Colorado Gov. Jared Polis – a Democrat – declared that the COVID-19 pandemic is “over.” Breaking from the Democratic Party, Polis added that he would not be implementing another statewide mask mandate despite the Omicron variant spreading easily.
“Everybody had more than enough opportunity to get vaccinated,” Polis told Colorado Public Radio on Friday. “Hopefully it’s been at your pharmacy, your grocery store, a bus near you, [or at] big events. At this point, if you haven’t been vaccinated, it’s really your own darn fault.”
“I didn’t hesitate to [issue a statewide mask mandate] in the emergency. The emergency is over,” Polis stated. “You know, [state] public health [officials] don’t get to tell people what to wear; that’s just not their job.”
“Public health [officials] would say to always wear a mask because it decreases flu and decreases [other airborne illnesses],” Polis stated. “But that’s not something that you require; you don’t tell people what to wear.”
“You don’t tell people to wear a jacket when they go out in winter and force them to [wear it],” Polis added. “If they get frostbite, it’s their own darn fault. If you haven’t been vaccinated, that’s your choice. I respect that. But it’s your fault when you’re in the hospital with COVID.”
“And at this point, I think it’s almost like they made a deliberate decision not to get vaccinated,” he noted. “I still encourage everybody who hasn’t been vaccinated to get protected. And for those who are, make sure to get that booster after six months. The data shows it’s important and very likely even more so with this omicron variant.”
Polis said he supported local jurisdictions instituting their own mandates according to their individual needs, but that the state should stay out of it.
Following the tragic death of George Floyd, Minneapolis became the home of the defund the police movement, and even contemplated abolishing the police. However, the government of Minneapolis has completely reversed course after a near-record crime wave has hit the city. Now the city is voting to fund the police.
Nearly two weeks after the death George Floyd, nine of the veto-proof council’s 13 members began the process of dismantling the Minneapolis Police Department.
“We are here today to begin the process of ending the Minneapolis Police Department and creating a new, transformative model for cultivating safety in Minneapolis,” the City Council declared in June 2020.
Days later, the City Council passed a resolution“declaring the intent to create a transformative new model for cultivating safety” for the police department.
By September 2020, violent crimes spiked, as did property crimes – even arson was up 55% compared to the same time in 2019. At the same time, more than 100 police officers left the department in the first nine months of 2020. By November 2020, violent carjackings skyrocketed by 537% compared to the previous year.
In February 2021, the Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously to approve $6.4 million in additional funding that the police department had requested after the crime rate continued to swell. By May 2021, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) – previously a proponent of defunding the police – admitted that limiting law enforcement led to a spike in violent crime.
“It’s just the reality of the solution, you know,” Mayor Frey conceded. “When you make big, overarching statements that we’re going to defund or abolish and dismantle the police department and get rid of all the officers, there’s an impact to that. We need accountability and culture shift within our department, and we need police.”
“It’s going to take a very comprehensive effort,” Frey added. “Yes, it includes safety beyond policing, and it includes police. And, you know, I’m one that has been working lock step with our Chief Arradondo, and I’m calling on the council members to try to work with him as well.”
Because crime continued to swell, a Hennepin County District Court judge ordered in July 2021 that the Minneapolis City Council and Mayor Jacob Frey to “immediately take any and all necessary action to ensure that they fund a police force.”
As of Thursday, Minneapolis had recorded its 91st homicide, according to Minneapolis Police Department data. The previous record for homicides in the city is 96, set in 1995. Now, Minneapolis has done a complete 180 regarding defunding the police.
“Mayor Jacob Frey and the City Council last week agreed to a $1.6 billion budget that includes just over $191 million for the Police Department (MPD), restoring its funding to nearly the level it held before George Floyd was killed in 2020,” the Star Tribune reported on Saturday.
The outlet noted that the “urgency faded as crime surged and the ‘defund police’ message became a political liability.”
Council Member Phillipe Cunningham – who lost his re-election bid this fall – said, “There wasn’t more of that type of action because there wasn’t the political will, really, to do so.”
Steve Cramer – president of the Downtown Council – added, “This vote is a first step on a long road back from the division over public safety that has characterized the past 18 tumultuous months in Minneapolis.”
Meteorologist Joe Bastardi fired back at President Joe Biden for seemingly blaming the devastating tornado outbreak that struck multiple states last week on climate change.
When a reporter asked Biden on Saturday whether climate change contributed to the deadly tornados, Biden pointed to climate change allegedly increasing the intensity of storms.
“All I know is that the intensity of the weather across the board has some impacts as a consequence of the warming of the planet and climate change,” Biden said. “The specific impact on these specific storms, I can’t say at this point.”
“I’m going to be asking the EPA and others to take a look at that,” Biden continued. “But the fact is that we all know everything is more intense when the climate is warming. Everything. And obviously, it has some impact here, but I can’t give you a quantitative read on that.”
Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell was more direct. During an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Criswell said the extreme weather “is going to be our new normal.”
“The effects we are seeing of climate change are the crisis of our generation,” Criswell said.
How did Bastardi respond?
The famed meteorologist accused Biden of weaponizing tornados and shared data showing that severe weather this year has not been as severe compared to previous years.
“Clueless Joe Biden In action again with his weaponization of Tornados. 1) Violent tornadoes not increasing. 2) this year tornados, hail and wind all together near-record low,” Bastardi said. “Mindless media should do their dang job and call him on it, I called Trump out on Dorian jibberish.”
The data Bastardi included, coming from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, directly contradicts claims from Biden and Criswell that severe weather is more intense because of climate change.
The first graph shows that, as carbon emissions increased between 1954 and 2014, the number of annual tornados did not increase; in fact, it went down.
The second graphs shows that the number of recorded tornados through Dec. 11, 2021, is, in fact, close to a record low.
The third graph shows that the number of local storm reports of hail — 3,714 through Dec. 11 — is significantly under the average of 7,979 through the same time period.
The fourth graph shows that the number of local storm reports of damaging winds — 12,780 through Dec. 11 — is also under the average of 13,996 through the same time period.
Climate change hawks love to exploit isolated weather events to promote a certain narrative about the climate. However, climate, by its very definition, describes observable patterns of weather over long periods of time — not isolated events. Thus, if climate change were truly driving more intense weather, such a phenomenon would be observable over a substantial period of time. But as Colorado University professor Roger Pielke Jr. pointed out on Sunday, the U.S. government’s own data shows that tornados, for example, are becoming less common in the U.S.
“According to data from the U.S. National Weather Service from 2000 to 2020 only four of the strongest category of tornadoes were observed (which are labelled as F/EF5 tornadoes) In comparison, from 1954 to 1974 36 (!) such powerful tornadoes were observed,” Pielke explained. “Our research on tornado damage in the United States over many decades shows a decline that is suggestive of an actual decline in tornado incidence.”
Pielke also highlighted an important point to consider when politicians and those with an agenda begin blaming climate change for weather disasters.
“If it is so well known that disasters are the result of a complex interplay of social and climate factors, why then is climate typically the main focus of attention after every extreme event?” Pielke wrote.
His point: If a tree falls in a forest, but no one hears or sees it, did it make a sound? In a similar way, weather disasters — like the one that happened last week — are only disasters because they impact a significant number of people. If a severe tornado with 200mph winds touches down in rural Nebraska, but causes no damage, no one blames climate change for such an extreme event.
As geographer Gilbert White, known for his work in helping society mitigate the impact of natural disasters, wrote: “Floods are ‘acts of God’ but flood losses are largely acts of man.”
A man drove a truckload of food and grill to Mayfield, Kentucky, to cook food for citizens affected by the deadly tornadoes that killed dozens of people.
Victor Ordoñez, a writer for ABC News, posted several videos Sunday of Jim Finch, who told the journalist that although he doesn’t own a restaurant, “it just needed to be done.”
This man drove half an hour with a grill and a truckload of food and parked right in the middle of #Mayfield, Kentucky. pic.twitter.com/xrVbrMdJ9S
“This man drove half an hour with a grill and a truckload of food and parked right in the middle of Mayfield Kentucky,” Ordoñez’s caption read.
Finch said that he decided to take his grill to Mayfield because he knows that some Kentuckians “don’t have any electricity.”
“That means they don’t have any restaurants, no running water so I just figured I would do what I could do, show up with some food and some water,” Finch said in the video.
Jim wore a smile the whole morning, we laugh when I asked if he had a restaurant. He shook his head, “it just needed to be done,” he said. pic.twitter.com/tpZ1LMvdOA
The man also said that those who wish to pick up his food should come with no worries. “We trying to feed the people. We got hamburgers, chicken, I got sausage, eggs. Just real simple stuff you can have and not worry about making a mess, grab and go type of food.”
Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said that at least 70 people were believed to be dead after tornadoes and severe weather ripped through the state over the weekend, WLKY reported. Beshear also said that President Joe Biden signed a federal emergency declaration for Kentucky after dozens of buildings were destroyed and other structures were damaged.
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.
Inflation. COVID-19. Ballooning federal debt made worse by irresponsible spending in Congress. Lost jobs from medically coercive mandates. A supply chain crisis. Racist and sexually explicit narratives flooding public schools while concerned parents are targeted as terrorists. A heartbreakingly botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. An aggressive dictatorship in China that perpetuates horrific human rights abuses. A border crisis.
Conservatives pride ourselves on our ability to see the world without the rose-tinted lenses of progressives. If men were angels, we would need no government (or government accountability), we say — but men are no angels and thus we must be skeptics.
That candid recognition of our world’s imperfection often leaves us discouraged. We are frustrated that so many naively buy the blatant lies of the corporate press and corrupt politicians, and that even basic truths like “don’t kill babies” and “boys and girls are different” meet vicious opposition.
Yet, unlike the utopian dreams of the globalist left, our goal is not and has never been the perfection of the system. Conservatives should not hope to “fix” the world — nor be despondent when it proves unfixable. While we should seek to cultivate and steward our culture and our communities, our inability to shut off the fire hose of foolishness, evil, and sin in our world today should remind us we await another one.
We Are Made to Long for the Eternal
The Advent season is a time to recall the ancient posture of a world awaiting its savior. We recall the longing of a people who had waited 400 years for the voice of God and millennia for his promised salvation.
But there is another Advent, or arrival, to which we look. We long for the day in which we will surrender our earthly failures and enjoy the presence of a heavenly God. Far from discouraging us, the shortcomings of Earth should embolden our hope. If men were angels, neither heaven nor salvation would be necessary.
For this reason, Christians should take heart at worldly turmoil. “Rejoice that such fruitful times are in store for you, for in them you will be weaned from earth and made meet for heaven,” said the great Baptist theologian Charles Haddon Spurgeon, in an evening devotional based on Job 1:9.
“You will be delivered from clinging to the present, and made to long for those eternal things which are so soon to be revealed to you,” he continues. “When you feel that as regards the present you do serve God for nought, you will then rejoice in the infinite reward of the future.”
Meanwhile, rather than withdraw from a hopeless world, Spurgeon threw himself into practical ministries as well as evangelical ones, founding an orphanage in 1867 and speaking out against the injustice of slavery. Evil in the world should not send Christians into resigned indifference — we are called to “do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”
We Engage the Present Because of Our Future Hope
In today’s America, that calling might mean fighting to keep schoolchildren from being vulnerable to political agendas that push sexually explicit material in the classroom and allow rapists access to girls. It can mean speaking up for people like Jack Phillips and Barronelle Stutzman whose livelihoods are targeted for their religious convictions, or fighting for the safety of women in prisons and shelters. It certainly means pleading the cause of the unborn.
Not all of the means by which we as Christians should seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly are political, of course. But our hope of heaven itself should not dissuade us from stewardship of our communities. We are not of the world, but we are in it.
As we anticipate Advent, our posture is one of hope. But — although church traditions vary — in one common symbolism, hope is only one of four virtues signified by the four candles lit each Sunday of the Advent season. Peace, love, and joy mark the other three, and we are called to live these out in the present even as we look with anticipation to heaven.
Because we have hope, we are to love those around us in a way that demands no return. Because we have hope, we may have peace with even dismal circumstances. Because we have hope, we can look upon a fallen world and know the fullness of joy.
God “wants [men] to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present,” C.S. Lewis said through his character Screwtape. “For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which [God] has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered to them.”
Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.
The United Nations just unveiled a statue of a beast outside its headquarters in New York City. The statue is bizarre and resembles the beast from the book of Revelation.
One of the strangest statues that I have ever seen in my entire life has just been set up right outside UN Headquarters in New York City. When I first heard about this, I could hardly believe that the global elite would be so brazen, and so I checked into this very carefully. Unfortunately, this is not just a bad rumor. This absolutely gigantic statue is called “The Guardian of International Peace and Security”, and it looks like something out of a science fiction movie. It does not resemble any known creature on this planet. Instead, it appears to very closely resemble a “beast” that is described in the Book of Revelation. If you have not seen it yet, you can see video footage of this “beast” right here. Did they really think that they could put this up without anyone noticing?
Of course when Christians see this monstrosity, they are immediately going to think of the “beast” that is described in Revelation chapter 13…
2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.
Jaguars and leopards have builds that are at least somewhat similar, and so I guess one could make an argument that the body of the statue resembles either one.
As for the feet, they do seem to resemble those of a bear, and it is noteworthy that the feet are a totally different color from the rest of the body.
