and an MPP from The George Washington University. Follow him on Twitter at @Mr_Squires.

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History Repeats Itself: Democrats Are Using Tactics of the Marxists of 1917 in Russia to Steal 2020 Election

Reported By Jim Hoft | Published December 22, 2020 at 7:19am

Once again we are republishing this analysis by John L Kachelman, Jr. We first published this piece back in October before the election.

2020 the “Perfect Storm” facing our Republic— All three branches of our Government are in peril

Historical Discovery…An election in 1917 forecast the election in 2020! Here are the elements from 103 years ago!

Years of preparatory work were spent in misleading and mis-directional propaganda
Contested voting results marred the election’s finality and ultimately its dismissal
Claims that the poor were going to be disenfranchised of their votes
The scheduled voting was extended by two months
Division, violence, slander and libel were widespread
A delusional/cunning/conniving campaign made unrealistic promises to win the population
Anger and mob violence were deliberately stirred against “privilege,” possessions, and status
Deceptive claims persuaded the “majority” they were robbed of their electoral victory
Inevitable civil war was sparked at the election’s end because Lenin’s group failed to win the majority
The dissolution of the old State and a “transformation” of the new system was promised to lead to true socialism but it brought history’s worst and longest ruling tyrant

And here is how it happened…

Here is a basic reminder of your 9^th Grade American Civics materials…The Founding Fathers of our Republic designed a system of governing to prevent the evils inherent in the onerous governing systems of Europe. The Republic was to be governed in a way that the majority would have a say BUT safeguarded against a rogue majority controlling the nation. A deliberate system of “checks and balances” was wisely incorporated against evil efforts to seize national control.

The ultimate safeguard was the separation of the State’s governing into three distinct bodies. While each would have an impact upon the others, that impact was deliberately limited. The Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of the Republic were designed to be independent but function with unity to guide the nation, preserve freedoms, and guard the human rights that are often disenfranchised by evil systems and philosophies. One of the greatest feats of our Republic is the exercise of individualism when these three branches of governing are properly functioning.

However, at this point in our nation’s historical narrative the “perfect storm” threatens ALL THREE of these safeguards of our Republic. And my disconcerting observation is that many prance and dance around with a Pollyannish attitude denying the reality of our current situation. The prevailing cultural concern is as absurd as the attitude of one busily rearranging the deck chairs on the sinking Titanic!

The assault on the EXECUTIVE BRANCH

The resistance has been hard at work even prior to President Trump’s inauguration. Attempts to nullify the electoral process have been constant. The evil agenda was visible. Our President has suffered evil resistance of historic proportions. The basic cause is his commitment to the U.S. Constitution. It is the unchanging Constitution that provides the legal governing making the USA an exceptional nation of individuals. This fixed and knowable Constitution gives our nation the strength and energy envied by the world and loathed by tyranny. )The Resistance/DEMS/BLM/ANTIFA demand an activist Court that will change our Republic’s basic foundational principles.)

The stated position of the resistance has been loud and long—they have robbed President Trump of his first four years as President. They have dared to present the most ridiculous reasons for his disqualification and removal. They have manipulated, deceived and extorted support for their evil agenda. They have ignited violence that has divided and destroyed the civility of the USA. Their evil purpose was to achieve the political purge of a duly elected President of the United States of America. Our President has been nominated for multiple Nobel Peace Prizes for his exceptional ability to broker true peace between Middle Eastern nations. But the resistance shrugs forgetting they excitedly embraced the Peace Prize awarded to Obama which is admitted now as an award for nothing! The resistance’s political maneuvering and evil mission is well documented.

Those of the resistance are described by inspiration. Their conniving and cunning evil is a constant action seeking to destroy legitimate order. Psalm 36:4, “He plans wickedness upon his bed; He sets himself on a path that is not good; He does not despise evil.” (See also Ecclesiastes 10:20)

Even the classics describe the reality of this evil. From Stevenson’s pen we remember the confession that describes those seeking to nullify the legality of President Trump’s election. Like the pained soul of Henry Jekyll the resistance can confess, “I lost my identity beyond redemption…had I risked the experiment while under the empire of generous or pious aspirations, all must have been otherwise, and from these agonies of death and birth, I had come forth an angel instead of a fiend…At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion.” Perhaps the most troubling reference that Stevenson’s pen gives to the resistance character states, “O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan’s signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend.”

Inspiration and the Classics unite in describing today’s controlling evil that occupies every thought of the Progressive/Liberal/BLM/ANTIFA “resistance” as “Satan’s signature upon a face.”

This is the first element of today’s “Perfect Storm.” There are two more elements…

The assault upon the LEGISLATIVE BRANCH

It is the Legislative Branch of our Republic’s government that involves the citizenry in the governing process. The population’s vote is a significant and treasured freedom. That vote expresses the desires of each State of the Union and is recorded by the Electoral College so that a free election is not controlled by a militant mob. The Founding Fathers wisely saw the potential of a militant group manipulating and coercing control. The establishment of the Electoral College was a masterful move safeguarding the Republic’s freedoms. By this method the most populous States are equal with the least populous—true equality.

The 2020 General Election is recognized as a critical point in our nation’s history. It can be said that every election is critical and previous elections have suffered the militancy of Progressives/Liberals attempting to undermine the Constitutional foundation of our nation. These past challenges failed because the general population was aware of the evil being campaigned and were educated regarding the safeguards of our Constitution. But the context has dramatically changed for the 2020 General Election. In this current election the Constitutional safeguards are condemned and the population is ignorant of just how fragile individual freedom is. It appears that many have been groomed and are eager to believe the Progressive/Liberal/Democratic lies and embrace anarchy. This is not a new situation. History is amazing as it details how the past continues to explain the present.

Consider the Russian Revolution. I offer just a scant discussion on Lenin’s role in this aspect of Russian politics. Hopefully I will have opportunity to offer a more complete discussion. Consider the first “free election” that Russia experienced. It was held in October or November 1917 (the month depends upon which calendar you consult). Lenin promised a “free” election where all votes would be equal and each citizen would be heard. The election was scheduled and a number of political parties provided the voters a choice. Among the many parties were two dominating parties: the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Lenin’s Bolsheviks).

The propaganda fueling this election is intriguing. Lenin had confidence that his party would be an overwhelming victor. He was convinced that his pamphleteering during his exile was persuasive. He was convinced that only he knew best what the poor citizens needed for happiness in life. Lenin had devised a governing system by which the State would help the poor citizen to have free health care, free food, personal land ownership, and the erasure of all class “privileges” by redistributing wealth/financial resources/personal property. Under Lenin’s control there would be no more denial of personal rights, no more prejudice of persons, and no more unjust financial levels. All would be totally “equal” IF Lenin’s perfect Revolutionary State was allowed to transform into the Marxist utopia.

Here is where history becomes instructive regarding the Legislative Body of the State.

When the Tsar abdicated, the Russian Provisional Government was formed. Its purpose was to organize the free elections for the Russian Constituent Assembly. The provisional government lasted only eight months and was replaced by the Bolsheviks. A significant footnote to this period is that the Provisional Government was unable to make decisive policy decisions due to political factionalism and a breakdown of state structures. The anarchy fomented by Lenin and the Bolsheviks rendered a civil governing impossible. Whatever legislative bills were presented were instantly killed by opposition. Revolutionary unrest fueled violence. This was a deliberate design of non-cooperation and pure resistance! The deliberate campaign for divisiveness and refusal to perform governing duties is a sobering similarity to the resistance in modern day American politics. Lenin’s free election was conducted but here are some troubling facts from its history:

1) The election was designed to be held on specific dates BUT some argued that the peasants in the outlying territory needed more time to get their votes counted. So, the ballot counting was extended in some places by TWO MONTHS!

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2) Throughout the 1917 campaign Lenin argued that the citizens deserved a government that represented “the proletariat’s interests” because, in his estimation, all other governments represented the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.” Lenin argued that the rich would never give up their “privileges” and so the soviets would need to seize power by violence. Lenin’s propaganda fueled the division that would destroy the Russian nation. He urged violence nurtured by envy and jealousy arguing that some had “privileged status” that others did not and this great “inequity” could only be removed with a violent overthrow.

