SEEN AROUND THE WEB
Monday, February 28, 2022
Archive for February, 2022
North Korea Fires Ballistic Missile Eastward Toward Sea as Vladimir Putin Orders Nuclear Forces on Highest Alert
Reported By Cristina Laila | Published February 27, 2022
Read more at https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/north-korea-fires-ballistic-missile-eastward-toward-sea-vladimir-putin-orders-nuclear-forces-highest-alert/
North Korea on Sunday fired what is believed to be a medium-range ballistic missile eastward toward the sea, according to Yonhap News Agency.
Reuters reported:
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff reported that North Korea had fired a suspected ballistic missile toward the sea off its east coast from a location near Sunan, where Pyongyang’s international airport is located. The airport has been the site of missile tests, including a pair of short-range ballistic missiles fired on Jan. 16.
The missile fired on Sunday flew to a maximum altitude of around 620 km (390 miles) and to a range of about 300 km (190 miles), the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
The United States condemned North Korea’s missile launch and begged Pyongyang to engage in dialogue, in a statement to Yonhap:
“The United States condemns the DPRK’s ballistic missile launch,” the department spokesperson told Yonhap News Agency, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“This launch, like the other launches earlier this year, is a clear violation of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions, and demonstrates the threat the DPRK’s illicit weapons of mass destruction and missile programs pose to the DPRK’s neighbors and the region as a whole,” the official added.
“We stand with the international community to call on the DPRK to abide by Security Council resolutions, refrain from further provocations, and engage in sustained and substantive dialogue,” the department spokesperson said, asking not to be identified.
North Korea fired a ballistic missile while Vladimir Putin is threating to nuke the West. Vladimir Putin put Russia’s nuclear deterrent forces on highest alert on Sunday. Putin justified his actions after top NATO officials made “aggressive statements against our country.”
Meanwhile Joe Biden is hiding out in his Delaware basement.
Cristina began writing for The Gateway Pundit in 2016 and she is currently the Associate Editor.
Belarus is preparing to invade Ukraine and provide support to its Russian allies
Reported by SAMUEL MANGOLD-LENETT | February 28, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/belarus-is-preparing-to-invade-ukraine-and-provide-support-to-its-russian-allies/
Belarus is preparing to deploy troops into Ukraine in support of the country’s Russian allies. A Biden administration official said that Belarusian leadership could order the deployment of forces into Ukraine as early as Monday, the Washington Post reported. The official said, “It’s very clear Minsk is now an extension of the Kremlin.”
The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and has allowed Russian troops to conduct military drills and store supplies within his country.
On Saturday, Ukrainian and Russian leadership agreed to hold peace talks along the Ukrainian-Belarusian border. Lukashenko’s planned invasion of Ukraine will, naturally, complicate these planned talks.
The Belarusian opposition leader, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, recently called for sanctions against Lukashenko and the Belarusian regime. Newsweek reported that Tsikhanouskaya referred to them as “accomplices of Russia’s brutal assault on Ukraine.” A Ukrainian government official told CNN that the Ukrainian government had intelligence indicating that Belarus is ready “to maybe participate directly” in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
The official said that the Belarusian government is allowing Russia to use Belarus to enter Ukraine, “in addition to allowing Russians to use their territory as well as letting them cross the border.” However, as of now, according to a senior U.S. defense official, the American government has not seen Belarusian troops “being readied to move into Ukraine” or “that they are moving or are in Ukraine.”
Anticipating Belarus’ participation in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration suspended all operations in the American embassy in Belarus. The State Department also encouraged non-emergency employees and family members of American diplomats to vacate the U.S. embassy in Russia.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “The U.S. Department of State has suspended operations at our Embassy in Minsk, Belarus and authorized the voluntary departure (‘authorized departure’) of non-emergency employees and family members at our Embassy in Moscow, Russia. We took these steps due to security and safety issues stemming from the unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces in Ukraine.”
Over the weekend, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine intensified as Russian officials threatened to drop the International Space Station on the United States and its allies and Putin ordered the Russian military to put its nuclear deterrence forces on high alert.
Putin blamed rhetoric and posturing from NATO allies and thoroughgoing economic sanctions against Russia for why he put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert.
Switzerland Drops Neutrality in Rare Move to Freeze Russian Assets
Reported by DYLAN HOUSMAN | HEALTHCARE REPORTER | February 28, 2022
Read more at https://dailycaller.com/2022/02/28/switzerland-ukraine-russia-freeze-assets-putin-lavrov/
Switzerland announced Monday it will be freezing Russian assets due to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, breaking a longstanding tradition of neutrality in foreign conflicts.