Joe Hoft is the twin brother of TGP’s founder, Jim Hoft, and a contributing editor at TGP. Joe’s reporting is often months ahead of the Mainstream media as was observed in his reporting on the Mueller sham investigation, the origins of the China coronavirus, and 2020 Election fraud. Joe was a corporate executive in Hong Kong for a decade and has years of experience in finance, IT, operations and auditing around the world. The knowledge gained in his career provide him with a unique perspective of current events in the US and globally. He has ten degrees or designations and is the author of three books. Joe is currently co-host of the morning radio show in St. Louis at 93.3 “Tomorrow’s News Today”. His new book: ‘In God We Trust: Not in Lying Liberal Lunatics’ is out now – please take a look and buy a copy. @joehoft
Kimberly Fletcher, president of Moms for America, speaks at a protest outside the National School Boards Association headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, on Oct. 27, 2021. | Moms for America
The fallout over a letter from the National School Boards Association comparing parent protests and threats to domestic terrorism continues as 18 state affiliates have announced intentions to cut ties with the national education organization, according to a watchdog group. The letter at issue, sent by NSBA leadership to President Joe Biden on Sept. 29, requested “federal assistance to stop threats and acts of violence against public schoolchildren, public school board members, and other public school district officials and educators.”
After expressing concern about the increased “acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials,” NSBA President Viola Garcia and Interim Executive Director and CEO Chip Slaven urged Biden to classify “these heinous actions” as “domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
In October, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland sent a memorandum directing the FBI to “convene meetings with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial leaders within 30 days” to “facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.”
While the NSBA apologized for the letter three weeks after its publication and it has since taken it offline, outrage over the tone of the request still looms large. In the weeks and months following the letter’s publication, the number of state school board associations that have either distanced themselves from the NSBA letter or withdrawn from the organization entirely continues to grow.
The advocacy group Parents Defending Education, which vehemently opposes the rhetoric of the NSBA letter, has compiled a list of actions taken by state school board associations in response to the letter. In the past three weeks alone, state school board associations in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi and Virginia have voted to withdraw from the NSBA. The school board associations in these states join their counterparts in Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Wisconsin in announcing their departure from the NSBA immediately or in the near future.
Additionally, several additional states have distanced themselves from the rhetoric in the NSBA letter without formally withdrawing from the national organization. Most notably, the Delaware School Boards Association, based in the president’s home state, issued a forceful response to an inquiry from Parents Defending Education.
“The DSBA disagrees, in the strongest possible terms, with parents and citizens protesting school board meetings being characterized as ‘domestic terrorists’ and their protests being likened to ‘hate crimes,” the organization said in a statement. “The DSBA firmly asserts that citizen and public engagement in school board meetings is an integral and vital aspect of school board governance. We also made it clear that any attempt to silence citizens’ voices is a clear violation of their rights to free speech.”
The DSBA also lamented that the NSBA did not consult with them before sending the letter, noting that had they done so, the state organization would “NOT have allowed the DSBA to be associated with the letter” and “would have asked that the language be changed to reflect the fact that the DSBA does not support the letter and should not be generally included in it.”
The NSBA letter stated that it was sent “on behalf of our state associations and more than 90,000 school board members who govern our country’s 14,000 local public school districts.”
Nine other state school board associations responded to Parents Defending Education, expressing some degree of disagreement with the rhetoric of the NSBA letter or stressing a belief in the ability of parents to speak out about their children’s education. Those states are Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, New Jersey, North Dakota, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Hawaii is not part of the NSBA. An email obtained via public records request revealed the head of the Rhode Island Association of School Committees telling his board that he thinks they should ignore the email from Parents Defending Education. The remaining state school board associations did not respond to the inquiry from the advocacy group.
The NSBA letter followed a summer defined by intense protests at school board meetings in some localities nationwide as parents and community members had expressed outrage about policies allowing trans-identified students to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity as opposed to their biological sex, the use of sexually explicit material in the curriculum and the incorporation critical race theory components into the curriculum.
Specific examples cited by the NSBA letter of “heinous actions” taken by parents speaking out at school board meetings include “anti-mask proponents [who] are inciting chaos during board meetings,” confrontation of school board members by “angry mobs” that have “forced meetings to end abruptly” and a resident of Alabama who describes himself as “vaccine police” calling school administrators “while filming himself on Facebook Live.”
Another occurrence cited as problematic in the letter was the mocking of a Tennessee student “during a board meeting for advocating masks in schools after testifying that his grandmother, who was an educator, died because of COVID-19.”
Five days after the NSBA letter’s publication, Garland wrote the memorandum directing federal law enforcement agencies to work with their counterparts at the local level to “facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats.” The move led to further criticism and a lawsuit.
Opposition to critical race theory and sexually explicit material in public schools played a significant part in last month’s off-year elections. In last month’s election, candidates who campaigned in opposition to critical race theory performed well in school board races.
At the same time, Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe, who proclaimed in a debate with his Republican opponent, Glenn Youngkin, that “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” lost the election. A recent poll from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty found that 63% of Americans think parents should have the “final say” in what children are taught at school.
An activist holds a rosary while rallying against abortion in Los Angeles, California September 29, 2015. | REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
A Texas-based pro-life activist organization received a new bomb threat against one of its offices, allegedly due to its support for the state’s controversial heartbeat abortion ban restricting abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy. Texas Right to Life released a statement Monday explaining that its legislative office in Austin had received a bomb threat that morning. The threat came in the form of what the lobbying group labeled a “suspicious letter” sent to the office, which threatened to bomb the organization and said that they should expect to “receive the bodies of aborted babies.”
Authorities arrived at the office at 11:40 a.m., according to the statement. The Austin Police Department is investigating the incident.
“Devaluing life inside the womb inevitably leads to violence outside the womb,” Texas Right to Life President Elizabeth Graham said in a statement. “These recent crimes demonstrate the brokenness, anger, and pain of the pro-abortion movement. We pray for the perpetrator, that he or she may find healing in Christ, and we ask for prayers for our staff.”
Kimberlyn Schwartz, director of media and communication for Texas Right to Life, told The Christian Post in a statement Thursday that the most recent threat and other threats they have received are “heartbreaking.”
“These threats are heartbreaking, not only because they endanger our staff, but also because they reveal the anger and pain that abortion leaves on the hearts of its proponents,” stated Schwartz.
“Ultimately, this is a spiritual war. Texas Right to Life is taking ground from deep in the Evil One’s territory and proclaiming the sanctity of Life. Now is the time for all Christians to stand up for preborn children and pray for the end of abortion.”
In another email cited by The Texas Citizen Journal, Graham said the organization is working with the Austin Police Department and the FBI to determine the validity of the threat. According to Texas Right to Life, the threatening letter stated: “LETS BOMB TEXAS FOR LIFE AND CHANGE IT TO – TEXAS FOR DEATH.”
Texas Right to Life, which was instrumental in helping craft Texas’ new abortion law, received an email in September from someone threatening to blow up its headquarters in Bellaire. A suspicious package was delivered to that office later that day. The facility was evacuated and bomb experts from Houston checked the package, which turned out to not have an explosive device inside.
“Texas Right to Life did the right thing in contacting the police,” said the Bellaire Police Department in a statement to CP in September.
“It was fortunate that our officers were on scene when the suspicious package was delivered and we appreciate the occupants of the building working with police to quickly clear out in the event that this was an actual bomb.”
In May, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the Texas Heartbeat Act prohibiting most abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, usually about six weeks into a pregnancy. The law is not enforced through state officials but rather through private citizens given financial incentives to sue abortion providers and anyone who helps a pregnant woman procure an abortion. Despite multiple pre-enforcement legal challenges, including from the Biden administration, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the controversial legislation to take effect on Sept. 1.
On Nov. 1, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for around three hours on the Texas law, focusing on the means through which the ban was enforced.
“Since the Texas Heartbeat Act took effect September 1, abortion advocates wished rape upon our female staff and their daughters, left vicious voicemails, circulated the home addresses of employees online, and threatened to bomb our offices twice within four months,” Texas Right to Life’s Monday statement reads. “Texas Right to Life has taken proactive measures to ensure the safety of our staff since we became the target of violent messages online and by phone due to the Texas Heartbeat Act.”
In September, an Oklahoma man was arrested for making death threats to pro-life Texas legislators.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased 0.9% in November, bringing the key inflation indicator’s year-over-year increase to 6.8%, the highest figure in four decades. The CPI’s increase is the largest increase in four decades, up from October’s 6.2% according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report released Friday morning. Experts surveyed by CNBC projected inflation would increase 0.7% in November, translating to a 6.7% gain on a year-over-year basis.
“These are frighteningly high inflation numbers, the likes of which we haven’t seen for decades,” Allen Sinai, chief global economist and strategist at Decision Economics, Inc., told The Wall Street Journal.
The core price index, which measures inflation of goods less food and energy, jumped 0.5% in November, a decrease from October’s 0.6% increase, according to BLS. Price increases in gasoline, shelter, food, used cars and trucks and new vehicles were among the largest contributors to the index’s jump in November, BLS said. Food prices increased 6.1% on a year-over-year basis, and energy prices soared 33.3% over the last year and 3.5% in November.
Meanwhile, the labor market continues struggle to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, and the emerging Omicron variant has brought new concerns.
“We have tremendous spending by consumers. A lot of people are getting hired. Demand is huge. Monetary policy remains very easy and fiscal stimulus has no precedent in history,” Sinai said.
The U.S. economy added just 210,000 jobs in November, far below experts’ projections of around 573,000, but unemployment slipped to 4.2% from October’s 4.6% figure. The number of Americans who filed new unemployment claims totaled 184,000 in the week ending on Dec. 4 as employers fight to retain workers entering a busy holiday season.
“Looking past the noise, we think claims will eventually hover more consistently around pre-pandemic levels of 220k, assuming the Omicron variant of the coronavirus has only a moderate negative impact on the economy,” Nancy Vander Houten, lead economist at Oxford Economics, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Soaring inflation and falling unemployment have triggered Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to pivot away from pandemic era stimulus programs. Powell signaled that the central bank would wind down its bond-purchasing stimulus, which will lead to earlier-than-expected interest rate hikes.
The central bank is scheduled to meet Dec. 14-15, when a more detailed schedule is slated to be announced.
An 11-year-old girl has been ordered to get vaccinated against COVID-19 by a judge in upstate New York. The ruling sides with the child’s mother and against the girl’s father — who is a scientist and a professor, according to the New York Post.New York
The daughter is in the middle of a messy battle between the divorced couple. The mother — Jeannie Figer — wants to get her 11-year-old daughter vaccinated against COVID-19. She notes that the estranged pair’s other two daughters — ages 17 and 19 — have already been vaccinated against COVID-19. However, the father — Donald Figer — was hesitant about allowing his youngest daughter to be vaccinated. The father — who is reportedly vaccinated against COVID-19 — said he wants to wait for his young daughter to be vaccinated until more information becomes available on the long-term side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine on children.
He is reportedly a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. The Rochester Institute of Technology lists Figer as the director of the Center for Detectors, and a professor in the College of Science with appointments in the Astrophysical Science and the Technology Ph.D. program and the Microsystems Engineering Ph.D. program. “He is a leader in developing and deploying new photon detection technologies,” the school states.
Monroe County Supreme Court Justice Richard Dollinger said he was “somewhat perplexed that an accomplished scientist and professor would oppose a child vaccine authorized by the CDC and universally encouraged by state and local physicians and other health officials.”
The judge said it “could be years before any researchers have exacting accounts of either the short or, long term consequences of the administration of this vaccine on 11-year-old girls.”
“Waiting — to be ‘sure,’ as the father asks — is simply untenable, when the specter of a killing or incapacitating disease is swirling in the environment surrounding this young girl,” Judge Dollinger said. “The wait, requested by the father, could extend beyond the term of the virus, as scientists may never catch up to this ever evolving and elusive virus and variants.”
“This Court, weighing the child’s best interests, cannot wait for the vaccine’s side effects or efficacy to be scientifically established beyond a reasonable doubt or even to the father’s satisfaction,” the judged ruled. “The imminent risk of contracting the disease is too high and the consequences of acquiring it potentially too dire.”
The judge noted that Monroe County recently declared a state of emergency because of rising hospitalization rates related to COVID-19. The judge sided with the mother, who is reportedly an attorney. He ordered the mother to schedule an “immediate appointment” for the child to be administered a COVID-19 vaccination “as soon as possible.”
On Oct. 29, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized emergency use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for kids ages 5 through 11 years old. This isn’t the first time that COVID-19 vaccines have been front-and-center in legal disputes between divorces.
In August, a Chicago mother was temporarily stripped of her parental rights over her 11-year-old son by a judge because she was unvaccinated. The judge asked the woman what her vaccination status was during a child support hearing with her ex-husband. A judge rescinded the ruling weeks later.
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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.
Those who believe in the freedom of bodily autonomy are celebrating a slew of recent court rulings enjoining the Biden administration’s injection mandate. However, no GOP state attorney general has bothered to fight the equally immoral, illogical, and inhumane mask mandates that are still in place. Despite nearly two years of evidence that strict mask-wearing has zero effectiveness in stopping the spread, the mandates on 2-year-olds on planes and in many schools still continue. Slovakia is a perfect case study of the mask mendacity.
On May 13, 2020, the Atlantic published an article lauding Slovakia for, at the time, having the lowest per-capita COVID death rate in Europe. The article’s prediction should now be the laughingstock of the world:
When this pandemic ends, and when the reckoning over how the world responded invariably begins, Slovakia will likely be among those highlighted as a success story, whereas the United States—which was supposed to be the country best prepared for such a crisis—will be remembered as among those that suffered the worst. How Slovakia was able to flatten its curve comes down to more than just quick decision making and the widespread adoption of face masks. Perhaps the greatest lesson to be learned from Slovakia is of the value of leading from the front.