3) Even though the first free election included a number of different political parties, Lenin was confident that his Bolsheviks would win. That did not happen. The final tabulation exposed Lenin as suffering defeat and his Bolsheviks only garnered 23.26% of the vote. The Socialist-Revolutionaries emerged with 37.61% of the vote. Lenin was unhappy and contested the results! Lenin refused to concede protesting the legitimacy of the election.

4) The objective of the resistance was a one-party government and an absolute silencing of opposition. “It is the duty of the revolution to put an end to compromise, and to put an end to compromise means taking the path of socialist revolution” Lenin, Speech On The Agrarian Question November 14 (1917).

Carefully consider how Lenin embraced the freedom of voting while masterfully disguising his evil objective of silencing the opposition and developing a one-party ruling government.

After the election results were announced, Lenin stood and revealed the coup. The results were called flawed. Those in opposition were eventually murdered. Lenin instituted his famous “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Lenin said this was the best course for the average citizen and this dictatorship would dissolve when all privileged distinctions were erased, all wealth inequities removed, and all land ownership seized. And the Russian population permitted this dictatorship to exist!

When applied to the 2020 General Election in the USA, this historical anecdote should sound national alarms! The very concepts that Lenin used to nullify the free election of Russia in 1917 are being used in today’s election. In fact, some of the very words and phrases that were used by Lenin are parroted by the Democratic Progressives today and characterize the membership of Democratic Party in the USA!

When the election process of our governing Constitution is compromised and dismissed as archaic and inapplicable THEN our nation has lost the compass for safely navigating the treacherous existence in this world.

The assault upon the JUDICIAL BRANCH

History reminds its students that the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justices were forever changed in 1987 with Joe Biden’s Judiciary’s malevolent confirmation hearing of Judge Robert Bork. Biden was campaigning to be the nomination of the Democratic Presidential candidate (which he would lose to Dukakis because of Biden’s plagiarism). In 1987 the custom was for such hearings to last two days or less. Under Biden’s chairmanship Bork’s hearing was weaponized and lasted TWELVE days. Such a reprehensible action has earned its own idiom in American language—“so and so was ‘Borked’.”

The 1987 Democratic Party’s politicizing and weaponizing the confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court appointments opened the floodgates for the most contentious events in the governing of the United States of America. One only needs to go back to the recent hearings to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. The personal slander, insidious innuendos, manufactured complaints and a host of other evil actions have become accepted political weapons (Or as Speaker Pelosi remarked, “arrows in our quiver”). In past times it was customary that the sitting President was respected and his nominations were accorded with approval, even if the conservatives knew they were approving a Progressive/Liberal who despised the literalist view of the U.S. Constitution they voted for the confirmation. But now there is a horrid specter of divisiveness and vindictiveness enveloping the process.

The General Election of 2020 spotlights the tragic devolving of the status of the U.S. Supreme Court. It is suggested by some, with validity, that the Supreme Court is no longer focused upon apolitical justice but has assumed an active role in establishing law that the U.S. Constitution reserves only for the Legislative Branch.

The Democrats/Progressives/Liberals have announced their intent to “pack” the Supreme Court with Justices who disrespect the U.S. Constitution. They want a left-leaning Court that will sanction the total dismemberment of the constitutional statutes that made America a great nation. The far-left Daily Kos cautioned Republicans that a “future government controlled by Democrats is likely to pursue — court-packing — as the best way to rebuff a conservative Court majority viewed as illegitimate.” Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told voters during an October 2018 campaign event that Democrats should “pack the Supreme Court of the United States of America” after taking the House, Senate, and Presidency. Leading Democrats also warned that if the justices issue a pro-Second Amendment ruling, and if Democrats win the White House and the Senate in 2020, then they will fundamentally remake the High Court.

Former President Franklin Roosevelt issued this same threat in the 1930s after facing legal obstacles with his New Deal and subsequently “threatened to expand the Court by six seats for a new total of 15 justices so that he could get the rulings he wanted.” The American people, however, rejected his threat, leading to massive Republican victories in the 1938 midterm elections.

Former Democrat presidential candidates Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and now vice-presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) announced that they were open to reshaping the court. “We are on the verge of a crisis of confidence in the Supreme Court,” Harris said, according to Politico. “We have to take this challenge head on, and everything is on the table to do that.”

During the summer of 2020 several major progressive groups, including Take Back The Court, Demand Justice, Progressive Change Institute, and the Sunrise Movement, signed a letter declaring their support for increasing the number of justices by “at least” two seats. The resistance wrote in part: “The fastest, most effective way to make the court representative of all Americans is to enact legislation increasing the size of the Court by at least two seats, and to quickly fill those seats with justices who will safeguard our democracy.” Note: In the context of this reference it is best to remember Lenin’s manipulative ploy that his “free” election would best represent “all Russians”?

In March 2019, President Trump astutely dismissed mounting calls from his Democratic opponents to pack the Supreme Court. “The only reason they’re doing that is they want to try and catch up, so if they can’t catch up through the ballot box by winning an election, they want to try doing it in a different way,” he added.

The late Justice Ginsburg balked at the proposition of packing the Supreme Court. “It would make the Court look partisan,” the late justice told National Public Radio’s Nina Totenberg last year.

The Judicial Branch of the government is to interpret laws respecting the United States Constitution’s limits. Once this unbiased governing is compromised, there is no lawful regulations for civility in our nation.

Concluding Thoughts…

This is where the United States of America is positioned as the General Election of November 2020 nears. A discord and division prevail that has never existed. This violence has been stoked with bitterness. The Progressives/Democratic Party/BLM/ANTIFA assure us that regardless of the election there will be violence. We are being conditioned to think that electoral results will take weeks or months to be validated and even then, they will be challenged. The vitriol marking the battleground is undeniable. Following Lenin’s example in 1917 the Democrats have been told never to concede. The results are already announced, “Furious Democrats are considering total war — profound changes to two branches of government, and even adding stars to the flag (i.e. adding the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as States thus insuring Democrats have two solid additions to their column) — if Republicans jam through a Supreme Court nominee then lose control of the Senate.”

As the National Election of 2020 approaches we read of violence, destruction and carnage in the public sphere…Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s recent death sparked a political firestorm, as Republicans prepare for a contentious, pre-election confirmation showdown and some Democrats threaten to, quite literally, burn the country down.

The ”Perfect Storm” facing the Republic of the United States of America has formed and threatens the three pillars of our civility.

After Lenin’s Bolsheviks permitted a “free election” they moved quickly to strangle freedoms. Lenin’s opinion of the poor proletariat having the right to vote for individual choices morphed into a ruling class identified as the “Politburo.” The first Politburo consisted of: Lenin, Trotsky, Krestinsky, Kamenev, and Stalin. Lenin died. Trotsky was exiled to Mexico and was murdered. Krestinsky and Kamenev were assassinated. That left Stalin. Stalin manipulated the bureaucratic apparatus and seized power. By the 1930s, Stalin had transformed the Politburo into the supreme executive and legislative body of the Communist party and the Soviet government. Stalin was in command of its membership, decisions, and debates. The party congress now not only did not elect the politburo, but its own membership was fully controlled by the politburo. Not only had Lenin’s vision of a one-party political government been achieved but now it became a one-man political government! Individualism had been erased. The individual had ceased to exist and all had become “the State.”

The ”Perfect Storm” in Russia’s history resulted in the totalitarian reign of Stalin’s terror. Such is the conclusion of Russia’s first free election.

What will YOU do regarding the “Perfect Storm” in which our Republic is now struggling?

Please read the historical documentation available and you will realize
this is not a conspiracy theory but a historical constant!

Jim Hoft

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West Virginia police officer launches ‘Operation Santa’s Handlebars’ to give bikes to kids in need this Christmas

Reported by CHRIS PANDOLFO | Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Sure, technically he’s not Santa Claus, but this year one West Virginia police officer is going beyond the call of duty to serve kids in his community by giving them Christmas gifts.