Swiss President Ignazio Cassis said Putin’s assets, along with those of Russia’s prime minister, foreign minister and 367 more individuals sanctioned by the European Union, would be frozen immediately, according to The New York Times. Cassis met with the Swiss Federal Council and determined that action was necessary due to the “unprecedented” aggression displayed by Russia in invading a sovereign European state.
Switzerland further joined the rest of the E.U. in shutting down its airspace to Russian aircraft, but said it will decide whether to join further European sanctions on a case-by-case basis.
The flight ban will prevent Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov from making a planned speech Tuesday to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. As of 2020, Russian companies and citizens owned more than $11 billion in assets in Swiss banks, according to the NYT.
Switzerland has historically maintained a neutral stance in global conflicts, in part due to its role as a global financial hub. Cassis said he was concerned that following along with all European sanctions could threaten the country’s reputation, but that some action was necessary.
Today’s TWO Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Reminiscing
A.F. BRANCO | on February 26, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-reminiscing/
Now that Biden has all but destroyed the country it’s nice to look back on better days with Trump as President.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Back to the Future
A.F. BRANCO | on February 28, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-back-to-the-future/
Obama ridiculed Romney’s Russia warning in 2012 during their presidential debate, and now?
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.
Teachers across US advocating trans-ideology in classroom for ‘Jazz & Friends’ reading day
Reported By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter | Thursday, February 24, 2022
Read more at https://www.christianpost.com/news/teachers-across-us-advocating-transgenderism-in-classroom.html/
Schools across the United States are urging students to read books about trans-identified children as part of an annual campaign promoted by a leading activist group to “support transgender and non-binary youth.”
Launched by the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT activist organization, schools nationwide held the annual Jazz & Friends National Day of School and Community Readings on Thursday in partnership with the National Education Association and the American Association of School Librarians. The event was first conceived after what the HRC characterized as “a national anti-LGBTQ hate group [bullying] a young transgender girl in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin” and “her community rallied behind her by hosting a community reading of I am Jazz by transgender advocate Jazz Jennings.”
Liberty Counsel, the religious liberty law firm that was derided by the Human Rights Campaign as a “national anti-LGBTQ hate group,” wrote a letter to the president of Mt. Horeb Area School District Board of Education in 2015, expressing opposition to plans to read the book, I am Jazz, to first-grade students. The law firm threatened to file “a federal lawsuit against teachers and staff in their official and individual capacities for violation of parental rights” if the school went ahead with the reading. In response to the threat to take legal action, the Mt. Horeb Area School District canceled plans to read the semi-autobiographical children’s book to first graders. However, a Mt. Horeb parent presented the book reading at a public library in the village in a show of support for a trans-identified student in the district. Shortly thereafter, the effort led to similar events across the U.S., which took place at schools and other community locations, such as libraries and places of worship, and has since become an annual affair. The stated purpose of the Jazz & Friends National Day of School and Community Readings is to “support transgender and non-binary youth.”
The Human Rights Campaign promotes I am Jazz as the primary reading material for the day, although it offers other suggested titles as well. The advocacy organization has put together a lesson plan, which encourages teachers to tell elementary school students that “gender is a spectrum, not a binary, and that we all express ourselves in many different ways along that spectrum.” Students are also taught “about differences and being an ally.”
Along with I am Jazz, the Human Rights Campaign has put together lesson plans for other books included on the advocacy organization’s list of suggested reading material for the Jazz & Friends National Day of School and Community Readings. The descriptions for one of those books, CALVIN: Time To Be Me! reads: “Calvin has always been a boy, even if the world sees him as a girl. He knows who he is in his heart and in his mind, but he hasn’t yet told his family. Finally, he can wait no longer.” The Human Rights Campaign lists CALVIN: Time To Be Me! as an ideal resource for students in kindergarten through second grade. The lesson plan for the book calls on teachers to use the “Gender Snowperson” when introducing the concepts of gender identity to their students, a concept whose lesson plan indicates that it is designed for students in the third through eighth grade. In other words, the Gender Snowperson is designed for students older than the target audience for CALVIN: Time To Be Me!
Lesson plans for CALVIN: Time To Be Me! describes the Gender Snowperson as “a simple tool to break down the concepts of how you feel and know yourself to be (gender identity), who you love (sexual orientation), boy/girl assigned at birth (sex assigned at birth) and gender expression.”