Well, that was before Slovakia’s first winter wave. One can excuse people for mistaking low spread at the time for mask efficacy rather than the fact that the country just didn’t get its turn yet. But for countries to continue this inhumane mandate despite what we now know demonstrates that masks are not a means to public health but an end in themselves of tyranny.
At over 2,000 new cases per million per day, according to Our World in Data, Slovakia now has more cases per capita than any country in the world. To put this in perspective, that is almost three times the level of the winter peak in the U.S., a country that has not exactly performed well in the pandemic!
It’s true that some individual states closer to the size of Slovakia have had more severe waves. However, even the worst counties in the upper Midwest are tracking about 1,200 new cases per million per day.
And here is the epidemiological curve presented by the inimitable Ian Miller, juxtaposed to policy solutions:
It’s not just Slovakia. Wherever you turn in Europe, both masks and vaccine mandates have failed miserably, and the spread is now worse than ever. Belgium is now six weeks into the new mask mandate, and it has more cases than ever before, even though the Belgians already suffered one of the deadliest waves in all of Europe. Oh, and 87.4% of adults are vaccinated.
To begin with, the CDC, as late as May 2020, was citing the 10 randomized controlled trials that showed “no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks.” The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford also summarized six international studies that “showed that masks alone have no significant effect in interrupting the spread of ILI or influenza in the general population, nor in healthcare workers.”
The only randomized controlled trial studying mask efficacy against COVID published last year was the now famous Danish study that failed to show any meaningful reduction in spread from mask-wearing. Then, several months ago, the media trumpeted a large study done in Bangladesh that seemed to show efficacy. Well, now that the authors have released the actual data, we see that indeed no such claim can be made from the study. It turns out that out of over 340,000 individuals over a span of eight weeks, there were only 20 fewer cases of COVID detected in the mask group over the control group – 1,106 symptomatic individuals confirmed seropositive in the control group and 1,086 such individuals in the treatment group.
Even these results are hard to interpret because of numerous confounding factors. University of California Berkeley professor Ben Recht critiqued the study as follows:
This study was not blinded, as it’s impossible to blind a study on masks. The intervention was highly complex and included a mask promotion campaign and education about other mitigation measures including social distancing. Moreover, individuals were only added to the study if they consented to allow the researchers to visit and survey their households. There was a large differential between the control and treatment groups here, with 95% consenting in the treatment group but only 92% consenting in control. This differential alone could wash away the difference in observed cases. Finally, symptomatic seropositivity is a crude measure of covid as the individuals could have been infected before the trial began.
Given the numerous caveats and confounders, the study still only found a tiny effect size. My takeaway is that a complex intervention including an educational program, free masks, encouraged mask wearing, and surveillance in a poor country with low population immunity and no vaccination showed at best modest reduction in infection.
It’s not OK for Republican-controlled states to continue to ignore the facts that masks are inhumane and they simply don’t work. Consider the fact that Head Start has now mandated masks on 2-year-olds, many of whom have special needs. Oregon has moved to make its mask mandate permanent. Why are no red state governments at least suing against the federal mandates, and why are so few red states even banning mask mandates within the states?
The courts are all political. They only responded to the lawsuits against the vaccine mandate when they saw robust political opposition within the political branches of the red states. They see no such opposition regarding the mask mandates. Thus, absent a unified effort from state attorneys general, they are unlikely to respond to a handful of individual lawsuits. The same legal rationale denying the feds the power to force vaccines also denies them the power to cover our breathing holes. But the courts only respond to political momentum.If nearly two years of masking failing to work anywhere is still not enough to end the most invasive human mandate of all time, then we truly are no longer a free people.
Jussie Smollett destroyed his career and reputation trying to live up to a racist expectation of “blackness.” It’s the same mistake former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick made. Popular culture’s puppet masters — academia, Big Tech’s social media apps, the executives running the TV, movie, music, and sports industries, and the political left — have established victimhood as the highest form of blackness. Attaining victim status is the primary expectation placed on American black men. Meeting this expectation is especially important for mixed-race, wealthy celebrities. In the culture created by the left, victimhood is their rite of passage into the fraternity of blackness.
As much as I despise Smollett for the 2019 racial hoax he staged in Chicago, the alleged crime that currently has him on trial, my disdain for the culture that baited him into the act far exceeds my disgust for Smollett.
Smollett, the child of a black woman and a white Jewish man, did what the culture told him to do and what the culture puts enormous pressure on half-black, half-white kids to do: prove their blackness. In modern American culture, there’s nothing blacker than being worthy of a white man’s aggression. Smollett isn’t worthy. So, he allegedly paid two black men to pose as white and attack him.
The whole scenario is funny until you consider the sadness of the mental state that would devise such a scheme and a culture that would entice it.
Smollett and Kaepernick, the self-made national anthem martyr, are victims. They’re victims of the racist expectations imposed on them by a sick, secular culture. At different levels, all American black people are victims of this culture. Human beings respond to expectations. Expectations can be and should be the greatest gift imposed on human beings. Expectations inspire behavior and shape mindsets.
Tuesday night, I had dinner with two friends. We engaged in a debate about white privilege. What is it? Does it exist? Can it be fixed? I argued that white privilege certainly exists in America and that the greatest white privilege is expectations that align with success. White people are expected to achieve academically. They’re expected to master the English language. They’re expected to have good credit. They’re expected to show up on time. They’re expected not to use the N-word. They’re expected to make an effort to avoid racist thoughts and actions. They’re expected to wed the mothers or fathers of their children. Do all white people meet these expectations? Absolutely not. But being born into a world that expects you to adopt principles and behaviors that lead to success is a privilege that puts you far ahead of people who don’t have those expectations on them.
Black people, as a collective, don’t have those expectations on them. Popular culture, as controlled by liberals, removes virtually all expectations from black people, particularly black men. We’re expected to excel at football and basketball. And we’re expected to meet the liberal standard of blackness. Anything we do or achieve beyond that is considered a bonus.
The lack of expectations imposed on black people is the most racist act in America. It’s far more racist than Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck and back. Had George Floyd entered a world that expected him to achieve beyond the athletic field, he would have been much less likely to find himself needing to be restrained by police.
The lack of expectations placed on black people is systemic racism. Victimhood being the highest level of blackness is systemic racism. Jussie Smollett is a victim of the systemic racism maintained by white liberals.
On Tuesday, while being cross-examined by the prosecution, Smollett complained that the white prosecutor was offending the black people in the courtroom by reading aloud Smollett’s direct messages to one of his black attackers. Smollett repeatedly used the N-word in the direct messages. The prosecutor apologized and asked Smollett to read the direct messages. Smollett obliged. We expect black people to call each other derogatory names. It’s acceptable and appropriate. We’ve been programmed to hate ourselves and express our self-hatred in writing, music, and acts of violence. We expect it.
Our expectations for white people are much different. We’re shocked and outraged when they mimic our anti-black behavior. We don’t expect that from them. We’re determined to rid them of the negative behavior. Our expectations for ourselves are much lower and/or nonexistent. That’s why it’s easy for us to ignore thousands of gang murders in black neighborhoods and hold summer-long protests over a tiny handful of police-involved shootings. That’s why Jussie Smollett has no problem saying the N-word repeatedly, but is mortified when a white man reads his words inside a courtroom. We’re victims of the racist expectations we’ve adopted.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, and WhatDidYouSay.org
Wow, the opposition press isn’t what it used to be!
In a Sunday interview with “The Sexiest Man Alive,” Anthony Fauci, CNN’s Jake Tapper played a clip of Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., criticizing Fauci for keeping the public in a state of raw panic over COVID.
Johnson: “Fauci did the exact same thing with AIDS. He overhyped it. He created all kinds of fear, saying it could affect the entire population, when it couldn’t. And he’s doing — he’s using the exact same playbook for COVID.”
At that point, the anchor is supposed to say something like, “Dr. Fauci?” and let him respond. But CNN apparently thinks Fauci is too delicate a flower to answer an attack all by his lonesome.
So, before turning it over to the interviewee, Tapper blathered: “Obviously, that’s a bizarre and false assertion. President George W. Bush gave you the Presidential Medal of Freedom because of your leadership in the AIDS crisis. But I did want to give you an opportunity to respond.” (I guess this is how you apply for Chris Cuomo’s job at CNN.)
At that point, Fauci merely had to join Tapper in sneering at the senator: “Jake, how do you respond to something as preposterous as that?”
Thank you, Dr. Fauci for that penetrating response. Next up on CNN …
Actually, Fauci then went on to use the Hillary Benghazi defense: HOW DARE YOU QUESTION ME WHEN PEOPLE DIED!!!
He said: “Overhyping AIDS? It’s killed over 750,000 Americans and 36 million people worldwide. How do you overhype that? Overhyping COVID? It’s already killed 780,000 Americans and over 5 million people worldwide. So, I don’t have any clue of what he’s talking about.”
That would have been a fantastic answer if Sen. Johnson had questioned whether anyone had ever died from AIDS or COVID. Unfortunately, he didn’t do that. Rather, he accused Fauci of overhyping the risk of COVID, terrifying everyone — as he did with AIDS — instead of concentrating protections on high-risk groups.
Overhyping car accidents? Cars have killed over 3.6 million Americans and multiple millions of people worldwide. How do you overhype that?
Yes, but you recommended that people drive blindfolded.
Long after it was clear that COVID was dangerous nearly exclusively for older people and the obese, Fauci lied, just as he once lied about AIDS being a risk for heterosexuals long after it became clear that it was almost entirely a problem for gay men and intravenous drug users.
Instead of devoting massive resources to shutting down bathhouses and shooting galleries to stop the spread of AIDS, and blanketing older Americans with protections in the case of COVID, Fauci repeatedly claimed that everyone was at risk.
This isn’t a matter of It’s a new virus! No one knew anything! I knew the high-risk groups back in March 2020. (bit.ly/3oBu8Et)
It seems that Fauci believes in “science” — except when he needs to terrify heterosexuals in the cause of destigmatizing gays, or frighten the entire population so as not to stigmatize the elderly and obese.
AIDS first appeared in 1981 in gay communities in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Two years later, 72% of cases involved gay men, and 90% of the non-homosexual AIDS victims were intravenous drug users. Most of the rest were children born to AIDS-infected mothers or victims of AIDS-tainted blood transfusions.
This wasn’t a big secret. According to CDC, by June 1983, out of 1,552 AIDS victims, only 37 were not gay men, drug users, hemophiliacs or Haitians. Frontline doctors actually dealing with AIDS patients were assuring the public, “The average person has nothing to be concerned about,” as a New York cardiologist told The Associated Press. (Then, as now, you can trust your doctor; you can’t trust “public health authorities.”)
But Fauci was out there, alarming the entire population about the odds of contracting AIDS. In April 1983, he said: “As the months go by, we see more and more groups … AIDS is creeping out of well-defined epidemiological confines.”
A month later, he wrote: “The finding of AIDS in infants and children who are household contacts of patients with AIDS … has enormous implications with regard to ultimate transmissibility of this syndrome.” (This was based on a study of eight infants in Newark, New Jersey — who may or may not have had AIDS, in households with people who also may or may not have had AIDS. So it was a solid study.)
By 1985 — four years after AIDS first appeared — 73% of the cases were in gay men, 17% in intravenous drug users, 3% in Haitians, 2.2% in those who’d received blood, and 1% in sexual partners of AIDS patients. Less than 4% didn’t fit into one of these categories.
With zero cases of proven heterosexual transmission, in February 1985, Fauci said, “Am I worried about [heterosexual transmission]? Yes.”
By 1987, only 4% of AIDS cases could possibly be attributed to heterosexual contact — and half of those were in Africans and Haitians.
And yet, here was Fauci in March 1987, still babbling about the risk of AIDS to heterosexuals. Asked if AIDS could be transmitted to men by vaginal intercourse, he answered, “Absolutely.” He actually warned the public about French kissing: “[H]ealth officials have to presume that it is possible to transmit the virus by exchange of saliva in deep kissing.”
If some of these quotes sound familiar, I cited a few of them in that March 2020 column, at a time when “public health authorities,” cable news hosts and the president were demanding nationwide lockdowns.
Today, Fauci is doing the exact same thing with COVID, treating teenagers as if they face as much danger as people in their 70s, despite the latter having a 300 times greater chance of dying from COVID than those under 20. For young people who contract COVID, the chances of dying are less than the risk of dying from sunstroke over the course of their entire lives. Even for those in their 30s, the odds are about the same as their lifetime risk of dying by choking on food.
If he’s ever interviewed by a serious journalist, perhaps Fauci could explain why his idea of “science” is about avoiding stigmatizing certain groups, and not about saving lives.
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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.
While documenting my former high school’s attempt to indoctrinate me with critical race theory six years ago, I remarked that now, several years later, “the situation has undoubtedly worsened.” Worsened it has. Now, Campbell Union High School District has promoted more than 100 “equity resources” to students and staff, including a document that taught students how to put a curse on those who say “all lives matter.”