South Charleston police officer Tony Messer has rallied an online community of supporters to raise money for Christmas gifts for the children of his city. Thanks to many generous donations, Messer was able to purchase bicycles for kids who might otherwise have received little for Christmas, as too many Americans face economic hardship during the coronavirus pandemic.

“We raised almost $2,000 for bikes, and we just bought 25 bikes,” Messer told WCHS-TV. “And that’s something that this community, they’re all so proud of, so that’s amazing.”

The project, called “Operation Santa’s Handlebars,” began months ago when Messer created a Facebook page to reach out to his community and humanize police officers during the summer unrest as Black Lives Matter and anti-police rioters set U.S. cities on fire. He began by streaming video games and making posts about his efforts to engage with the community he protects.

“I wanted to build some kind of community, and I never thought it would be what it is now. We do a thing that we want to humanize the badge. So, I want to be a better person. I want to be a better police officer, and I want to set goals for kids who are growing up. I started the page, Officer Messer, and it just kind of took off,” he said.

His page now has more than 10,000 followers from all over the country. Many kind supporters donated to help Messer buy bikes for kids.

“We have so many people who have a goal on here to do stuff for these kids that are not going to have a good Christmas. It’s because of these people, all 51 people behind us, watching right now. It’s because of them, it really is,” he said.

Messer also wants to use his Facebook page to honor other police officers who tragically were killed in the line of duty, like officer Cassie Johnson of Charleston, who recently died two days after being shot while responding to a parking complaint.

“We want to start a scholarship for a criminal justice program for female officers, something like that, just to keep her name in memory because of everything she sacrificed for this community,” Messer said.

A post pinned to the top of Officer Messer’s Facebook page links to a GoFundMe account set up for Johnson’s family.

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Pakistani ‘gender programs,’ horse-racing integrity, climate monitoring in Tibet: Just a few of the ridiculous things thrown into the COVID relief omnibus package

Reported by PHIL SHIVER | Tuesday, December 22, 2020

On Monday, Congress passed a long-awaited $900 billion coronavirus relief bill as a part of a $2.3 trillion omnibus spending package to fund the the government through next September, and as you might expect, the behemoth piece of legislation included far more than just stimulus checks and pay for government workers. In fairness to the nation’s lawmakers, they were only granted a handful of hours to review the more than 5,000-page document before they were expected to vote for its passage. It’s doubtful that anyone outside congressional leadership read it, but nevertheless it received overwhelming support from both Republicans and Democrats in both chambers.

Now that the legislation has been approved, details about what exactly is in it have started to trickle out — and, needless to say, it’s not pretty.

What are the details?

Included in the bill are millions of dollars to fund “gender programs” in Pakistan, fund new cars for federal HIV/AIDS workers, and establish a Climate Security Advisory Council, according to Grabien Media founder Tom Elliott, who posted a lengthy Twitter thread with snapshots of the document Monday night.

Money is even set aside to fund an investigation of the “1908 Springfield Race Riot” and enforce horse-racing integrity.

Evidently, lawmakers thought it unacceptable not to provide funding for a museum to celebrate “the life, art, history, and culture of women.” Oh and they also made sure to appropriate funding for programs to discourage teenagers from drinking under age and engaging in unsafe sex.

Townhall reporter Beth Baumann even discovered a section of the bill where millions of dollars are set aside to monitor the climate change taking place in Tibet.

What else?

In a blistering speech on the Senate floor, Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) denounced the bill and called out the so-called conservatives who abandoned their “soul” and their “fiscal integrity” to vote for it.

“If free money was the answer … if money really did grow on trees, why not give more free money? Why not give it out all the time?” the senator asked.

“Why stop at $600 a person? Why not $1,000? Why not $2,000?” he said in reference to the forthcoming stimulus checks set to be distributed to every American. “Maybe these new Free-Money Republicans should join the Everybody-Gets-A-Guaranteed-Income Caucus? Why not $20,000 a year for everybody, why not $30,000? If we can print out money with impunity, why not do it?”

The legislation passed in the Senate by a vote of 91-6. Five Republicans — Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), Rick Scott (Fla.), Mike Lee (Utah), and Ron Johnson (Wis.) — joined Paul to vote against the bill. Prior to that, the bill passed in the House by a vote of 359-53, with only 53 members — 50 Republicans, 2 Democrats, and 1 independent — disapproving.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Orange Man Good

A.F. BRANCO | on December 22, 2020 at 8:45 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-orange-man-good-2/

Trump has given the world a huge Christmas present through his warp-speed and fast-track programs.

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Zoom executive exposed as Chinese Communist spy who sabotaged anti-China video conferences with child porn and terrorism: DOJ

Reported by PAUL SACCA | Monday December 21, 2020

A former executive at Zoom, who shut down video conferences that were not flattering to China, was exposed as a spy for the Chinese Communist Party, according to the Department of Justice. Xinjiang Jin, aka Julien Jin, was an employee of the American video conferencing company. The 39-year-old, who was based in China’s Zhejiang Province, worked as a “security technical leader” for tech company headquartered in San Jose, California. Jin served as a liaison between Zoom and the Chinese government after Beijing blocked the company’s service in China in September 2019.

Jin provided the Chinese Communist Party with information about users and meetings, even supplying the CCP with IP addresses from anyone who held anti-China sentiments, say federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York.

According to the complaint filed in United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Jin reportedly participated in a plot to disrupt a series of meetings in May and June that commemorated the Tiananmen Square massacre, where at least 280 pro-democracy demonstrators were shot dead.

In the CCP’s bidding, it is reported that at least four video meetings commemorating the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre were infiltrated and terminated. Jin and his co-conspirators reportedly contrived false accusations, including child porn and terrorism, against Zoom users in the United States.

Jin’s co-conspirators created fake email accounts and Company-1 accounts in the names of others, including PRC political dissidents, to fabricate evidence that the hosts of and participants in the meetings to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre were supporting terrorist organizations, inciting violence or distributing child pornography. The fabricated evidence falsely asserted that the meetings included discussions of child abuse or exploitation, terrorism, racism or incitements to violence, and sometimes included screenshots of the purported participants’ user profiles featuring, for example, a masked person holding a flag resembling that of the Islamic State terrorist group. Jin used the complaints as evidence to persuade Company-1 executives based in the United States to terminate meetings and suspend or terminate the user accounts of the meeting hosts.

In June, Zoom admitted that they suspended a U.S.-based user who had hosted an event commemorating the anniversary of 1989’s Tiananmen Square Massacre. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, questioned the company’s close ties with China.

“The allegations in the complaint lay bare the Faustian bargain that the PRC government demands of U.S. technology companies doing business within the PRC’s borders, and the insider threat that those companies face from their own employees in the PRC,” acting U.S. Attorney Seth DuCharme said in a statement. “As alleged, Jin worked closely with the PRC government and members of PRC intelligence services to help the PRC government silence the political and religious speech of users of the platform of a U.S. technology company. Jin willingly committed crimes, and sought to mislead others at the company, to help PRC authorities censor and punish U.S. users’ core political speech merely for exercising their rights to free expression.”

Zoom is not directly identified in the DOJ document, but the teleconferencing company released a statement addressing the situation. Zoom said they were “fully cooperating” with the Department of Justice, terminated the “China-based former employee charged in this matter,” and “placed other employees on administrative leave pending the completion of our investigation.”

Last week, there was a massive database leak of nearly 2 million registered Chinese Communist Party members. The breach provided an “unprecedented view” into how China could infiltrate western businesses and companies.

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Horowitz: Comprehensive analysis of 50 states shows greater spread with mask mandates

Reported by DANIEL HOROWITZ | Monday, December 21, 2020

For months, we’ve been lectured to by the political elites that cases of coronavirus are spreading too quickly and that we must wear masks to stop the spread. The obvious fault with their act of desperation is that they can no longer mask the fact that most parts of the country have already been fully masked for months — long before the ubiquitous spread this fall.

Researchers at RationalGround.com, a clearinghouse of COVID-19 data trends run by a grassroots group of data analysts, computer scientists, and actuaries, did an analysis of all 50 states divided by those that had mask mandates and those that did not. Justin Hart, co-founder of the website, posted the results in a Twitter thread and shared with me the data analysis:

They studied the number of cases over a 229-day period from May 1 through Dec. 15 and divided the results of the two study groups by days with mask mandates and days without mask mandates. The non-mandate data group includes both states that never had a mandate and those that did at some point, but data set included only the days they did not have a mask mandate.