The lesson plan insists that “many people do not realize that gender identity and sexual orientation are two very different concepts and that all of us have both a gender identity and sexual orientation,” adding: “there are lots of different ways to be a boy, girl, both or neither.”
Conservative groups expressed concern about promoting LGBT activism and ideology to school children, contending that parents are the best people to teach their children about such topics. Jeff Johnson, a culture and policy analyst at Focus on the Family, first wrote about the Jazz & Friends National Day of School and Community Readings in 2019.
“Sadly, this event is part of a much larger trend in public education, as children are taught confusing messages about gender and sexuality in classrooms across the nation,” he said. “These lessons are in direct opposition to objective, scientific reality — and to most parents’ beliefs and values.”
The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest public school district in the United States, announced last week that it was partaking in the National Day of School & Community Readings to “affirm transgender & non-binary youth.” The event, available for viewing on Zoom, was hosted by Hooper Avenue Elementary School’s Rainbow Club.
“Join Human Relations, Diversity & Equity (HRDE) and schools across the district for a nationwide virtual community reading about gender, diversity & inclusion,” a promotion for the event states. “Teachers, Zoom in with your class for the story, discussion, and an optional art activity. We recommend paper and basic supplies for the activity.”
While the Los Angeles school district did not state which age group the discussion was geared toward, the fact that Hooper Avenue Elementary School is taking part suggests that young students will be participating. The book at the center of this particular discussion, From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea, is designed for students in kindergarten through third grade.
The Jazz & Friends National Day of School and Community Readings comes as parents across the U.S. have raised concerns that school officials are encouraging gender fluidity in children who might be confused or have questions surrounding their biological gender. Last year, a parent in Leon County, Florida, sued the school system for working to prevent her from finding out that the school had begun to refer to her daughter by using “they/them” pronouns and allowed the child to sleep in the same quarters as her male classmates on a school field trip.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
Media Blackout: Nasal Spray that is 99% Effective Against COVID-19 in its Phase 3 Clinical Trial – Now Approved in India, Israel, Bahrain, Indonesia & Thailand
Reported By Jim Hoft | Published February 25, 2022
Read more at https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/media-blackout-nasal-spray-99-effective-covid-19-phase-3-clinical-trial-now-approved-india-israel-bahrain-indonesia-thailand/
The Canadian pharmaceutical company SaNOtize Research & Development Corp., (SaNOtize), and Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Limited (Glenmark), announced earlier this month the successful outcomes of a nasal spray in its Phase 3 clinical trials and now approved by India’s drug regulator as a treatment for adult patients with COVID-19 who have a risk of progression of the disease. TrialSite is the first to report on this.
“The study confirmed that SaNOtize’s Nitric Oxide Nasal Spray (NONS) represents a safe and effective antiviral treatment that shortens the course of COVID-19, and could prevent the transmission of COVID-19,” according to their news release.
The SaNOtize Nitric Oxide Nasal Spray (NONS) is designed to kill the Covid-19 virus in the upper airways, preventing it from incubating and spreading to the lungs. It contained anti-microbial properties with a direct virucidal effect on Covid-19.
Read their news release published at Business Wire and below:
In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-arm study at 20 clinical sites across India that evaluated 306 patients, NONS reduced the SARS-CoV-2 log viral load in COVID-19 patients by more than 94% within 24 hours of treatment, and by more than 99% in 48 hours as compared to saline control.
Treatment also demonstrated, in the high-risk group (n=218), a statistically significant greater proportion of patients who achieved a combination of clinical and virological cure, based on the World Health Organization (WHO) Progression Scale. Moreover, the median time to negative PCR, in this group, was 4 days in the treatment group compared with 8 days in the control. Test subjects included patients infected with different variants, likely including Delta and Omicron. There were no significant adverse health events recorded in the Phase 3 trial, or in over 500 subjects treated so far with NONS in clinical trials.
The reduction in log viral load corroborates the reduction of viral load in the UK Phase 2 trials (a reduction of 95% in 24 hours and 99% in 72 hours), conducted in March 2021 by Ashford and St Peter’s Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and Berkshire and Surrey Pathology Services, and published in the Journal of Infection in August 2021.
“These results definitively substantiate the safety and efficacy of NONS in the fight against COVID-19,” said Dr. Gilly Regev, SaNOtize Co-Founder and CEO. “We are thrilled to be able to provide COVID patients with an affordable product that has been shown to deliver a faster cure. And with the proven safety profile of NONS, we look forward to this becoming the first line of treatment and potentially defense for COVID infection worldwide.”