Colorblindness, Cops, and Curses
The page serves as a vast library for CRT resources and features 60 different links, including a Google Drive folder with 45 different documents. The list made sure to include the full range of CRT buzzwords, with links like Raising Race Conscious Children, the infamous 1619 Project, Anti-Racism for Beginners, and Social Identities and Systems of Oppression, among others. One link takes you to an “Anti-Racism Resource List,” which teaches about “white fragility” and claims that racism can only be perpetrated by white people. One of the “resources” provided was a Trevor Noah speech labeled “Why rioting makes sense,” followed by an unhinged anti-white rantfrom Sonya Renee Taylor, demanding that white people “throw your white body” on police officers and “put their bodies on the line for the purpose of justice.”
The list also addresses white people when it says, “We are socialized into white supremacy from the moment we are born” before going on to say, “It is about completely dismantling how you see yourself and how you see the world, so that you can dismantle … white supremacy.”
Samuel Martin graduated from CUHSD’s Branham High School in 2019 and was appalled by the district’s actions. He told The Federalist, “The idea that white students must ‘dismantle themselves’ in the context of their personality is cultish. Not only is it cultish, but it is deliberate in that this school system wants its’ white students to hate themselves. Do these people honestly think that drilling racial identitarianism into childrens’ heads from a young age is going to make them less racist?”
CUHSD also links to the Black Lives Matter Resource Guide, specifically their section labeled “high school,” which itself includes 45 different texts. Amid a wide variety of CRT inspired assignments is a document that includes writing prompts on police brutality and racist violence.
One section titled “Hex” tells the reader, “Hexing people is an important way to get out anger and frustration.” It becomes increasingly deranged, suggesting that those who say, “all lives matter” or commit “microaggressions,” should be targeted. “Write your own hex poem, cursing that person,” it instructs.
When asked her thoughts on the document that instructed K-12 students to use witchcraft on political opponents, Branham teacher Meredith Allen told The Federalist she hasn’t read the documents her district recommends, so she “can’t comment,” but that she is generally “opposed to the ‘all lives matter’ message.”
Another section labeled “A World With No Police” cites police and military as “systems or institutions that … contribute to oppression.” It asks, “What would the world be like without them?” before telling the reader to write a poem discussing “a world without these institutions.”
“The Black Radical Tradition,” is a 565-page e-book that includes articles from the Communist League and Noel Ignatiev under the pen name Noel Ignatin. Ignatiev was a Marxist who argued that “abolishing the white race is … so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed white supremacists.”
Then there’s a slide show entitled “What is the Black Lives Matter Movement?” which is made for children and was produced in part by teachers at LAUSD. It includes a glossary of terms like “white supremacy,” the definition of which includes the line, “systems, like schools and jails, have white supremacy built into them because white people have had so much power for so long.”
The ADL’s linked document “George Floyd, Racism, and Law Enforcement” defines racism as “the … oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people,” a definition that reinforces the malicious lie that white people can’t be the victims of anti-white racism.
The district’s equity resources page is just the most visible result of a series of steps in support of CRT that started long ago. In fact, the district was a testing ground for CRT before it spread throughout the nation. The book “Research Studies on Educating for Diversity and Social Justice” was published in 2018 and describes the process. An entire chapter, written in part by my former teacher, is dedicated to discussing how CRT was used at my high school so it could be replicated.
The book noted the use of the theory, saying, “CRT is used here to centralize the discussion of race and racism at Branham High School.” It went on to describe an “equity advisory” class that I was placed in as a sophomore, where “Students learn about the different types of oppression along with the privilege it affords the oppressors.” The authors hoped their tactics would spread, writing, “the intent behind sharing the process Branham underwent is to provide a model that could be followed by other schools across the nation.”
The district’s Board of Trustees supports this agenda, recently offering unanimous support for a resolution resolving to “dismantle institutionalized racism in our society and our school district” and is “committed to … implicit bias training, Ethnic Studies, and resources that foster dialogue around the guiding principles of #BlackLivesMatter.”
Note the district’s adoption of the term “equity” rather than “equality.” Here’s superintendent Robert Bravo two hours and 39 minutes into a board meeting saying he believes “equity is about equity of outcomes.”
CUHSD even established an Anti-Racism Team, which is divided into eight Equity Teams that include teachers, principals, administrators, and even two students who must be “BIPOC.” That means white students are banned from the “Equity” Teams. They’re tasked with “challenging imbalances of power and privilege,” among other roles.
Michael Espinoza is a member of one such Equity Team and a teacher at Branham High School who won the district’s teacher of the year award. Here he is calling a Native American tribe the “rightful stewards of the lands our schools and district offices stand on” and telling teachers to recognize “the power of critical race theory and use it in our lesson plans.”
He also gave a speech to the class of 2021, where he levied leftwing complaints against America and quoted Huey Newton, imploring students to engage in revolution instead of “conforming to the machine that is the United States.” On his Instagram account, Espinoza celebrates mandates for ethnic studies classes and complains of living under “white supremacist, heteropatriarchal rule” in a plea to his “co-conspirators.”
If this is CUHSD’s model teacher, what does their model student look like? Espinoza’s students created a variety of leftwing posters in his ethnic literature class. One poster demanded “Dear White PPL: Start Listening, Stop Talking” and others that said, “Wear UR F-cking Mask” and “Give us back our land.” Principal Lawton took down the posters amid outcry before caving in and apologizing to the leftwing agitators.
Co-Conspirators? Or A Conservative Counter Culture?
The full ramifications of our education system’s descent into leftwing radicalism is yet to be fully realized, although we can be certain that many of the students it doesn’t lose to homeschooling will be successfully transformed into “co-conspirators.” But as the rhetoric of revolution becomes standard for stodgy school administrators, its appeal to youth might wane.
Conversely, they run the risk of creating a small but clever cadre of conservative youth who understand from firsthand childhood experiences the consequences of toxic racial grievance politics. Don’t be surprised if the propagandizers who intend to give permanency to left-wing hegemony instead give rise to a nascent conservative political force that will uproot it.
Spencer Lindquist is an intern at the Federalist and a senior at Pepperdine University where he studies Political Science and Rhetoric and Leadership and serves as Pepperdine’s College Republicans President. You can follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach him at LSpencerLindquist@gmail.com.
A trans-identified athlete’s continuous record-setting performances are causing concern among those who fear that allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports will damage the integrity of women’s athletics.
Lia Thomas, a trans-identified male who has been competing on the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s swimming and diving team this season, has shattered records even though the athlete competed on the men’s swim team in previous seasons. As the University of Pennsylvania noted in a statement published over the weekend, Thomas completed the women’s 200-yard freestyle at the Zippy Invitational in Akron, Ohio, in 1 minute and 41 seconds, beating the second-place finisher by nearly seven seconds. A detailed list of results reveals that Thomas’ performance marked the fastest completion of the 200-yard freestyle in the history of the Zippy Invitational and the fastest finish in any competition at Ocasek Natatorium at the University of Akron, where the event took place.
Thomas broke other records at the event, finishing the preliminary 500-yard freestyle in 4 minutes and 46 seconds. Thomas finished the 500-yard freestyle finals in 4 minutes and 34 seconds. The University of Pennsylvania described the time as “the best in the country in the event.” On Sunday, the third and final day of the competition, Thomas completed the 1,650-yard freestyle in 16 minutes, beating the second-place finisher by 38 seconds.
Thomas previously swam for Penn’s men’s team from 2017 to 2020 under the name Will Thomas. In the 2018-2019 season, Thomas placed second in the Ivy League Championships in three freestyle events — the 500-yard freestyle, the 1,000-yard freestyle and 1,650-yard freestyle. In the 2019-2020 season, Thomas won a 500-yard freestyle event against Villanova. Thomas’ performance at a previous competition invoked a strong reaction from Clay Travis, radio host and founder of the sports website OutKick. Travis noted that the athlete “swam as a man” for three years before joining the women’s team.
In his remarks just days before the Zippy Invitational began, Travis lamented that “this man, who is now competing as a woman, is destroying female athletes after having competed for three years as a male swimmer.”
“If you think it is in the interest of athletic competition for a male athlete to decide to become a woman and then dominate female athletes with the advantages of the height, the strength, the weight of a male athlete, this represents the potential destruction of female athletics,” he argued. “It’s absurd, it’s ridiculous. It shouldn’t be allowed to happen.”
Travis further argued that “women should not be losing to biological men, especially not biological men who were good enough to be competing on college swim teams before they decided to identify as women.”
While data from the advocacy group Women’s Liberation Front reveals that nine states have passed laws that require athletes competing at the K-12 level to play on sports teams that correspond with their biological gender as opposed to their gender identity, efforts to restrict participation in women’s sports to biological females have been less successful at the collegiate level.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association, one of several associations regulating collegiate sports in the U.S., has threatened to move tournaments out of Idaho in response to the state’s passage of a law banning biological males from competing in women’s sports. The NCAA doubled down on its support for letting athletes compete on teams that match their gender identity in an appearance before the U.S. Senate last year.
Opposition to biological males competing in women’s sports is not limited to conservatives. Thomas’ record-breaking performances at the Zippy Invitational came less than a week after Richard Dawkins, a prominent scientist and outspoken atheist, signed an online document called the “Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights.” The declaration aims to “lobby nations to maintain language protecting women and girls on the basis of sex rather than ‘gender’ or ‘gender identity.’” The preamble asserts that “Men who claim a female ‘gender identity’ are being enabled to access opportunities and protections set aside for women.”
The declaration argues that such accommodations for trans-identified athletes in women’s sports is “a form of discrimination against women, and endangers women’s fundamental rights to safety, dignity, and equality.”
Article 7 of the declaration seeks to reaffirm “women’s rights to the same opportunities as men to participate actively in sports and physical education.” The document argues that because of “physiological differences between women and men,” biological males competing in women’s sports means that “women are placed at an unfair competitive disadvantage.”
The document notes that the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979 contains a provision requiring state parties to ensure girls and women have the “same Opportunities to participate actively in sports and physical education.” The declaration calls for clarification to Article 7 that would allow “girls and women to participate in sports and physical education on a single-sex basis.”
Critics of trans-affirming sports policies contend that the anatomy of male bodies is different from female bodies as they tend to have increased bones density and muscle mass. Progressive organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, deny that any “unfair” advantage exists for trans-identified biological males who compete against women or girls. The legal group argues that “athletes vary in athletic ability just like cisgender athletes” and success often depends on mastering techniques and dedication to training.
A Pennsylvania church was vandalized by unknown assailants who desecrated the property with graffiti depicting satanic symbols and the words “kill God.” The Lititz Church of the Brethren in Lancaster County was vandalized sometime between Thursday evening and Friday morning, police said, according to The Morning Call. The chalk graffiti displayed the phrases “kill God” and “hail Satan,” as well as the satanic symbol of a star inside a circle. The vandalism also featured the number 666, the biblical number for the Antichrist.
Eric Landram, the lead pastor of Lititz Church of the Brethren, told The Christian Post on Monday that the “chalk which was used left no permanent damage and clean up was minimal.”
Landram explained that such vandalism has not occurred on his church’s property in the past, so they are “are treating it as a one-time prank and are not concerned by the antics.” He added that apart from “what has already been reported, we have no additional comments to make at this time.”
News of the church vandalism grabbed the attention of the editorial board for Lancaster Online, which denounced the actions as “egregiously wrong” and “especially disturbing.”
“There is something especially disturbing about vandalism directed at a place of worship or a religious symbol. It seems designed to rattle people of faith who regard their sacred spaces as sanctuaries to which they go in times of both grief and joy,” wrote the editors.
“There was no lasting damage to the church. But memories of the desecration likely will linger. Even if it turns out to be the work of clueless young people. Or the product of a disturbed mind.”
The editorial board also cited a report by Axios published in October, which concluded that houses of worship of various faiths were “experiencing high amounts of vandalism, arson and other property damage.”
“2021 is on track to exceed last year’s spike in hate crimes in the U.S., many of them linked to religious bigotry,” Axios reported.
“The number of hate crimes reported in FY 2020 was the highest since 2001, when a wave of Islamophobia followed the 9/11 attacks, according to updated FBI data.”
Deportations of illegal immigrants, including those convicted of serious crimes such as burglary and homicide, dropped to the lowest levels in decades during President Joe Biden’s first six months in office, according to new data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In total, deportations of illegal immigrants from Jan. 21, 2021, through July 9, 2021, dropped by 90 percent compared with the same time period in 2019, the last year before the COVID-19 pandemic, which ground attempted migration into the United States to a near halt.
The curb in deportations extended to all types of illegal immigrants living in the United States, including those with criminal convictions. Deportations of illegal immigrants with convictions for crimes such as aggravated assault, kidnapping, sexual assault, and homicide fell by double-digit percentages in the first six months of 2021 when compared with the previous two years. The number of illegal immigrants with serious criminal convictions deported declined by more than 50 percent from 2020 and 65 percent from 2019.
The data, obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request from the Center for Immigration Studies, provide a picture of the dramatic change in immigration policy and priorities from the White House. The drop in deportations is due to a mix of factors, according to the report’s author. Biden promised to pause removals for his first 100 days in office, and new bureaucratic procedures from political appointees have made it nearly impossible for ICE agents to carry out their mission. Jessica Vaughan, who wrote the report and is the director of policy studies at the center, said the Biden administration has paralyzed immigration enforcement at a time when border crossings have reached unprecedented levels.
“This collapse in deportations is undeniably due to the policies President Biden put in place upon taking office, including a deportation moratorium (later blocked in federal court) and by severely restricting the types of cases ICE officers can pursue,” Vaughan told the Washington Free Beacon. “Officers are allowed to take action against only the most egregious illegal alien lawbreakers, and even then they have to complete voluminous paperwork for what would normally be routine deportation cases.”