The results: When comparing states with mandates vs. those without, or periods of times within a state with a mandate vs. without, there is absolutely no evidence the mask mandate worked to slow the spread one iota. In total, in the states that had a mandate in effect, there were 9,605,256 confirmed COVID cases over 5,907 total days, an average of 27 cases per 100,000 per day. When states did not have a statewide order (which includes the states that never had them and the period of time masking states did not have the mandate in place) there were 5,781,716 cases over 5,772 total days, averaging 17 cases per 100,000 people per day.

The reverse correlation between periods of masking and non-masking is remarkable.

The 15 states that did not have a statewide mask mandate for the duration of this analysis were Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Wyoming.

Importantly, for purposes of this study, the analysts gave the mask mandate states a 14-day grace period from the time of implementation in order to begin counting cases against mask efficacy. This gives time for the existing spread from the original policy to become obsolete, in order to more accurately assess the efficacy of the mandate. Proponents of the mask mandate might suggest that mask mandates were often imposed once cases already spread quickly, so there is a negative bias of increased cases in those areas (or times) that had mandates in place. However, there was no evidence of any reduction in cases or even better outcomes many weeks later. In fact, Ian Miller, one of the researchers at RationalGround.com, found that three counties in Florida (Manatee, Martin, and Nassau) that allowed the mandate to expire after having implemented it had fewer cases per capita than those counties that kept the mandate.

Nor has the mandate worked in states where it was implemented long before the surge in cases began.

California is the ultimate example of a state that had a mask mandate in place forever — long before its turn for spread hit in earnest.

The simple reality is that there is no legitimate data showing the mandates worked.

My first question when reading this analysis was that perhaps there is a bias in case counts against those areas with mask mandates because, by definition, most areas without them are more conservative and tend to have lower population density. After all, dense areas seem to be associated with more spread, and therefore, those areas must be judged by a different standard.

First, it’s important to recognize that over the past few months, as the virus has spread rapidly to the low-population states and counties, the gap between the urban and rural areas has really closed as the virus appears to be giving everyone equal treatment. Also, included in the top-line number of 17 cases per 100,000 in the non-mask states are also the larger states that did eventually adopt a mandate, but had prior days without the mandate in which the cases were counted among the non-mandate data set. Thus, the study is more apples-to-apples than simply taking places that never had a mandate vs. those that always did over the entire study period.

More fundamentally, this study analyzed Florida by county data and shows no correlation between mask mandates and fewer cases, even adjusting for population density. Gov. Ron DeSantis has notoriously declined to issue a statewide mandate in the Sunshine State; however, of the 67 total counties in Florida, 22 have implemented an executive mask order at some point during the study period. Two of them (Miami-Dade and Osceola) were in effect for the entire period, while the other 20 began in the spring, summer, or fall.

What are the results?

When counties did have a mandate in effect, there were 667,239 cases over 3,137 days with an average of 23 cases per 100,000 per day. When counties did not have a countywide order, there were 438,687 cases over 12,139 days with an average of 22 cases per 100,000 per day.

Did population density play a role?

When you isolate only the top 12 most populous counties in the state (>500,000), eight of them had effective mask orders implemented at some point during the study period, and four never had a countywide order (Brevard, Lee, Polk, and Volusia). When the eight did have an order in effect, there were 24 cases per 100,000 a day. On the other hand, during the days when mandates were not in place (which is never in four counties, and some weeks in seven of the other eight except for Miami-Dade), there were 17 cases per 100,000 per day.

We can turn the numbers upside down and inside out, but no matter how we examine them, there is no evidence of masks correlating with reduced spread. If anything, the opposite is true. And it sure as heck is not because of a lack of compliance.

It’s self-evident that the virus does what it does naturally and follows a very mechanical pattern regardless of state policies.

The burden is on those who want to violate the Constitution with such a draconian mandate for the rest of our lives to present affirmative evidence that their religious symbol works. The phony “fact checkers” will always find ways to show that we can’t prove beyond a shadow of doubt that masks will never work. But while they force us to prove 100% that they don’t work, mandates don’t have to prove any efficacy at all, even as 2-year-olds are forced to have their faces covered on planes.

We used to all scoff at the Islamic fundamentalist for believing that if they just waged jihad a little harder, they’d earn their 72 virgins. Well, those people can learn a thing or two about faith from the mask fundamentalists who believe it’s never too late for masks to magically stop a virus after months of failure.

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MI Sec of State Official Caught On Video Telling Volunteers To Count “Multiple Ballots with the very Same Signature” During “Audit” Of Votes In Antrim County

Reported By Jim Hoft | Published December 18, 2020

Constitutional Attorney Matthew DePerno is an American hero. Two weeks ago, Michigan 13th Circuit Court Judge Kevin A Elsenheimer agreed to allow Mr. DePerno’s client, William Bailey, and a highly skilled team of IT experts to perform a forensic examination on 16 of the Dominion voting machines in Antrim County. On Monday, Judge Elsenheimer agreed to allow the results of the forensic examination to be released to the public. The results were damning.

THE REPORT:

After the forensic examination of 16 Dominion Voting machines in Antrim, Co., MI, Allied Security Operations Group has concluded that the Dominion Voting machines were assigned a 68.05% error rate. DePerno explained that when ballots are put through the machine, a whopping 68.05% error rate means that 68.05% of the ballots are sent for bulk adjudication, which means they collect the ballots in a folder. “The ballots are sent somewhere where people in another location can change the vote,” DePerno explained. The allowable election error rate established by the Federal Election Commission guidelines is 1 in 250,000 ballots or .0008%.

Based on the Allied Security Operations report, Constitutional Attorney Matthew DePerno states: “we conclude that The Dominion Voting System should not be used in Michigan. We further conclude that the results of Antrim County should not have been certified.”

The stunning report was widely criticized by the Democrat Party mainstream media and by the dishonest Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.

Following the bombshell findings by Mr. DePerno and his team of IT experts, a “risk-limited audit” was ordered by Sec. of State Benson. Constitutional Attorney Matt DePerno was invited to observe the “risk-limiting audit” of Antrim County’s vote that took place yesterday in the Kearney Twp. hall in Bellaire, MI., where 6 officials from the Secretary of State continuously walked around the room observing and correcting the counters who dared to stray from their objectives.

According to Verified Voting: The risk-limiting audit process can be conducted on any set of paper ballots that has a record of the number of ballots cast, how they are stored, and how to retrieve any particular ballot (ballot manifest). For an RLA to meaningfully support confidence in the reported election outcome, the standard is higher, and requires the following:

Paper ballots preferably marked by hand and supplemented with a ballot marking device for those who need to use one.
A deliberate and intentional step for a voter to check the paper ballot for accuracy before casting the ballot (voter verification).
Rigorous ballot accounting and a properly maintained chain of custody of the ballots.
If photographic evidence proves seals on the Dominion voting machines were broken on November 27, how can a “properly maintained chain of custody of ballots” be assured. The answer is, it can’t.

Before her so-called audit was completed, Sec of State Benson explained the purpose of the “risk limited audit” to the media while ensuring the integrity of the elections in Michigan:

“While we know the machine tabulators functioned properly in Antrim, we are conducting this audit to assure the public of what countless officials from both parties at the federal, state and local levels have already confirmed – that this was the most secure election in our nation’s history and the certified results are an accurate reflection of the will of the voters,” adding, “It is time for Michigan, and the nation to once and for all dismiss the meritless disinformation campaign that seeks to undermine the integrity of our election and move forward in support of our collective democracy.”

Mr. DePerno, who acted as an observer to the “risk-limited audit,” doesn’t agree with Ms. Benson about the integrity of Michigan’s election and has provided us with video and photographic evidence to prove that he was again able to debunk her statement about the “most secure election in our nation’s history.”