The SaNOtize treatment is designed to kill the virus in the upper airways, preventing it from incubating and spreading to the lungs. It is based on nitric oxide (NO), a natural nanomolecule produced by the human body with proven anti-microbial properties shown to have a direct effect on SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The pharmacology, toxicity, and safety data for NO use in humans has been well-established for decades. The NO molecule released from NONS is identical to the one delivered in its gaseous form to treat persistent pulmonary hypertension, or Blue Baby Syndrome, in newborn babies.
With the receipt of manufacturing and marketing approval from India’s drug regulator, SaNOtize’s strategic partner, Glenmark, will launch NONS commercially in India under the brand name FabiSpray®. The approval is for the treatment of adult patients with COVID-19 who have a risk of progression of the disease, which includes either persons over the age of 45, non-vaccinated people and/or those with comorbidities. Glenmark entered into an exclusive long-term strategic partnership with SaNOtize in August 2021 to manufacture, market and distribute NONS for COVID-19 treatment in India and other Asian markets including Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Nepal, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam.
NONS has a marketing authorization as a Class I Medical Device in the EU. NONS is also approved and being sold in Israel, Thailand, Indonesia, and Bahrain, under the name enovid™ or VirX™.
“As viral load is an important determinant of disease severity and transmission of COVID-19 infection, demonstration of reduction in the viral load is expected to have significant clinical consequences from a patient and community perspective,” said Dr. Monika Tandon, Senior Vice President and Head – Clinical Development, Global Specialty/Branded Portfolio for Glenmark. “In the current scenario, with new emerging variants exhibiting high transmissibility, this novel product provides a useful option in the world’s fight against COVID-19.”
Glenmark will submit the clinical trial data for publication in a peer-reviewed journal in order to share its findings.
Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Phase 3 Trials – Details
- Patients in the Glenmark Phase 3 clinical trial in India self-administered a dose of 2 sprays per nostril, six times a day for a seven-day treatment period, along with standard supportive care.
- The primary and secondary outcome measures demonstrated the efficacy and safety of the NONS treatment arm over the control arm, which was administered normal saline nasal spray as placebo in double-blind manner.
- The trial also included a subgroup analysis for patients with a high risk of disease progression, including either non-vaccinated patients, patients in middle- and older-age groups, and/or patients with co-morbidities.
- Reduction in log viral load in the NONS group was statistically significant and superior to the control group in the full population and high-risk population (p < 0.05). Similar results were seen in the un-vaccinated group. The primary endpoint was achieved and confirmed in all analyses.
- Significantly higher proportion of patients became negative on the RT-PCR test in the NONS group as compared to the placebo group. The time to virological cure was four days in the NONS group and eight days in the placebo group (p < 0.05).
- A significantly higher proportion of patients demonstrated a 2-point clinical status improvement on the WHO Progression Scale, the most clinically validated point system used in clinical trials, in the NONS group as compared to the placebo group in the high-risk group (p < 0.05).
- Data suggests role of NONS in prevention of COVID-19, which is consistent with a faster viral reduction.
- NONS was safe and well tolerated by all patients who were part of the clinical trial. There were no reports of moderate or severe or serious adverse events or death in the study. An independent Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) concluded that NONS was safe in COVID-19 patients.
“NONS destroys the virus, blocks entry into the nasal cavity and halts replication of the virus, which rapidly reduces viral load. This is important because viral load has been linked to infectivity, poor health outcomes and complications from Long COVID,” said Dr. Chris Miller, Chief Science Officer and co-founder of SaNOtize. “Amid evidence of waning efficacy for some vaccines and higher breakthrough rates, there is currently a lack of an antiviral therapy that is effective against COVID-19 and its variants that can be made widely and affordably available to the public. This is what makes NONS a critical weapon in ending the pandemic and preventing future outbreaks.”
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.
‘He is risking his life’: Russian tennis star shows what true courage looks like
Posted by BLAZETV STAFF | February 25, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/video/this-takes-true-courage-russian-tennis-player-shows-what-true-bravery-looks-like/
Russian tennis player Andrey Rublev wrote a truly courageous message on a TV camera moments after advancing to the final at the Dubai Championships on Friday. A video of Rublev writing “No War Please” on a TV camera just after beating Poland’s Hubert Hurkacz in their semifinal match has taken Twitter by storm.
“In these moments you realize that my match is not important. It’s not about my match, how it affects me. What’s happening is much more terrible,” Rublev said on Thursday.