Earlier this year, ICE acting director Tae Johnson said the agency would focus on deporting illegal immigrants who present “threats to national security, border security, and our public safety.” The announcement came as part of a new federal directive to reevaluate how ICE uses its resources.
Although illegal immigrants with serious criminal convictions did make up a larger number of total deportations—32 percent in the first half of 2021 versus 14 percent in 2020 and 9 percent in 2019—the total number of deportations dropped significantly. During the first six months of 2021, ICE removed just 6,000 illegal immigrants with serious criminal backgrounds, about a third as many as the Trump administration removed during the same time period in 2019.
The deportation numbers provided to the Center for Immigration Studies do not make a distinction between interior and border removals, meaning some of the decline in ICE’s activity could be attributed to the Biden administration’s use of Title 42, a public health measure that has allowed immigration authorities during the coronavirus pandemic to turn away migrants as soon as they enter the country. The center maintains that the severe drop in deportations from ICE field offices—in San Antonio, for example, deportations dropped from 44,523 in 2019 to 2,386 in 2021—are evidence of the Biden administration weakening immigration enforcement. Some ICE field offices were virtually inactive during the first six months of Biden’s term, with the Baltimore field office removing just 32 illegal immigrants during that time.
“In addition to requiring what is essentially pointless busywork to seek an extra layer of approval for each arrest, agency leadership has also reduced interior enforcement by downsizing the number of working officers,” the CIS report reads. “This has been accomplished in many ways, including sending officers to work at the border and even by paying officers not to work.”
The 2021 fiscal year saw 1.7 million migrant arrests on the southern border, more than any other year on record. In fiscal years 2013 through 2019, border arrests averaged around 540,000 annually.
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.
A court in Nepal has sentenced a pastor to two years in prison under the country’s harsh anti-conversion law for merely saying that prayers can heal COVID-19, according to reports. The District Court in Dolpa this week sentenced Pastor Keshab Raj Acharya to two years in prison and a fine of $165 (20,000 Rupees) for suggesting on social media that prayer could bring healing from the coronavirus, the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern said in a statement.
Pastor Acharya was first arrested on March 23 last year from his home in Pokhara, Gandaki Pradesh Province, on charges of spreading false information regarding COVID-19. Though he was released about a fortnight later, he was rearrested moments later on charges of “outraging religious feelings” and “proselytizing.” After more than three months in prison, he was released on July 3, 2020, after paying bail equal to about $2,500.
In a viral video published on the internet, Pastor Acharya prayed in front of his congregation, saying, “Hey, corona — you go and die. May all your deeds be destroyed by the power of the Lord Jesus. I rebuke you, corona, in the name of Lord Jesus Christ. By the power or the ruler of this Creation, I rebuke you. … By the power in the name of Lord Jesus Christ, corona, go away and die.”
William Stark, ICC’s regional manager for South Asia, said: “For more than a year, authorities in the Dolpa District have seemed bent on convicting Pastor Acharya of something and punishing him for simply being a Christian pastor. Since the new constitution was adopted in 2015, Nepalese Christians have been concerned that Article 26 and its enacting laws would be used to target their community.”
Stark added that “Nepal’s sweeping anti-conversion law must be repealed if religious freedom is truly a right to be enjoyed by the country’s citizens.”
After his release last July, Acharya had told Morning Star News that it was a “very difficult” time for him.
“I would think of my little children and my wife, and I would cry out to the Lord in prayer. I would look up at Him in hope that if it is in His will that I should be put through this, He would get me out of this,” he said at the time.
Acharya told the outlet he believed government officials and police worked together against him. “They were laying a thorough plan to make sure I would stay in the jail for a longer period.”
Senior Counsel Govinda Bandi, who was defending the pastor, told the U.K.-based Christian Solidarity Worldwide at the time that his repeated arrest was a “very worrying sign of the trajectory of religious freedom in this country.”
“The police are clearly acting outside the scope of the constitution and without any regard to the rules of criminal procedure,” Bandi said. “There seems to be a concerted effort to use the draconian provisions in the Penal Code to target him that will also threaten the wider minority community with penal sanctions for practicing their religion or belief. Furthermore, the whole allegation against him, is forged on unfounded and prejudiced allegations. This is without a doubt a targeted persecution and a travesty of our justice system.”
Christians have been under attack since before the promulgation of the country’s new constitution in September 2015. Low-intensity blasts occurred in two churches in east Nepal around the time. Pamphlets promoting Hindu nationalism were found at each of the churches and a nationalist group, Hindu Morcha Nepal, issued a press statement calling for Christian leaders to leave the country and for Christian converts to return to Hinduism. The constitution establishes Nepal as a secular country but also effectively bans evangelism, as it states that no one is allowed to make an attempt to convert people of other religions to his or her own. It also calls for the protection of Hinduism, the majority religion.
Article 26 (3) of the constitution states: “No person shall behave, act or make others act to disturb public law and order situation or convert a person of one religion to another or disturb the religion of other people…such an act shall be punished by law.”
Hindu nationalist groups in Nepal allege that Hinduism is under threat as more people could be converted into Christianity. They have been calling for the exclusion of the term “secularism” — which in the South Asian context means equal treatment of all religions by the State — from the charter of Nepal, which was a Hindu monarchy until 2006.
Persecution watchdog Open Doors USA ranks Nepal at No. 34 on its World Watch List of 50 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian.
In a recent online exchange, the YouTuber Casey Neistat posted his fury after his car was broken into and the contents stolen. Los Angeles, he railed, was turning into a “3rd-world s—hole of a city.”
The multimillionaire actor Seth Rogen chastised Neistat for his anger.
Rogen claimed that a car’s contents were minor things to lose. He added that while living in West Hollywood, he had his own car broken into 15 times, but thought little of it. Online bloggers ridiculed Rogen. No wonder: The actor lives in multimillion-dollar homes in the Los Angeles area, guarded by sophisticated security systems and fencing. Yet both Neistat and Rogen accurately defined Third Worldization: the utter breakdown of the law and the ability of the rich within such a feudal society to find ways to avoid the violent chaos.
After traveling the last 45 years in the Middle East, southern Europe, Mexico, and Asia Minor, I observed some common characteristics of a so-called “Third World society.” And all of them might feel increasingly familiar to contemporary Americans. Whether in Cairo or Naples, theft was commonplace. Yet property crimes were almost never seriously prosecuted. In a medieval-type society of two rather than three classes, the rich in walled estates rarely worry that much about thievery. Crime is written off as an intramural problem of the poor, especially when the middle class is in decline or nonexistent.
Violent crime is now soaring in America. But two things are different about America’s new criminality. One is the virtual impunity of it. Thieves now brazenly swarm a store, ransack, steal and flee with the merchandise without worry of arrest.
Second, the left often justifies crime as a sort of righteous payback against a supposedly exploitative system. So, the architect of the so-called “1619 Project,” Nikole Hannah-Jones, preened of the riotous destruction of property during the summer of 2020: “Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence.”
Third Worldization reflects the asymmetry of law enforcement. Ideology and money, not the law, adjudicate who gets arrested and tried, and who does not.
There were 120 days of continuous looting, arson and lethal violence during the summer of 2020. Rioters burned courthouses, police precincts and an iconic church. And there was also a frightening riot on Jan. 6, when a mob entered Washington, D.C.’s Capitol and damaged federal property. Of those arrested during the violence, many have been held in solitary confinement or under harsh jail conditions. That one-day riot is currently the subject of a congressional investigation. Some of those arrested are still — 10 months later — awaiting trial. The convicted are facing long prison sentences.
In contrast, some 14,000 were arrested in the longer and more violent rioting of 2020. Most were released without bail. The majority had their charges dropped. Very few are still being held awaiting capital charges.
A common denominator to recent controversies at the Justice Department, CIA, FBI, and the Pentagon is that all these agencies under dubious pretexts have investigated American citizens with little or no justification — after demonizing their targets as “treasonous,” “domestic terrorists,” “white supremacists,” or “racists.”
In the Third World, basic services like power, fuel, transportation and water are characteristically unreliable. In other words, much like a frequent California brownout.
I’ve been on five flights in my life where it was announced there was not enough fuel to continue to the scheduled destination. The plane was required either to turn around or land somewhere on the way. One such aborted flight took off from Cairo, another from southern Mexico. The other three were this spring and summer inside the United States.
One of the most memorable scenes that I remember of Ankara, Old Cairo, or Algiers of the early 1970s were legions of beggars and the impoverished sleeping on sidewalks. But such impoverishment pales in comparison to the encampments of present-day Fresno, Los Angeles, Sacramento, or San Francisco. Tens of thousands live on sidewalks and in open view use them to defecate, urinate, inject drugs, and dispose of refuse.
In the old Third World, extreme wealth and poverty existed in close proximity. It was common to see peasants on horse-drawn wagons a few miles from coastal villas. But there is now far more contiguous wealth and poverty in Silicon Valley. In Redwood City and East Palo Alto, multiple families cram into tiny bungalows and garages, often a few blocks from tony Atherton. On the main streets outside of Stanford University and the Google campus, the helot classes sleep in decrepit trailers and buses parked on the streets.
Neistat was right in identifying a pandemic of crime in Los Angeles as Third Worldization. But so was Rogen, though unknowingly so. The actor played the predictable role of the smug, indifferent Third World rich who master ignoring — and navigating around — the misery of others in their midst.
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and author of the book The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won. You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com.
Jeffrey Epstein will no doubt go down as one of history’s most notorious sex criminals, preying on vulnerable young women. However, while up until this point a picture has been painted of a man who used and abused teenage girls, testimony provided during the trial of his longtime confidant and accused accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, underscores that twisted financier may have been even more infatuated with children than we realized.
Brace yourself — this is highly disturbing, even for an Epstein story.
A woman using the pseudonym “Kate” took the stand on Monday morning, who, according to Reuters, is the second of four women listed in the indictment against Maxwell. Because she was 17 at the time of her reported sexual encounters with Epstein, above the relevant age of consent, the jury was instructed to consider that she had not engaged in “illegal sex acts” with the now-deceased pervert.
While the Times reported that was some disagreement between prosecutors and Maxwell’s attorneys over whether “Kate” could be considered a victim when she says she was lured into Epstein and Maxwell’s clutches, her story nonetheless paints a picture of a man who decidedly enjoyed at least the idea of sexual acts with children.
“It follows that Ms. Maxwell’s role in grooming Kate to engage in sex acts with Mr. Epstein was a part of, and therefore constitutes evidence of, the conspiracy charges against Ms. Maxwell,” prosecutors have written in court documents, according to The New York Times, and have noted that Kate was still a minor when she was allegedly groomed by Maxwell and Epstein.
Whatever the legal technicalities, it’s clear that “Kate,” who said she was initially “exhilarated” by Maxwell’s friendship when she was promised help with her aspiring music career, was clearly taken advantage of and fetishized for her youth.
The New York Post reported Monday morning that Kate testified she was instructed by Maxwell to don a schoolgirl outfit to serve Epstein at his Palm Beach mansion and was once even told she was “such a good girl” after the twisted pedophile appeared to be pleased with her, um, “services.”
Kate said that she met Epstein and Maxwell in Paris in the early 1990s and was instructed to provide sexual massages to Epstein first in Maxwell’s London mansion before later engaging in sexual acts with him in his own notorious Florida property as well. Maxwell, who is standing trial for sex trafficking and sexual abuse, has long been accused of recruiting and grooming young women and girls for Epstein to abuse and even, at times, abusing them herself.
In London, Kate was led to a massage room by Maxwell in the socialite’s London home, where the accused madame told her to “have a good time” as she opened to the door to reveal a nude Epstein, ready for his (ugh) service.
When the encounter concluded, Maxwell told Kate that she was “such a good girl” and that she was “so happy you were able to come.” Kate noted that Maxwell “sounded really pleased.”
In Palm Beach, Kate arrived to visit the notorious power couple to find a schoolgirl outfit laid out for her on a bed, complete with pleated skirt, white socks, and a shirt. Maxwell told her she thought it would be “fun” for Kate to bring Epstein his tea in the outfit. Given what’s well known about the relationship between Epstein and Maxwell — that she played the role of Epstein’s procurer for more than a decade, it’s a fair conclusion that Maxwell didn’t just think the school uniform would be “fun” on her own. She knew it’s what Epstein wanted.
According to the Post, Kate testified that she was then given a tray to bring Epstein his tea, where he then engaged in sex acts with her by the pool.
Last week, an accuser identified as “Jane” testified that Maxwell and Epstein had also appealed to her creative aspirations, playing the chums and even paying for music lessons before they began to sexually abuse her.
There is no doubt that Epstein has consistently been accused of preying on young, vulnerable, and easily influenced women. And while Kate’s disturbing testimony is in line with this theme, it makes it clear that he wasn’t simply interested in young, underage women. He was seemingly interested in girls, and according to her account, enjoyed the impression that he was being waited on. Epstein’s alleged victims have often been referred to as his “sex slaves.”
I don’t think it’s ever been clearer that that’s exactly what they were.
Isa grew up in San Francisco, where she was briefly a far-left socialist before finding Jesus and her husband in Hawaii. She now homeschools their two boys and freelances in the Ozarks.@crunchyconmama
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.