The first video provided by Matthew DePerno shows a bin of ballots from Mancelona Township, Precinct #1. The bin was delivered to three of the 20 bi-partisan volunteers that included several Antrim Co. city clerks who agreed to assist with the “risk-limited audit.”

Inside the bin, tabulated ballots were mixed in with ballots that were never tabulated, and several blank ballots were mixed in as well. Mr. DePerno referred to the bin of ballots as “an absolute mess!” On December 16, we reported about photographs taken at Mancelona Township’s Precinct #1 on November 27, 2020, that showed both of the security seals on the Dominion Voting machine were missing.

The second video was taken at a table where ballots were being counted in Helena Twp. The volunteers can be seen questioning why there were fewer ballots in the bin than the original number that was recorded in the previous recount? Shortly after asking the question, a male SOS official approached the table with a bag marked “spoiled ballots” and told them to count them. Attorney Matt DePerno witnessed the unidentified male SOS rep pulling the “spoiled ballot bag out of the bin and delivering it to the volunteers who were “auditing” the ballots. DePerno also witnessed the SOS official telling them to add the “spoiled ballots” to the count.

The third video was taken at a table where the ballots from Central Lake Twp. were being counted. In the video, a male counter can be seen questioning “multiple ballots with the same signature.” According to Matthew DePerno, 138 ballots had write-in-votes where the penmanship was exactly the same.

In the video below, the SOS official can be seen demanding that the counters ignore what they believe is voter fraud and count the ballots.

“We need to do the counts because if we don’t have the counts, then we can’t move forward. And we understand that there is a concern with this precinct—but this is not a time for you to be investigating right now.”

“Did you find something else?” the male counter asks.

“No,” she replies, adding, “So, you need to move forward with the audit, so we can get the numbers, so we can see how many ballots are here.”

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The female counter asks, “So when we’re done with the audit, there’s still the opportunity to challenge the fact that we have multiple ballots with the very same signature?” she asks.

“I don’t know if ‘challenge’ is the right word,” the SOS official says.

“But we’re challenging—” the volunteer says.

The male volunteer tells the SOS, “We’ll go ahead and count the ballots moving forward, but we will separate out, and count those— there’s going to be an asterisk, saying ‘these ballots have the same signature.’”

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“And again, we know that you have a concern with this precinct,” she tells them, explaining, “That’s not your role at this very moment,” as she continues to push for them to ignore the multiple matching signatures and only count the ballots.

“What I need you to do right now is finish the audit,” she tells them again. Both of the volunteers explain that they are going to make a note of the ballots, to which the SOS official replies, “Again, that is not the process.”

The SOS official implores them to continue to count the presidential ballots.

At no point does the SOS official assure them that the issue of the multiple potentially fraudulent ballots will be addressed, but instead demands that they count them as if they were all legitimate ballots.

In this video, the SOS official can be seen telling the volunteers who are objecting to adding the ballots in question to the vote total, “This is not an investigation right now!”

On December 16, one day after Dominion Voting Systems CEO John Poulos testified in front of the MI Senate Oversight Committee, Mr. DePerno contacted us to say Poulos was incorrect in his statement that the ballots were securely stored. In fact, Mr. Derno provided us with photos showing seals were broken on one of the tabulators. DePerno explained, “In Central Lake, the lock that protects the side data port where you can insert a thumb drive in order to perform a software upgrade, that could change the program, was missing.” He explains, “The missing lock gives the ability of any person, including a voter to change the Dominion Voting machine program.” Mr. DePerno explained to us that once the seals are broken, and the lock is removed, the integrity of the machines has been compromised. “It definitely showed that someone had accessed the inside of the tabulator, and it no longer represents a secure voting platform,” DePerno said.

The bin (or box) seen in the image below is where the ballots are stored. DePerno explained, “If you remove the tape, it gives you the ability to separate the tabulator from the box that contains the ballots.”

The photo below shows the stack of ballots in Central Lake that were cast for Joe Biden. The ballots that are pulled forward are all ballots that the counters pulled forward after objecting to the legitimacy of the ballots.

Mr. DePerno was stunned by the number of blank ballots that were mixed in with actual ballots, saying that he believes he observed more blank ballots in the recount than there are registered voters in Antrim County.

DePerno told us, “The guidelines from RLA were not followed. What they did yesterday was not an audit under those guidelines. It was a hand recount of the presidential race only and failed to address many of the problems with down-ballot races. Members of the public who assisted in the hand recount were not allowed to ask any questions or question any ballots. This hand recount also failed to address any of the glaring problems from the erroneous counts conducted on November 3 and November 6. Yesterday was nothing more than political theatre designed to allow the Secretary of State to again publish the same false narrative to the Michigan voters. Yesterday, when the people conducting the count dared ask questions, they were shut down.”

DePerno’s forensic and photographic evidence should be enough to call the entire Michigan election into question. Will the media or the courts care, or have we now entered a period in our nation’s history where we have officially become a Banana Republica after decades of Republicans ignoring the corruption of our media and our judicial system.

Jim Hoft

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Today’s TWO Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Outer Limits

A.F. BRANCO | on December 20, 2020 at 6:20 pm | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-outer-limits/

Governor Walz says outside dining only in the dead of winter below zero.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Helping Hand

A.F. BRANCO | on December 21, 2020 at 8:45 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-helping-hand/

The Media continues to run defense for President-elect Biden and ignore the gravity of recent scandals.

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Additional Politically INCORRECT Cartoons

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Small Businesses Like Mine Didn’t Cause COVID, But Governments Are Making Us Pay For It

Back in 2000, I left my job in San Francisco working for an entrepreneur named Bruce Carlisle. From scratch, Bruce had co-founded an online advertising agency named SFInteractive, eventually growing the business to 200 employees. I successfully started his analytics department, and then flew the coop. Los Angeles was calling me, and I’ve never looked back. The day I left, I made a pact with myself to never work for anyone else. I saw what Bruce had created and set out to create something of my own. Outside of a short stint working for the city of Malibu and a Christmas gig at Williams Sonoma in L.A., that’s exactly what I’ve done.

In 2003, my wife and I were expecting our first child, and we hadn’t figured out how to pay for her arrival yet. We were both freelancing reading movie scripts for film companies. It was enough for the two of us, and a lot of fun, but we didn’t have enough steady income to raise a family.

A wise acquaintance once said to me, “Every baby comes with its own basket of bread.” Interesting idea, I thought. Sometime after, almost on cue, my old roommate from New York reached out and asked if I knew anyone who could sell French tours on the internet to Americans.

After some serious convincing on my part (I’d never worked in travel before), my roommate vouched for me and we got the contract. Our business and child arrived at virtually the same time. We were off to the races.

For almost 20 years now my wife, Laura, and I have run Link Paris, a small boutique French travel company. We’ve had our ups and downs, but we survived the great recession in 2008, the aftermath of the terror attacks in Paris in 2015 and 2016, and the reality of giant competitors eventually moving into our niche.

On the upside, we’ve served more than 80,000 happy customers and in 2014 we were voted the “Best Online Tour Operator” by the French Government Tourist Office. We truly love this business and our customers.

Our No. 1 product is a day trip from Paris to visit the landing beaches in Normandy. It is a destination every American should see if he or she visits France. We are very proud to have helped so many people visit this hallowed ground.

Now, here we are, 10 months into COVID. Our revenue is down more than 99 percent. We’ve had a total of two clients since March — a father and daughter who were receiving medical treatment in Paris. They, and others like them, are among the very few Americans allowed abroad.

We’re still standing, but how much longer can we? How much longer can any disrupted small business last? We are hurting in my industry and many others.

This is a horrible virus and I fully understand and support the fight against it. The worry is that the government is implicitly saying to us, and a million other small businesses, that we’re simply collateral damage of the pandemic. “Yes, you had a decent life, but that is over now. You need to accept your limited prospects and move on. Tough break. But, you know, the virus.”

Yes, there has been some aid. The Paycheck Protection Program helped, and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan helped even more. But, after ten months of zero revenue, it isn’t enough.

To complicate matters, the Small Business Administration lowered the maximum EIDL loan amount from $500,000 to $150,000 in April — although not before people like Rep. Ilhan Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett, and others got their loans approved for the full amount.