Ethnic Uyghur members of the Communist Party of China carry a flag as they take part in an organized tour on June 30, 2017, in the old town of Kashgar, in the far western Xinjiang province, China. Kashgar has long been considered the cultural heart of Xinjiang for the province’s nearly 10 million Muslim Uyghurs. At an historic crossroads linking China to Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, the city has changed under Chinese rule with government development, unofficial Han Chinese settlement to the western province, and restrictions imposed by the Communist Party. Beijing says it regards Kashgar’s development as an improvement to the local economy, but many Uyghurs consider it a threat that is eroding their language, traditions, and cultural identity. | Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
Being a self-confessed history buff, I admit that I have often found myself wondering, “What must it have been like to live through some past era?”
Usually, these musings are motivated by curiosity about, for instance, “how could America have been so blind about the monstrous evil that was metastasizing in Hitler’s Third Reich?”
How could so many American corporations have continued to do business with the Nazis? How could America have failed to recognize the systemic squelching of all human rights and the brutal anti-Semitism directed toward the Jewish population?
My curiosity about this particular historical phenomenon began when I was assigned to read both Mein Kampf (1925) and The Communist Manifesto (1848) in an accelerated honors Civics class in my public high school. As I was reading Hitler’s Mein Kampf, I distinctly remember going out to the kitchen and asking my mother incredulously, “Didn’t anybody read this book before the war? The horrible things Hitler wanted to do are all right here in the book.”
My mother said, “Well, people just thought he was crazy.” He may have been insane, but he did gain control of one of the most powerful countries in the world (and it wasn’t even his own country, since he was Austrian by birth).
Frankly, up until now, I was incredulous as to how America could have been so blasé or ignorant about the evils of the Nazis that they would send their athletes to the obviously propagandized 1936 Berlin Olympic Games where our own American Olympic Committee agreed to discriminate against our Jewish athletes.
Frankly, it bewildered me, until now. As I have watched the widespread collaboration of American corporations with the Chinese Communist (CCP) regime in China, I now see how it could have happened, because it happening again.
The closest analogy to the Nazi regime in Germany from 1933 to 1945 that the world has seen since is the current Chinese Communist (CCP) government in China.
They are practicing full-fledged genocide against the Uyghur Muslims, including concentration camps and slave labor. In fact, we know more about the genocide of the Uyghurs at this point than we did about the Holocaust until midway through the Second World War.
The CCP regime is imposed on a country that is 92% ethnically Han Chinese, and they reportedly have at least as much confidence in their ethnic superiority as the Germans assumed for themselves in the 1930s and 1940s.
The Gestapo could only dream of having the amount of social and thought control the CCP is exercising over its population through the latest in technology (much of it either stolen from or supplied by, American technology companies).
Many Americans have been shocked at the abject “kowtowing” of so many segments of American business, which routinely passively surrender to CCP demands which violate basic human rights and American values.
For example, Apple has self-censored and removed a popular Bible app as well as a Quran app at the direct insistence of the CCP.
China has an estimated Christian population of approximately 97 million people, the majority of whom worship in “unregistered” churches. Reports continue to surface that the CCP is aggressively pursuing “Sinicization,” an official state campaign to “Chinasize” religious groups within the country. For example, the CCP’s Administration of Religious Affairs has “ordered Christians to study President Xi’s book and memorize his speeches.”
It is reported that the Chinese CCP has an official policy of what they call “decapitation.” In this strategy, the CCP consciously seeks to coop a country’s elites, entangling them in lucrative business deals which then keeps them from criticizing the CCP. When one looks at the extensive business ventures of American political families with the Chinese (the Bidens, the Kerrys, the Pelosis, the Boxers, the Feinsteins, the McConnells, etc.), it is not difficult to conclude that they have attempted to apply this strategy to the U.S., and have done so with considerable success.
Perhaps no segment of American business has been more spineless and abjectly servile in acquiescing to the CCP’s demands than the American Entertainment industry. At CCP demand, they have self-censored themselves on numerous occasions. For example, when the remake of Red Dawn was undertaken, the North Koreans were substituted for the Chinese at CCP demand. Paradoxically, currently, the most popular movie in China depicts the Chinese military routing U.S. forces. And, if anyone speaks up for the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans, they are reportedly blacklisted by the demand of the CCP.
In the sports world, the one bright sport of moral courage in standing up to the bullies of Beijing, the Women’s Tennis Federation (WTA), has stated that it will halt all of its tournaments in China until it is satisfied that Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai is safe. Ms. Shuai had made an accusation of sexual assault against a senior government official and was promptly “disappeared.”
Even though this decision could cost women’s tennis millions and millions of dollars, the WTA’s chief executive Steve Simon declared they will boycott China until they know Ms. Shuai is safe.
In stern but fair language, Mr. Simon stated,
“Chinese officials have been provided the opportunity to cease this censorship, verifiably prove that Peng is free and able to speak without interference or intimidation, and investigate the allegations of sexual assault in a full, fair and transparent manner….Unfortunately, the leadership in China has not addressed this very serious issue in any credible way.”
We should all be grateful for this sterling example of moral leadership provided by Mr. Simon and the WTA. The contrast with the graveling response of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is both revelatory and instructive.
And yes, I believe we should lead an international boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing and host alternative international games in a country that respects human rights. Do not give President Xi and the CCP their Olympic “Berlin Moment.” The CCP is not part of the civilized family of nations and it should be treated as the pariah that it is.
In the realm of athletics, no segment of our society has been more scandalously servile in its interactions with the CCP than the National Basketball Association. The CCP has been very successful in intimidating and silencing any NBA criticism of their frightfully repressive regime and their oppression of the Tibetans, the Uyghurs, and the people of Hong Kong.
Enes Kanter, an immigrant from Turkey, is a 13-year veteran center for the Boston Celtics and a brand new American citizen. In honor of the event, he officially changed his name to Enes Kanter Freedom. Like many immigrants to our country, he truly appreciates the freedoms we enjoy as Americans and too often take for granted.
He has used his platform as a professional athlete to denounce political repression in his native Turkey and he has had the courage to wear shoes in NBA games that declare “Free Tibet,” “Modern Day Slavery,” and “No More Excuses” despite the fact that NBA officials “tried to force him to remove his ‘Free Tibet’ shoes before a recent game at Madison Square Garden.”
I thank God for new Americans like Mr. Freedom. All of us as Americans should draw inspiration from new citizens like him to remind us of what a wonderful heritage is our birthright.
We need to draw on that heritage and birthright to denounce the dehumanizing CCP and its desire for world dominance which also mimics Nazi Germany.
We stood astride the Nazi’s path, foiling their dreams of world domination. May we be used again to thwart the CCP’s plan for world domination and the subsequent trampling of human rights on a global scale.
The stakes are enormous. A world dominated by the CCP would be a world where human freedom and human rights would be trampled in favor of Chinese hegemony and totalitarian state power. Every freedom-loving human being of whatever nationality or ethnicity has a tremendous state in thwarting the CCP’s dark vision for humanity’s future.
May God give every freedom-loving human being the wisdom to see the looming danger and to rise up to meet it before it is too late. The Third Reich is back, masquerading as the CCP.
Dr. Richard Land, BA (Princeton, magna cum laude); D.Phil. (Oxford); Th.M (New Orleans Seminary). Dr. Land served as President of Southern Evangelical Seminary from July 2013 until July 2021. Upon his retirement, he was honored as President Emeritus and he continues to serve as an Adjunct Professor of Theology & Ethics. Dr. Land previously served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1988-2013) where he was also honored as President Emeritus upon his retirement. Dr. Land has also served as an Executive Editor and columnist for The Christian Post since 2011.
Dr. Land explores many timely and critical topics in his daily radio feature, “Bringing Every Thought Captive,” and in his weekly column for CP.
Dozens attended a live reenactment of Jesus’ nativity scene held outside the U.S. Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C. on Thursday Dec. 2 2021. | The Christian Post/Nicole Alcindor
WASHINGTON — Dozens attended a live reenactment of Jesus’ nativity scene held outside the U.S. Supreme Court Building on Thursday, the day after the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that could alter abortion law precedent nationwide.
The annual reenactment, organized by the Christian missionary and spiritual outreach organization Faith & Liberty, was held across the street from the East Façade of the Supreme Court.
The ceremonial event consisted of a little over a dozen impersonators dressed as biblical figures like Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus, the three wise men, angels and more to shed light on the meaning of Christmas and spread the Gospel message.
Dozens attend a live reenactment of Jesus’ nativity scene held outside the U.S. Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021. | The Christian Post/Nicole Alcindor
The reenactment of the virgin birth that occurred over 2,000 years ago came less than 24 hours after the outside of the Supreme Court Building was crowded by thousands of pro-life and pro-choice demonstrators as the nation’s high court heard arguments for and against Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban.
Many believe that with the current 6-3 conservative makeup of the court, the case, Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health, has the potential to change legal precedent on abortion set in the 1973 case Roe v. Wade.
At the nativity event, pro-lifers in attendance said it is a “blessing” that Jesus’ “unplanned” birth could be displayed the day after many pro-choice demonstrators openly proclaimed their belief that mothers should have the right to end an unplanned pregnancy.
A woman holds camel during a live nativity scene at the U.S. Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021. | The Christian Christian Post/Nicole Alcindor
“Yesterday, the court talked about the shedding of innocent blood,” said Allan Parker, a pro-life attorney and the president of The Justice Foundation, a Christian public interest nonprofit litigation organization.
“And today, we are witnessing the reenactment of the most innocent blood in American history. Jesus shed His most innocent blood so that even murderers could be forgiven. We just have to humble ourselves and say: ‘Lord, forgive me.’”
Parker believes that the nativity scene “is cleansing the grounds that we stand on after yesterday’s event.”
Parker reasoned that because Mary was shocked to discover that she was chosen to give birth to Jesus, her pregnancy can be viewed as “unplanned” from the worldly perspective.
Actors reenact Jesus’ nativity scene outside the U.S. Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021. | The Christian Post/Nicole Alcindor
“Mary’s unplanned pregnancy led to the salvation of the whole world,” Parker told The Christian Post while standing outside on the stairs of the Supreme Court Building. “If Mary were alive today, Jesus might have been aborted, and then Jesus and the world would be in darkness instead of having a chance to step into the light.”
Many others in attendance believe that Jesus’ birth was “humble” because He came into the world as an infant and a servant when He could have come to earth as a king.
Nancy Claudio, an 81-year-old pro-life demonstrator who lives in Washington, D.C. and attended the nativity scene, said she thought the reenactment was “breathtaking and encouraging.”
Claudio felt led to attend the event because she loves Jesus. She said Jesus has been a part of her life as far back as she can remember. She told CP about how Jesus saved and delivered her before she began many years of work as a traveling missionary.
“I am Spirit-led and I live every day to please Jesus. And we all need to remember that Jesus came to a place that is not fancy, and He came because He loved the world and us,” Claudio said. “Events like this are so important because this happened 2,000 years ago, and we are still celebrating and living in the victory that Jesus brought us through his servant Heart. He was laid in a manger where cattle eat out of, and He came to serve, not be served.”
Judy Mcdonough attended the rally and the nativity scene in association with the Christian organization Intercessors For America. She told CP she believes it is “God’s timing” that both of the days spent at the Supreme Court are related to pregnancy.
“It’s all about the humanity of the baby in the womb, and every child is so innocent,” Mcdonough, a devoted pro-life Christian, told CP.
“I am all about praying, and the nativity scene today is a way that we can act, pray and exercise our constitutional right. Everything about Jesus goes against what we would naturally think about ourselves and who God should be. He’s the only God who came humbly, and He asks us to respond to Him humbly. He is unique because He came humbled, and at the same time, He says [to] bow before Him.”
Others who came to view the scene agreed that it is “necessary” to reenact the birth of Jesus in front of the Supreme Court in hopes elected officials cab develop a relationship with Jesus.
“This showing is desperately needed because the only hope we have is through the life of Jesus, who promises peace, and we have hope for reconciliation, and we were sent to be reconciled to Him and others,” attendee Becky Lyttle said.
“These elected officials need to know that corruption is not the answer because many are corrupt. People in ruling positions need the Word of God. We all desperately need the Lord.”
Attendees came from across the nation to view the nativity scene.
Coming from Chicago, Debra Smith, who identifies as a charismatic nondenominational Christian, said she attended the nativity scene because she felt led to pray in tongues on the premises of the Supreme Court Building. She had also prayed at the Supreme Court during the oral arguments the day before.
“His Holy Spirit lives with me, and He is always with me. Jesus is the best because He came as a helpless baby, and there are so many other helpless babies out there that desperately need saving,” she said.
Joel Enge traveled from Texas and is also a representative from the organization Intercessors of America. He attended both the rally and the nativity scene.
“We have killed millions in America because we have been pro-death, and this event shows us the life that Christ offers can move us from being a nation of death to life. This is amazing,” said Enge, who attends a Baptist church and is the founder and director of a private Christian school.
“Jesus’ entry into the world is very important because the Creator of the world came to His creation. Jesus became a zygote. He developed in Mary’s womb. He went through the same process that children being terminated went through. There’s no comparison. We can’t compare.”
Some in attendance said the scene brought them “relief” because it showed them that outward expressions of faith can still exist in similar settings.
“It was amazing. My whole life is built around the Christian faith,” said Paul Kope from Delaware. “Our country was founded on Christian beliefs and the right to worship. It shows we still have rights that they would do this demonstration.”
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect that the number of jobs created in November is among the lowest initially reported for a single month in 2021.
The U.S. economy added 210,000 jobs in November, marking nearly the lowest number of jobs created in a month since President Joe Biden took office in January.
November’s jobs report was well below economists’ estimate of 573,000, according to CNBC. Additionally, unemployment fell to 4.2% from October’s 4.6% figure, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The U.S. economy, still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic but now subject to uncertainty related to the Omicron coronavirus variant, appeared to slow in momentum in November, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“Just as Delta derailed the recovery in terms of the labor market, if Omicron behaved like that, I would guess it would hold back any recovery in the labor market,” Justin Weidner, an economist at Deutsche Bank, told the WSJ.
“Greater concerns about the virus could reduce people’s willingness to work in person, which could slow progress in the labor market and intensify supply-chain disruptions,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said in Senate Banking Committee testimony on Tuesday.
The BLS initially reported that 194,000 jobs were added to the economy in September, the lowest number of new jobs for a single month in 2021, but that figure was revised substantially in October to 312,000 jobs, CNBC reported.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis talks to the media during a news conference in Miami, Fla., August 29, 2019. (Marco Bello/Reuters)
There’s some choice DeSantis Derangement Syndrome on CNN this morning. Check out this headline:
DeSantis proposes a new civilian military force in Florida that he would control
Gosh! A “civilian military force in Florida that he would control”! That sounds terrifying — especially when paired with the piece’s artwork, which, for some reason, shows both Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.
And what would this “civilian military force in Florida” do?
St, Petersburg, Florida (CNN) Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to reestablish a World War II-era civilian military force that he, not the Pentagon, would control.
DeSantis pitched the idea Thursday as a way to further support the Florida National Guard during emergencies, like hurricanes. The Florida National Guard has also played a vital role during the pandemic in administering Covid-19 tests and distributing vaccines.
Sounds . . . fine? Useful, even.
Ah, but this is unusual, right? Oh wait, no, it’s not:
States have the power to create defense forces separate from the national guard, though not all of them use it. If Florida moves ahead with DeSantis’ plan to reestablish the civilian force, it would become the 23rd active state guard in the country, DeSantis’ office said in a press release, joining California, Texas and New York.
So nearly half the states do it — including California and New York — and Florida itself used to have one before it was abandoned. Which makes the problem . . . what, exactly?
CNN continues:
But in a nod to the growing tension between Republican states and the Biden administration over the National Guard, DeSantis also said this unit, called the Florida State Guard, would be “not encumbered by the federal government.” He said this force would give him “the flexibility and the ability needed to respond to events in our state in the most effective way possible.” DeSantis is proposing bringing it back with a volunteer force of 200 civilians, and he is seeking $3.5 million from the state legislature in startup costs to train and equip them.
Ah, right. The problem is that this unit would be “not encumbered by the federal government,” and, thereby, that it would be under DeSantis’s control. Which is just absolutely horrifying — unlike, say, the massive, nuke-filled, “civilian military force” that is under Joe Biden’s control, which is completely different, for reasons that CNN will presumably arrive at next time a Republican is in the White House.
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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.
Entrenched leftists within the U.S. State Department are supporting the effort to demote Viktor Orban from prime minister of Hungary, if a report in Financial Times is correct. The Biden administration also left Hungary off its invitation list for a forthcoming international virtual Democracy Summit on Dec. 9 and 10 to which some 100 countries were invited.
“Trump and his enablers and those who invaded and attacked our Capitol, they don’t like the world we’re living in and they have that in common with autocratic leaders from Russia to Turkey, from Hungary to Brazil, and so many other places,” Hillary Clinton explained to MSNBC.
Hungary’s Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó retorted that Clinton’s remarks about the Democracy Summit proved that “the event has a domestic political character, with invitations withheld from countries whose leaders had good ties with former President Donald Trump . . . We need nobody to judge the state of Hungarian democracy as if in a school exam.”
A superficial reading of this would conclude it’s the big bad Central Euro authoritarians complaining about another American-backed regime change, but there’s more to it and this is just the latest connection to a broader ideological war unfolding across the Euro-Atlantic.
The European Culture War
Hungary has been an important point of discussion among U.S. conservatives. Orban’s party, Fidesz, leads a family-friendly conservative government, where women are tax free if they have more than three kids. Orban’s government has also crushed gender studies and other disciplines, defunded universities, closed Hungarian borders to illegal mass migration, stopped LGBT programs targeted towards children as propaganda, and cut down on abortion.
Alongside Poland, Hungary has formed a semi-alliance of Christian conservative central European powers, and has been an example of sorts for Western conservatives. Hungary offers what Sweden does to leftists: an functioning example of what a social-conservative government might look like in practice.
This is drawing attention from liberals and conservatives alike. Rod Dreher of the American Conservative lived in Hungary on a fellowship often writing about it, and Tucker Carlson of Fox News shot a whole documentary for a week from Budapest.
It’s also invited transnational opposition. Germany’s new center-left coalition of red and green parties insisted they will start a full-on culture war with Poland and Hungary while making the European Union a stronger transnational government.
“Countries which do not live up to the EU’s standards should not expect to receive EU money—a clear message to Poland and Hungary. This general approach applies to the United Kingdom as well,” a recent analysis stated, adding that the German coalition wants to make it legal for “trans people to self-identify.”
Meanwhile, Belgium and Netherlands are planning to fund abortion across Poland and Hungary, which limit the practice. “The Dutch parliament adopted a resolution approving the use of state funds to help Polish women obtain abortions, reports Deutsche Welle… The decision follows a similar move in September by Belgium, whose government agreed to provide funding for women in Poland to obtain terminations abroad, as a growing number have done since the near-total abortion ban was introduced,”according to a report.
Just to take one example, consider the implications of Germany allowing self-identification of transgenders, a process that fundamentally goes against biological reality. Given the Schengen borderless mandates within the EU, German transgender individuals could travel everywhere and use their EU special protections to undermine individual national policies about transgenderism, as well as the religious traditions of Hungary and Poland, which are stricter (and, one can say, more democratic) about such rules.
That likely sequence further indicates these countries are not “liberal democracies” (the key word here being liberal), opening them up for further charges of growing authoritarianism, and further clashes in EU courts, the rulings of which are increasingly considered superior to national democracies and lawmaking. In the past that has resulted in the EU clashing with Poland over fossil fuels and with Hungary over LGBT legal preferences and national courts.
Intellectual Compatibility Across Borders
The Polish conservative government, as well as Orban, bear similarities to the socially conservative section within the Republican Party, which consolidated under Donald Trump with increasing exchanges of intellectuals and conferences. The left’s reaction to that ascendence of social conservatives across the globe was therefore somewhat expected, given the new Biden administration staffed with Hillary-era culture warriors. The culture war is transnational, and the battle lines being drawn are naturally ideological as well. On one hand, there’s evangelical internationalist liberalism, which is imperial in nature and is therefore clashing with localist reactions from Virginia schools to villages in Hungary.
“Hungarian-American relations were at their peak during the Trump presidency,” Szijjarto of Hungary also noted when the FT reporter asked why Hungary was the only EU country left out of the planned Democracy summit by Joe Biden. “We have a great deal of respect for the former president, a respect that is mutual. We give the same respect to every elected U.S. president — regardless of what we get in return — but it is clear that those who were on friendly terms with Donald Trump were not invited.”
Hungary was the only country in the EU to be snubbed even when the U.S. State Department coyly added that that was not the case. “As an important part of our bilateral agenda, we continue to press our Hungarian counterparts when we have concerns about developments that erode space for independent media and civil society, curtailed LGBTQI+ rights, and undermined judicial independence,” the State dept said, according to FT. Within hours of its report, someone leaked an old speech of one of Orban’s closest allies that heightened political tensions in the nation.
Democracy Isn’t the Issue; Sexual Chaos Is
Ultimately, however, there are two emerging questions to ponder. One, the complete hypocrisy of the Biden administration is visible. New Zealand, which is growing rapidly authoritarian with vaccine passports, second-grade citizenships, and lockdowns, is invited, but not Hungary, where people can move freely. The undertone of this decision is not lost on conservatives across Europe and possibly the United States: it is not about democracy at all, but about liberalism and sexual rights.
Are Republicans astute enough to see through this, and understand the potential long-term damage the left’s culture war is causing to America’s reputation as the ruling Democratic Party turns increasingly woke, revolutionary, and ideological? Democrats are actively building ideological solidarity and fellowship with other leftist parties across the world, but there’s no such equivalent among conservatives. If it is coming down to a battle of ideas across national boundaries, perhaps cultivating that is something to think about.
The second, and far more crucial, question is: what next for Poland and Hungary and how long can they survive within an openly hostile EU? The combined GDP and manpower of the four conservative central V4-Euro powers led by Poland and Hungary can compete with Germany and France. But at translating that into power, hard and soft, there’s no visible effort of unity.
France and Greece, for example, recently made a bilateral treaty that consolidated their foreign policy into one. There’s no such treaty between Poland and Hungary, or one alongside the UK, for example. Nor is there any visible effort of promoting a socially conservative order across Europe even when the situation is ripe with right-wing voters opposed to a leftist social revolution feeling increasingly voiceless, especially across Northern Europe.
Glimpses of that ideological movement building were once seen in an Orban speech asking Christian refugees from Europe to head to Hungary: “Of course we can give shelter to the real refugees: Germans, Dutch, French, Italians; scared politicians and journalists; Christians who had to flee their own country; those people who want to find here the Europe that they lost at their home,” he said.
If Orban wins re-election this time, against the odds, will we see the consolidation of a conservative bloc right at the heart of Europe? Because the days of hedging might soon be over. When the world turns binary, fence-sitting is usually no longer an option.
Dr. Sumantra Maitra is a national-security fellow at The Center for the National Interest; a non-resident fellow at the James G Martin Center; and an elected early career historian member at the Royal Historical Society. He is a senior contributor to The Federalist, and can be reached on Twitter @MrMaitra.
Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald speaks at a news conference about the fatal shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan on Dec. 1, 2021. | YouTube/Click On Detroit WDIV
A 15-year-old suspect in the Oxford High School shooting in Michigan that left four students dead and seven others injured was charged as an adult with four counts of first-degree murder and other charges, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said Wednesday.
At a press conference where she expressed condolences to friends and family of the victims, McDonald named the suspect, Ethan Crumbley, just once.
In addition to charging him with four counts of murder for the deaths of students, Tate Myre, 16; Hana St. Julian, 14; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; and Justin Shilling, 15; Crumbley was also charged with one count of terrorism causing death, seven counts of assault with intent to murder, and 12 counts of possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony.
McDonald said there remains a lot of evidence to review and more charges could be forthcoming before explaining why they made the decision to charge Crumbley as an adult.
“First the seriousness of the crime this person committed under Michigan law. There are crimes that the Legislature says is so serious that a person who commits them can automatically be charged as an adult. First-degree murder is the most serious of all those crimes,” she said.
McDonald added that “there are facts leading up to this shooting that suggest this was not just an impulsive act.”
“Those facts are not appropriate for discussion right now because it could affect the prosecution of this case,” she said.
Some of those facts might be related to concerns being raised by the school community as early as Nov. 4 when someone threw the head of a deer into a locked courtyard at the school while on the roof, as noted in a letter from Oxford High School Principal Steve Wolf, stating there was “no threat on campus.”
“Before school began this morning, we identified graffiti on the cement outside our pool entrance doors. We immediately notified security, the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office and our custodial staff. This vandalism was created by an individual with red acrylic paint very early this morning and did not contain any threats or any concerning messages,” Wolf wrote.
“Security personnel reviewed camera footage and confirmed this person did not gain access into the building, as OHS is locked and secure. Unfortunately, this person did throw the head of a deer into a locked/inaccessible courtyard while on the roof. The deer was from a nearby location off-campus, likely struck from a vehicle prior to today … With the help from the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office, we did identify and locate the suspect. At this time, this is a police investigation, and we can assure our students, staff and parents the suspect is not a threat to our building,” the letter added.
Concerns were also raised in a Nov. 12 letter about troubling social media posts about Oxford High School. An alleged screenshot of Crumbley’s now deactivated page on Instagram appears to threaten Oxford with death.
In an interview with ABC 7, Oxford High School student Treshan Bryant said while he didn’t know Crumbley personally, he knew he was being bullied.
“I’ve seen him around the school. He’s a kid, he’s been picked on and stuff like this. And when a kid has been picked on, people bullying him, you’re going to get this,” he said. “You’re going to get this reaction.”
In capping off her reasons for charging Crumbley as an adult, McDonald said it was about public safety.
“Charging this person as an adult is necessary to achieve justice and protect the public,” she said. “Any other option would put all of us at risk of this person because they could be released and still a threat.”
The video below shows the suspect when he was a child.
The National Fraternal Order of Police – the oldest and largest police union in the United States – said that 2021 is already the bloodiest year in history for American law enforcement officers. As of Tuesday, the National Fraternal Order of Police reported that 314 police officers were shot in the line of duty — 58 of whom were killed. There were 42 cops shot in Texas, 25 in Illinois, 21 in California, and 17 officers shot in both Florida and Georgia.
Despite a month left to go in the year, 2021 is already the deadliest year on record for police officers, according to the FOP. There were 312 police officers shot and 47 killed in 2020. There were 293 cops shot and 50 killed in 2019.
Another disturbing trend is that there were reportedly 95 ambush-style attacks thus far in 2021 – a 126% increase compared to 2020. The ambush attacks resulted in 119 officers being shot and 28 who lost their lives.
“We are on pace this year to see the highest number of officers shot in the line of duty in one year ever recorded,” FOP president Patrick Yoes said on Wednesday. “We’ve already had more officers killed in the line of duty by gunfire this year than any other — and there is still one month left.”