Mynett’s company made $2.2 million this year from Omar’s reelection campaign. Where exactly did he suffer an “economic injury?” I’m sure there are many examples on the other side of the aisle as well. This isn’t a partisan issue, but the point is the same: the well-connected aren’t just barely getting by — they’re thriving.

Indeed, we wouldn’t have even received the EIDL loan if it hadn’t been for a Reddit user who helped us, along with a thousand other people, resubmit our application. When I originally submitted, I’d had made an error, and the SBA was so overwhelmed at the time that amending an application was near impossible — until I found the EIDL subreddit and an anonymous user named Cue378. He (or she) knew exactly what to do and we got it fixed. When someone else started a GoFundMe page for this person as a thank you, more than $100,000 was raised.

In the end, we received a loan. We are grateful for it, but compare it to the $500 million credit facility that our main competitor (Trip Advisor) initiated, and it’s essentially nothing. That is the unintended, or intended, consequence of all of this. The big and connected are getting much stronger, while the small are having their dreams destroyed.

No small business could’ve prepared for this. What started as “15 days to slow the spread” has turned into something far different. I get it — six weeks to beat the Germans in World War I turned into four long years of trench warfare. Things change.

But Washington needs to give small businesses a genuine, real chance to survive. Big business may do the heavy lifting, but we make up 45 percent of America’s GDP. Small business is the lifeblood of this economy. Don’t let us bleed dry.

John Romano is the co-founder and operator of LinkParis.com, a small boutique French travel company.

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Recent Leaks Expose Communist China’s Extensive Infiltration Of The West

U.S. State Department’s Assistant Secretary David Stilwell recently warned the public: “Influence and interference operations are fundamental to how the Chinese Communist Party engages with the world.” Through two leaked documents, the rest of the world recently discovered more about how aggressive and extensive the CCP’s influence and interference operations are: a database of CCP members and a secret agreement between Switzerland and Chinese police.

The CCP Member Database

One of the largest newspapers in Australia, The Australian, reported last weekend it obtained a leaked database of nearly two million CCP members, including their national ID number, birth date, and party position. Additionally, the database contains information on almost 80,000 party branches, showing these CCP members are currently working inside international corporations, universities, and even government agencies around the world.

Based on this database, The Australian also disclosed the names of several companies that have employed CCP members, including Boeing, Volkswagen, Qualcomm, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Deutsche Bank, and J.P. Morgan. Further, as seen via the database, numerous CCP members have infiltrated Australian, American, and United Kingdom consulates in Shanghai, China.

The database was reportedly extracted from a Shanghai-based server by a Chinese dissident in 2016. The Australian stated it hasn’t found any evidence that any member on the list is spying for the CCP. Still, there are good reasons to be concerned. As one national security expert suggested, “Allowing members of the CCP to work for such companies risks their stealing technology, providing intelligence to China on forthcoming weapons systems and capabilities, or on force structures built around those capabilities.”

That no spying has been discovered yet doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened or it won’t happen in the future when the CCP issues a call to action. After all, these CCP members took the same oath when they first joined the party, to “carry out the Party’s decisions; strictly observe Party discipline; guard Party secrets; be loyal to the Party … fight for communism throughout my life, be ready at all times to sacrifice my all for the Party and the people, and never betray the party.” If the party demands its members to share sensitive technology or take certain actions, it will be very difficult for a CCP member to say no.

Besides security concerns, having this many CCP members holding senior positions at western companies and government agencies also raises the concern that they would influence or sway these entities to support the CCP’s policies. For example, the U.K.’s Telegraph discovered:

…At least 335 HSBC employees were CCP members. Current members include the senior vice-president of HSBC China, the president of HSBC’s Shenzhen office, and the deputy manager of Hong Kong corporate and consumer products are listed as members.

The paper also learned that the deputy president of Standard Chartered Bank in China, Dong Shuyin, has won the “Excellent Communist Party Member in Shanghai” award.

Not surprisingly, both HSBC and the Standard Chartered Bank publicly backed the new national security law that China imposed on Hong Kong to crack down on dissent in the city. The law is so draconian that even a tweet supporting Hong Kong protests could land someone in jail. At least two dozen Hong Kong activists have been imprisoned under the security law since it went into effect in July.

HSBC not only supports the policy but may help with its enforcement. Ted Hui, a former pro-democracy Hong Kong lawmaker who now lives in Denmark, claimed that HSBC froze his and his family’s bank accounts. It’s worth asking: would HSBC carry out Beijing’s economic coercion like this had it hadn’t employed so many CCP members in its senior management?

Switzerland’s Secret Deal with Chinese Police

Another leak came from Safeguard Defenders, a Switzerland-based Human Rights organization. It disclosed last weekend that Switzerland had established a secret “Re-admission Agreement“ with Chinese police since Dec. 8, 2015, and posted details of the deal on its website.

Countries typically establish a “Re-admission Agreement” with each other’s immigration agencies to address illegal immigration issues and make sure illegal immigrants or visa over-stayers will be safely returned to their country-of-origin. What’s unusual about Switzerland’s agreement with China is that the deal allows agents from China’s Ministry of Public Security to have “free access in Switzerland, for unsupervised operations across the country.” Furthermore, Switzerland “agreed to keep the identity of visiting agents secret. Agents are selected by China, and Switzerland has no part in the selection.”

Yet MPS is no ordinary agency in China. It’s in charge of Chinese police, national security, espionage, and intelligence. It’s known for suppressing domestic dissent and has been accused of human rights violations.

In recent years, it has expanded its operations overseas, sending agents around the world to bring Chinese nationals it deems as “criminals” back to China — part of “a global, concerted, and extralegal repatriation effort known as ‘Operation Fox Hunt.’” According to China’s state media, the operation has been highly successful and about 6,000 “criminals” have returned to China by mid-2019, including 300 Uighur Muslims from 16 different countries.

Nevertheless, the aggressive tactics Chinese agents deploy as well as their vague definition of “criminals” have irked law enforcement agencies in the West. In August, the U.S. Department of Justice charged eight people, including both Chinese nationals and U.S. residents, with conspiring to act as illegal agents of China, in a multi-year campaign of harassment and stalking of Chinese immigrants in the United States, attempting to force them back to China.

In contrast, Switzerland appears neither bothered by the hard-hitting tactics of Chinese agents nor concerned with the fate of those who have been forced to return to China. There’s also apparently little concern over whether they committed crimes, or were persecuted for being critical of the CCP’s policies, and whether they would be safe upon their return to China.

Under the agreement between Switzerland and China, the Swiss government put very little constraints on their Chinese counterpart. Chinese MPS agents have been allowed to go anywhere they want, and “meet” anyone they want in Switzerland without the Swiss government’s supervision.

In 2016, 16 Chinese nationals who resided in Switzerland were forced to return to China as the result of these MPS agents’ visits. So far, the Swiss government refuses to disclose who these people were. Even more outrageous, the Swiss government covered the cost of the extensive travel expenses for these Chinese agents. In essence, “Swiss taxpayers are paying for Chinese police agents to secretly enter Switzerland and conduct unsupervised operations against Chinese people inside their country.”

What’s not surprising, but embarrassing for Switzerland, is that the deal is not reciprocated. By no means do Swiss agents who travel to China enjoy anything near the same kind of unsupervised movement inside China. As such, it isn’t clear why the Swiss government signed such an erroneous agreement to aid the CCP, and what benefits, if any, this deal has brought for Switzerland.

When details of this deal became public, it caused an uproar in both the Swiss public and members of Parliament. Since the deal expired on Dec. 7, Switzerland’s Foreign Affair Committee requested a consultation on any renewal of a similar agreement.

The leaked database of CCP members and a secret agreement between Switzerland and Chinese police reveal that the CCP’s influence and infiltration operations are far-reaching and widespread in a scale and magnitude that was previously unknown. It also shows the CCP’s success in executing its plan is at least partially due to the complacency or even willing cooperation by some short-sighted western corporations and governments.