“There is no doubt that the recent erosion of respect for law enforcement has fueled more aggression towards police officers than what has been seen in previous years,” Yoes added. “As violence continues to be aimed at law enforcement, our officers continue to show up every day to keep the communities they serve safe. These men and women run toward danger to protect the public when everyone else is running away.”
The National Fraternal Order of Police called on Congress to pass the “Protect and Serve Act” – legislation reintroduced by 17 Republican lawmakers in March that would “create federal penalties for individuals who deliberately target local, state, or federal law enforcement officers with violence.”
The FOP demanded, “Congress must act now to address the terrible violence targeting our law enforcement officers and pass the ‘Protect and Serve Act’ to better protect the brave men and women who wear the badge and send a clear message to those who would seek to do them harm.”
The FOP blamed “rogue prosecutors refusing to prosecute violent criminals” for the rising crime across the country. The group also called out media members for not covering increasing crime rates.
“Those saying that America’s #CrimeCrisis is not out of control are either not paying attention or trying to cover for the rogue prosecutors pushing radical policies,” the police organization wrote on Twitter. “To the various media folks who’ve been turning a blind eye to the killings in our streets: do your damn job!”
The FOP also blamed “activist judges” for contributing to the “historic crime wave” by “releasing violent criminals on probation with low bail or no bail.”
— National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) (@GLFOP) November 17, 2021
The U.S. murder rate skyrocketed 30% from 2019 to 2020 – the largest single-year increase in modern history, according to data published in October by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In September, the FBI published similar findings that homicides jumped up by 30% in 2020 compared to the previous year. Several cities have experienced surges of violent crime in 2021.
The Council on Criminal Justice released a report in July that found the number of murders in 22 major U.S. cities increased by 16% compared to the same period in 2020 and soared by 42% compared to the first six months of 2019.
Philadelphia has reached 512 murders, surpassing the record of 500 homicides that was set in 1990.
Washington, D.C., has recorded 205 homicides in 2021, surpassing 200 for the first time since 2003.
Portland set a new record for homicides in September with 67.
House lawmakers considered several proposals to reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in an Energy and Commerce Committee hearing Wednesday, with Republicans and Democrats each using the opportunity to advance their agenda.
“It’s wrong for anyone to use this opportunity to push for more censorship, more power, and more control over what they determine Americans should say, post, think and do,” Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers said. “One of the bills before us today, the Justice Against Malicious Algorithms Act, is a thinly veiled attempt to pressure companies to censor more speech.”
Democratic Rep. Darren Soto dismissed allegations of tech censorship, arguing that Republicans were attempting to use free speech concerns to spread disinformation.
The hearing also featured left-leaning witnesses who stressed the dangers of misinformation and hateful speech on social media platforms, calling on lawmakers to reform Section 230 in order to hold platforms liable for such content.
House lawmakers considered several proposals to reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in an Energy and Commerce Committee hearing Wednesday, with Republicans and Democrats each using the opportunity to advance their agenda.
While both parties lobbied for Section 230 reforms, their reasons for doing so and their proposals diverged considerably; Republicans stressed the dangers of tech companies censoring online speech, particularly conservative political content, and Democrats decried the threat posed by social media misinformation.
In her opening remarks, Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers emphasized her concerns with tech platforms censoring speech, characterizing Democrats’ Section 230 reforms as an attempt to encourage social media companies to remove more conservative political content.
“It’s wrong for anyone to use this opportunity to push for more censorship, more power, and more control over what they determine Americans should say, post, think and do,” McMorris Rodgers said. “One of the bills before us today, the Justice Against Malicious Algorithms Act, is a thinly veiled attempt to pressure companies to censor more speech.”
The bill, introduced by top Energy and Commerce Democrats, removes Section 230 liability protections from tech platforms that recommend “personalized” content contributing to “physical or severe emotional injury” of a user, thereby allowing “injured” users to sue. Rep. Frank Pallone, who co-sponsored the bill, said the legislation would stop social media platforms from promoting “extremism” and “disinformation.”
“Clearly, companies will have to decide between leaving up content that may offend someone and fight it in court, or censor content that reaches a user; which do you think they’ll choose?” McMorris Rodgers asked.
Democratic Rep. Darren Soto dismissed allegations of tech censorship, arguing that Republicans were attempting to use free speech concerns to spread disinformation.
Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen testifies during a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing entitled ‘Protecting Kids Online: Testimony from a Facebook Whistleblower’ on Capitol Hill October 5, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“It seems like as we’re working on key reforms like protecting civil rights, accountability for social media companies, and protecting our kids, the main opposition is by Republicans today; they want a license to have the right to lie without consequence,” Soto said.
House Republicans also pressed key witnesses including former Facebook employee Frances Haugen, who has called for increased federal oversight of social media platforms’ content moderation decisions.
“I wanted to start with a yes-or-no question: do you support Big Tech’s censorship of constitutionally protected speech on their platforms?” McMorris Rodgers asked Haugen.
“I believe we should be re-architecting these systems so that they are more focused on our family and friends, because this is not about good ideas or bad ideas; it is about making the system safe,” Haugen responded.
When McMorris pressed Haugen for a clear yes or no answer, she failed to provide one.
The hearing also featured left-leaning witnesses who stressed the dangers of misinformation and hateful speech on social media platforms, calling on lawmakers to reform Section 230 in order to hold platforms liable for such content.
“Big Tech is profiting off of yelling ‘fire in a crowded theater,’ and though I understand that we have these conversations about the First Amendment, there are limitations to what you can and cannot say,” Rashad Robinson, president and CEO of left-wing advocacy group Color of Change, adding that “freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences.”
Bipartisan leaders of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee vowed to continue promoting nuclear energy during an industry conference Wednesday.
Both Energy Committee Chairman Joe Manchin and Ranking Member John Barrasso reiterated their support for nuclear energy during the American Nuclear Society winter conference in Washington, D.C., arguing that an economy-wide transition to clean energy would be impossible without it. The Senate leaders added that the U.S. must produce more energy and avoid reliance on foreign entities.
“The reality is that you cannot power the world with solar panels and wind turbines alone,” Barrasso said during his remarks. “The demands for energy worldwide are going to continue to increase. Not just in the United States, you’re gonna see that worldwide.”
“Every time we use energy, we’re using it more efficiently, but you still have increased demands,” the Wyoming Republican added. “Nuclear has to be a very, very important part of that.”
Barrasso said more members of Congress should support nuclear energy because of its efficiency and built-in storage systems unlike solar and wind power.
“It is smaller, it’s more efficient and includes an energy storage system when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining,” he said. “It’s an interesting debate that I have occasionally with the Bernie Sanders’ of the world who is not pro-nuclear. He should be, but he’s not.”
Republican Sen. John Barrasso speaks alongside other GOP lawmakers during a press conference on rising gas and energy prices on Oct. 27. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
In July, Barrasso and a bipartisan group of senators introduced the American Nuclear Infrastructure Act (ANIA), which proposed to bolster domestic nuclear reactor development. The bill was ultimately included in the infrastructure package signed into law by President Joe Biden on Nov. 15.
Manchin highlighted the legislation Wednesday, saying it was part of the “significant progress” made by the U.S. in advancing nuclear infrastructure over the last year. He noted that the ANIA funds two billion-dollar advanced reactor projects, allocates $6 billion for supporting financially-strained nuclear plants and includes money for developing a nuclear-powered clean hydrogen hub.
“I will continue pushing for the inclusion of funding for the advanced nuclear fuel availability program,” Manchin said during a pre-recorded speech. “As you know, proper funding of this program will ensure a domestic supply of high-assay low-enriched uranium, eliminating reliance on Russia or other foreign suppliers.”
“The U.S. must maintain our nuclear supply chain, creating high paying manufacturing jobs and reassert U.S. leadership,” he continued.
The Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on the future of nuclear in the U.S. on Nov. 4. Witnesses included experts from the Idaho National Laboratory, American Electric Power and Council of Radionuclides and Radiopharmaceuticals, who all testified in favor of nuclear.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, and WhatDidYouSay.com
Source: AP Photo/Matt Rourke
Twitter announced this week that Parag Agrawal will be the social media giant’s new CEO. (This is an incredible achievement for the Indian-born Agrawal, given that the selection process heavily favored people born in India.) He has a difficult job ahead of him, trying to maintain the site’s reputation for fast-paced, free-ranging commentary, while also keeping the platform free of dangerous misinformation.
Agrawal is probably aware of the mounds — and I mean mounds — of irrefutable SCIENTIFIC PROOF that conservatives are gullible paranoids, constantly falling for misinformation and hoaxes. For example, consider these 100% objective academic studies:
Conservatives More Likely To Believe False News, New Study Finds — Maggie Fox, CNN, June 2, 2021
Return of the Paranoid Style: Fake News Is Fooling More Conservatives Than Liberals. Why? — The Economist, June 3, 2020
Conservatives’ Susceptibility to Political Misperceptions — R. Kelly Garrett and Robert M. Bond, Science Advances, June 2, 2021
On the other hand, now that I think about it, even powerful Democrats, establishment news organizations and influential celebrities have been known to err when evaluating the news.
Hey! That reminds me — the Jussie Smollett trial kicks off this week! (It’s a good thing I remembered that while writing this column.)
Smollett, you will recall, is the half-black, half-Jewish gay actor formerly of the Fox TV show “Empire” who claimed, back in January 2019, that he left his Chicago apartment at 2 a.m. in the middle of a polar vortex to get a sandwich, whereupon he was viciously set upon by two white guys shouting racist and homophobic slurs. (Despite being racist, homophobic white guys, they were huge fans of “Empire,” recognizing Smollett immediately.)
They beat him about the face, put a noose around his neck and doused him with a “chemical substance.” (Yes, as luck would have it, the white guys happened to be carrying a noose and chemical agents. Duh. It was a polar vortex.)
For extra bonus authenticity, Smollett said his assailants yelled, “This is MAGA country!” Did I mention this was in Chicago? (Trump: 12.4% of the 2016 vote.)
Even a skeptic would have to admit, Smollett’s account had the ring of truth. When you add (to an already highly believable story) the fact that there have been dozens of “noose incidents” over the past few decades, and every single one of them, without exception, turned out to be a hoax, his narrative only becomes more convincing!
To leap ahead to the conclusion, the Chicago Police Department spent 3,000 man-hours carefully examining surveillance tapes of the neighborhood where the incident had occurred and determined that — please sit down for this — the “attackers” turned out to be two Nigerian extras on “Empire.” (That does explain how they were able to recognize him.) After their arrests, they admitted that Smollett had paid them $3,500 to stage the attack.
Liberals, those calm, dispassionate seekers after truth — not conservative dolts, with their “paranoid style” and “susceptibility” to “false news” — reacted to Smollett’s alleged attack with the cool detachment we have come to expect from them.
“What happened today to @JussieSmollett must never be tolerated in this country. We must stand up and demand that we no longer give this hate safe harbor; that homophobia and racism have no place on our streets or in our hearts. We are with you, Jussie.” — Joe Biden
“@JussieSmollett is one of the kindest, most gentle human beings I know … This was an attempted modern-day lynching. No one should have to fear for their life because of their sexuality or color of their skin. We must confront this hate.” — then-Sen. Kamala Harris
“The racist, homophobic attack … is an affront to our humanity. No one should be attacked for who they are or whom they love. I pray that Jussie has a speedy recovery & that justice is served. May we all commit to ending this hate once & for all.” — Rep. Nancy Pelosi
“This is a sickening and outrageous attack, and horribly, it’s the latest of too many hate crimes against LGBTQ people and people of color. We are all responsible for condemning this behavior and every person who enables or normalizes it. Praying for Jussie and his family.” — Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand
“There is no such thing as ‘racially charged.’ This attack was not ‘possibly’ homophobic. It was a racist and homophobic attack. If you don’t like what is happening to our country, then work to change it. It is no one’s job to water down or sugar-coat the rise of hate crimes.” — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
“Regarding the heinous attack on @JussieSmollett, yet another reminder that Trump’s ascendance and the resulting climate of hate has meant that lives have been increasingly at stake since 2015. Smollett could have been killed by those thugs screaming MAGA. Let that sink in.” — Karen Attiah, Washington Post editor
“The horrific attack on Jussie Smollett has no place in a decent human loving society. Homophobia existed before Trump, but there is no question that since he has injected his hatred into the American bloodstream, we are less decent, less human, & less loving. No intolerance! No DT!” — Director Rob Reiner
“Jussie Smollett was violently attacked by two white men who poured bleach on him and put a noose around his neck. He was targeted for being black and for being gay. THIS is why we have to have zero tolerance against homophobia and racism. Jussie’s life matters.” — Actress Olivia Munn
“Heartbroken and furious reading about the attack on @JussieSmollett. I want Trump and all MAGA lunatics to burn in Hell.” — Actor Billy Eichner
All this blithering idiocy, about something that was an obvious hoax from day one, was posted on the very social media site that Agrawal is about to oversee. Nearly identical tweets from nearly identical liberals could be produced for similarly deranged takes on Nick Sandmann, Kyle Rittenhouse, Althea Bernstein, the NASCAR “noose,” the “Klansman” at Oberlin College, the “racist” bus attack in Albany, Trump supporters ripping hijabs off Muslim girls, racist graffiti at the Air Force Academy, the noose at Columbia’s Teachers College, the Duke lacrosse rape hoax, the University of Virginia gang rape hoax, the synagogue bomb threats and on and on and on.
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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.
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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