It’s high time for citizens in Western democracies to demand their corporations and governments stand up for the values and liberties we cherish and resist the CCP’s infiltration, corruption, and economic coercion. The long term survival of free societies is at stake.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Helen Raleigh, CFA, is an American entrepreneur, writer, and speaker. She’s a senior contributor at The Federalist. Her writings appear in other national media, including The Wall Street Journal and Fox News. Helen is the author of several books, including “Confucius Never Said” and “Backlash: How Communist China’s Aggression Has Backfired.” Follow her on Parler and Twitter: @HRaleighspeaks.

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‘You Can’t Find One That Wasn’t Dating A Chinese Spy?’: Trey Gowdy Rips Pelosi Over Swalwell’s Intel Committee Seat

Reported by VIRGINIA KRUTA, ASSOCIATE EDITOR | December 18, 2020

Trey Gowdy appears on “Outnumbered OT.” Screenshot/Fox News

Former Republican South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for keeping Democratic California Rep. Eric Swalwell on the House Intelligence Committee.

Gowdy made an appearance Friday with Fox News host Harris Faulkner to discuss the recent revelation that a Chinese spy had gotten close to Swalwell as he worked his way from city council to Congress — so close that Swalwell has claimed that the details of their relationship are “classified.”

Faulkner began the segment with a clip of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who has questioned whether Swalwell should be allowed to remain on the Intelligence Committee after being linked to an alleged Chinese spy.

“Congressman Swalwell has yet to explain what his relationship was with the suspected spy. This feels like, Trey, this just got a little bit more heated, more important to pay attention to,” Faulkner said.

“It’s the hardest committee in all of Congress to get on,” Gowdy replied, noting that members of Congress and even the Intelligence Committee are not required to go through background checks and they are frequently privy to classified information. This, he explained, was why the Speaker and the minority leader were so careful to choose the right people.

“Kevin is 100% right. There are 230 members of the House. You can’t find one that wasn’t dating a Chinese spy?” Gowdy asked. “Out of all 230, you can’t find a single member on the Democrat side that wasn’t involved in a relationship, which he won’t even tell us what it was, Harris. He won’t say whether he was sleeping with her or not. He says it’s classified. How? How is that classified, Eric? I mean you want people to not find out about it but it’s not classified.”

Gowdy went on to claim that Swalwell sat on that committee because he was a “loyal acolyte” to Pelosi and Democratic California Rep. Adam Schiff.

“This is the only reason he is on it. Having to work with him, he is eminently replaceable. I can promise you that,” Gowdy continued.

Faulkner then asked Gowdy what he would like to hear Swalwell say with regard to the situation.

“Eric, how did this happen for four years. Eric, with all candor, when a woman is expressing interest in you chances are great that she is paid to do so. You have to have the self-awareness to ask, ‘Why do I have this new face in my life?’ ‘Why is this person trying to put an intern in my office and why are they trying to help me get elected to Congress?’” Gowdy replied, going on to note that Swalwell had been front and center when it came to accusing the president and members of his family of similar transgressions.

“You couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing Swalwell in the Russia investigation. Where is he now? He’s criticizing Jared and Donald Trump Jr. For meeting with a Russian lawyer. They weren’t dating one. They were meeting with one. So, just answer some questions, Eric,” Gowdy concluded.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Green New Steal

A.F. BRANCO | on December 18, 2020 at 8:45 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-green-new-steal/

Joe Biden is the Grinch that stole the 2020 election from we the people.

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2,200 Nigerian Christians hacked to death in 2020; 34,400 since 2009: Intersociety report

Christian mourners at the burial site of the Rev. Alubara Audu who was killed by jihadist herdsmen at Buda, Kajuru in Kaduna state, Nigeria, in September 2020. | Emeka Umeagbalasi

When radical Islamists murder Christians in Nigeria, the government lists their deaths as having other causes, according to new report released by Nigeria’s International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law. The newly-released report indicates that deaths which the Nigerian government describes as random banditry or inter-tribal violence, actually result from radical Islamists attacking Christians, said Intersociety leader and founder Emeka Umeagbalasi.

Since 2009, 34,400 Christians have been murdered by radical Islamists, with 2,200 slain in the last year, the report says. Radical Muslims have also killed an estimated 20,000 moderate Muslims.

” … the most dangerous dimension to radical Islamism in Nigeria is its secret rise and spread and clandestine control of state power through Fulani Jihadism. In other words, the Nigerian Government’s major local and foreign policy direction, in clandestine practice, is ‘Fulani Jihadism’ — a policy pursued with utter alacrity and through different colors and disguises including pro-jihadist or radical Islamic policies and conducts. To cover up these, the present Nigerian government has also created an international machinery of falsehood and propaganda with well-funded or oiled international lobbying campaigns targeted at misinforming and misleading key and strategic international legislative, diplomatic and democratic institutions or bodies especially the EU, U.S., U.K. and Australia and their Parliaments; the Commonwealth and the U.N. and other internationally respected state and non-state actors,” the report states, in part.

“What the government here is doing is mapping out strategies. [It’s] a kind of script that’s given to media, local media and what have you,” Umeagbalasi said.

According to Umeagbalasi, Nigeria’s government tells media that Fulani tribe herdsmen travel south fleeing desertification and kill during conflicts with local farmers. The truth is that Fulani tribesmen travel south because they are radical Islamists looking for Christians to kill. They don’t attack Muslim villages, and traditional cattle-grazing methods don’t support enough cows to justify fatal conflicts with farmers.

The Nigerian government hides these attacks because it supports radical Islamists, Umeagbalasi asserted. President Muhammadu Buhari is a Muslim. He is also a member of the Miyatti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, which supports radical Islamic tribesmen, he added.

“Buhari sets aside the Constitution. He makes appointments without recourse to the Constitution,” Umeagbalasi continued. “In the Constitution, it is forbidden for the government to have a state religion. The Constitution made it clear that the composition of the armed forces of Nigeria should reflect regional or religious balancing, but the president is not listening to that.”

Instead, Buhari stacks the government with Muslims in positions of high authority, the Intersociety report said. Since Buhari’s 2015 election, Muslims have occupied 32 of the most important 39 positions in politics, security, lawmaking and the judiciary, even though Nigeria has even numbers of Muslims and Christians.

In June, five of Nigeria’s major Islamic groups made an alliance with each other to rise up against Christians. The killings of Christians in Nigeria aren’t random acts of violence, but a calculated attempt to conquer Nigeria for Islam, Umeagbalasi claims.

“The country is being taken over by the caliphate,” he said. “When they are done in the north, they will now come to the south.”

In response to the rise in attacks, Nigeria’s government has done little or nothing, the report says. They consistently under-report casualties of Christians. Sometimes, the government buries murdered Christians using Muslim funeral rites in an attempt to convince the world that Christians aren’t under attack.

“The Government of Nigeria clandestinely will direct the Army Commander or Commissioner of Police in charge of the incident area to organize a press conference denying the killing or linking it falsely to another cause such as ‘attack by bandits’ or ‘rival communal violence’ or ‘killing associated with kingship/chieftaincy/intra communal violence’ or ‘reprisal violence’ or ‘cult-related killing,’ or ‘killing arising from armed robbery and kidnapping,’ or ‘road accidents,’” the report reads.

Rather than sending the military or police to defeat heavily armed terrorists, the Nigerian government orders its forces to stand down and retreat if fired on, said Umeagbalasi. In some cases, the Nigerian Army allegedly participate in the killing of Christians. Some Christians in the Army told him that commanders who tell their soldiers to fight terrorists get transferred to assignments where they can’t make the country safer.

“There is a security code given to Nigerian armies not to shoot or arrest Fulani hitmen,” Umeagbalasi said. “Christian Army leaders drew my attention to it. The soldiers said there was an instruction from the president [that] nobody should shoot. If you are under attack, you should retreat.”

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Islamic News, Religion, Spiritual

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BREAKING: US Department of State Issues New Warnings: “The Chinese Communist Party Poses a Real Threat”

Reported By Joe Hoft | Published December 17, 2020 at 7:30am

Overnight the US State Department released three tweets warning of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) threat to the US.

The first tweet from the State Department was a picture of the President confirming that the US is a sovereign nation:

Next the State Department released a tweet showing a speech by Secretary of State Pompeo where he says China’s Chairman Xi “has his eye on each and everyone of us”:

The third tweet shares only this: “The Chinese Communist Party poses a real threat. We want China to engage on the world stage the way we ask every other nation to.”

A fourth tweet was released this morning discusses the CCP’s threat to national security as it relates to our financial markets:

The CCP is watching every one of us and they want to rule the world. Not good.

Joe Hoft

Joe Hoft is the twin brother of TGP’s founder, Jim Hoft. His posts have been retweeted by President Trump and have made the headlines at the Drudge Report. Joe worked as a corporate executive in Hong Kong and traveled the world for his work, which gives him a unique perspective of US and global current events. He has ten degrees or designations and is the author of three books. His new book: ‘In God We Trust: Not in Lying Liberal Lunatics’ is out now – please take a look and buy a copy.

@joehoft

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WATCH: Portland Restaurant Set Ablaze After Owner Criticizes Antifa

Reported by BOB PRICE | 16 Dec 2020

An apparent arsonist sets fire to Reo’s Ribs in Portland. (Twitter Video Screenshot/KOIN CBS6)

Portland Fire and Rescue officials are looking to question a person seen in surveillance footage apparently setting fire to a local restaurant. The suspected arsonist acted after the restaurant owner criticized vandalism in the area committed by Antifa.

On November 23, a suspected arsonist set fire to Reo’s Ribs located in Portland’s Hollywood District, Breitbart News reported. When firefighters arrived on the scene, they observed smoke pouring out of the rear of the building and flames both on the interior and exterior.

Surveillance video shows a person setting that fire, KOIN CBS6 tweeted.

It is not known if the suspected arsonist’s face was blurred by KOIN or by Portland Fire officials.

The video shows the suspected arsonist setting a fire at the rear of Reo’s Ribs. The person continues to add more fuel. The person is in plain view of the street while setting the fire.

KOIN said fire officials said they would like to question the suspect. They did not report if fire officials knew the identity of the person.

“I feel really relieved that we know who did it and we know that we might be stopping other fires,” Reo’s Ribs co-owner Myra Girod told KOIN 6 News.

This is the second fire at Reo’s Ribs in the past three years. Portland Fire Department officials ruled a 2017 fire that previously destroyed the restaurant to be an accident. Reo remains suspicious of the incident. He rebuilt the restaurant only to have it burned a second time.

Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s Sunday-morning talk show, What’s Your Point? Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX, Parler @BobPrice, and Facebook.

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Perspectives; Thoughts; Comments; Opinions; Discussions

Archive for December, 2020

Reported by Yaakov Menken | DECEMBER 31, 2020

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Portland had logged about 900 shootings, compared to 393 shootings in all of 2019. On Monday, Portland police identified 33-year-old Jaron Weeks as the city’s 53rd homicide victim this year — the highest number of homicides in Portland since a wave of gang violence in the early 1990s.

Weeks was killed Christmas morning in an apartment building in the Lloyd District. A second shooting victim at the scene was hospitalized.

Two people were hospitalized in multiple shootings across Portland on Saturday night, police said. A truck rammed a patrol car, putting a Portland police officer in the hospital with a broken pelvis.The driver of the truck has not been found.

It’s not just gun violence that has rocked the city. Trendlon Brewer, 53, was arrested last week for a series of random attacks on people with a baseball bat.

In an unprecedented situation for Portland, a racially diverse and experienced group of police officers is taking pay cuts to get away from the city, while citing poor working conditions here.

And the city’s police recruiter tasked with boosting bureau diversity isn’t looking for replacements — because that person is gone, too.

Chief Chuck Lovell recently announced that the Portland Police Bureau would be moving the vast majority of traffic cops and all its K-9 officers to respond to 911 calls. The goal: to deal with a wave of retirements and resignations and combat historically low response times this past year.

What Lovell didn’t say is that for the first time that anyone can remember, the number of people resigning has outstripped retirements.

While 14 officers have filed papers to retire by the end of January, nine officers have resigned since November, and seven more have filed to resign shortly.

Police officers often leave smaller departments to go to places like Portland for higher pay. In this case they are leaving Portland for places like Beaverton, Bend, Hillsboro, Tigard and Boise, Idaho — where they will receive less pay.

In Boise, for instance, Chief Ryan Lee — a former assistant chief in Portland — has hired four Portland officers away from his old bureau so far. They’ll lose not only pay, but service time towards their eventual retirement.

Frome, for his part, said he doesn’t have numbers, but did say the confirmed departures constitute a racially diverse group with at least one multi-lingual officer, and he’d hire them all back if he could.

Complicating things is that the bureau has no plans to hire new officers anytime soon — so much so that it’s done away with the recruiter position that spearheads efforts to diversify the force and attract quality candidates.

In part, that’s a result of how the bureau has shifted resources to cope with the Black Lives Matter protests that broke out in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

In general, he said, “They’re leaving because they just don’t enjoy working here anymore.”

They blocked the alleys and they blocked the side street of my house. They wouldn’t allow us to move our cars because they had fully barricaded us in. They said they had basically claimed the area and we weren’t able to leave.

Everyone who was directly surrounded by this was really, really scared and nervous. And people kept their mouths shut because they were worried about their safety and protecting their homes.

Portland Fire & Rescue says they have seen a huge increase in tent fires among the city’s homeless population this year.

PF&R told FOX 12 they are responding to about 10 to 11 tent fires every day.

With temperatures dipping into the low 30s, and sometimes upper 20s, it is increasingly tough for the homeless to stay warm – and sadly, two weeks ago a tent fire became deadly.

PF&R says a lit candle caused a fire in a tent by the Interstate 405 on-ramp near Legacy Emanuel Hospital. Two people were inside the tent. One person escaped, but firefighters say a woman died after suffering burns over 75 percent of her body.

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Voters that are dead, verified no longer at that address

Several with the actual name “Unknown Voter”

Registered at commercial addresses, especially Church’s Chicken

Non-U.S. Citizens who denied voting

Felons who stated they can’t vote, others in jail for years

Out of State residents who just don’t live in Arizona

Registered using Schools, car lots, and sports arena’s addresses

65 using the AZ Tabulation Center & Recorders Office as their address

Vacant lots at elderly villages (55 & over) and undeveloped properties

Wilderness addresses on Bureau of Land Management & State Trust land

Abandoned homes completely unlivable or boarded up

Street names that just do not exist in any Arizona records

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – The Good Old Days

If you think 2020 was bad, 2021 may be much worse with Biden and the Democrats in charge.

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Commentary by Ann Coulter | Posted: Dec 30, 2020 3:35 PM

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The chief danger that confronts the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, heaven without hell.

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Though religious persecution in China and India is expected to increase in 2021, exposure to the Bible is increasing in North Korea, the world’s most repressive country, according to the annual Persecution Trends survey from Release International.

“The government of President Xi Jinping is increasing its ‘clean up’ of anything that does not advance the communist agenda. They appear to believe that they can achieve this by systematic opposition,” the group warned.

“The Chinese government is trying every way to take advantage of the virus by increasing the crackdown against Christian churches,” said RI partner Bob Fu, of ChinaAid. “It has accelerated particular campaigns, such as the forced removal of crosses.”

In September 2020, Hindu extremists incited mobs of up to 3,000 people to attack Christians in three villages in Chhattisgarh state.

“This idea was not on the market 10 years ago, and has led to an increase in discrimination and killings of Indian Christians and other minorities,” he said, adding that Christians in Western countries must “speak up” for those persecuted for their faith.

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On election night election officials ran 15,000 ballots five times and got five different answers. They could NEVER duplicate the results from the Dominion voting machines!

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Reported by SARAH TAYLOR | December 30, 2020

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Unity Is a Joke

Political Religion Makes All of Life a Holy War

Don’t Let the Leftist Toddlers Get Their Way

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Friend and Foe

The Democrats and the Media exalt whistleblowers but only when they work against President Trump.

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The most popular argument against the Electoral College is that it violates the fundamental principle underlying democratic society: political equality, or, commonly phrased as “one person, one vote.”

Federalism and the Electoral College