“You realize how important it is to have peace in the world and to respect each other no matter what, to be united. We should take care of our earth and of each other. This is the most important thing.”
Outkick’s Clay Travis tweeted, “Given the threats a Russian athlete can face from its government, this is what speaking truth to power actually looks like. And this takes true courage.”
And the praise just kept coming. Here are a few samples:
A few folks on Twitter couldn’t help noting the contrast between Rublev’s action and those of a certain American athlete who claims to care about human rights.
Hillary Clinton takes shot at Trump, GOP over Russia — and even invokes treason clause in Constitution
Reported by CHRIS ENLOE | February 25, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/hillary-clinton-takes-shot-at-trump-gop-over-russia-and-even-invokes-treason-clause-in-constitution/
Hillary Clinton just cannot resist.
The twice-failed presidential candidate made reference to the Constitution’s treason clause on Friday while implicitly condemning former President Donald Trump and parts of the Republican Party that she alleged have emboldened Russia’s aggression.
During a radio interview this week, Trump described Russian President Vladimir Putin as “very savvy.” He also described Putin’s decision to declare the independence of two Ukrainian regions as “genius.” And regarding the “peacekeepers” — which were Russian soldiers — that Putin sent into those eastern Ukrainian regions, Trump said, “we could use that on our southern border.” Meanwhile, Russian-state media have reportedly used comments from former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Fox News host Tucker Carlson for their propaganda purposes.
Speaking on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Clinton referred to Trump’s comments and said that any American who parrots talking points worthy of being broadcast by Russian propaganda outlets must be called out.
“We have to also make sure that within our own country we are calling out those people who are giving aid and comfort to Vladimir Putin, who are talking about what a genius he is, what a smart move it is, who are unfortunately being broadcast by Russian media, not only inside Russia, but in Europe to demonstrate the division within our own country,” Clinton said.
Clinton’s comments implicitly invoked the Constitution’s “treason clause,” which is found in Article III, Section 3:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.
Hillary Clinton: What’s Left Of The GOP Must Stand Against Those Giving ‘Aid’ To Putin www.youtube.com
Later in the interview, Clinton described rhetoric from Trump and other Republican figureheads as “heartbreaking” and “dangerous,” and she repeated the accusation that they are giving “aid and comfort” to Putin.
“I think it’s time for what’s left of the Republican Party that has any common sense not just to say, ‘OK, go help defend Ukraine against Putin,’ but to stand against those people in politics and government, in the media and elsewhere in our own country who are literally giving aid and comfort to an enemy of freedom and democracy,” Clinton said.
Such rhetoric, Clinton claimed, emboldens not only Putin, but also Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“It can’t continue because it plays right into the ambitions of not just Putin, but also President Xi of China to undermine democracy, to literally divide and conquer the West without ever invading us, but by setting us against each other,” Clinton said.
Clinton attributed the development of the problem that she identified as happening because “starting with ascent of Trump, there has been, sadly, a total loss of spine and conscience of too many Republicans.”
“There is also another element. These people are naive in such a dangerous way,” Clinton continued. “I think the naiveté that we saw starting with Trump, but which has now been accelerated, is really hard to understand. But we have to deal with it, and we have to call it out.”
Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Window to the Soul
A.F. BRANCO | on February 25, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-window-to-the-soul/
Eyes being the window to the soul reveal Putin as an evil tyrant and Biden as a dithering idiot.
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.
Christian group calls on parents to pull kids out of private schools over LGBT activism
Reported By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter | Thursday, February 24, 2022
Read more at https://www.christianpost.com/news/private-school-curriculum-teaching-lgbt-gender-ideology-to-kids.html/
Christian groups are urging parents to remove their children from a group of private schools after video footage revealed an effort to teach pre-k students about LGBT ideology.
Breitbart News obtained video footage from a National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) workshop in 2020. NAIS describes itself as a “nonprofit membership association that provides services to more than 1,900 schools and associations of schools in the United States and abroad, including more than 1,600 independent private K-12 schools in the U.S.”
At the training session, which took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, speakers addressed how to “prepare your PK-8 Students for Their World” through “the lens of gender, identity, and sexuality education.”
NAIS lauded the workshop for enabling Belmont Day School, a private school in Belmont, Massachusetts, to share its “comprehensive, dynamic, responsive Health and Wellness curriculum with a developmentally appropriate PK-8 Gender, Identity, and Sexuality strand.”
One speaker who presented at the workshop discussed how “with the younger children starting in pre-k, we talk about their bodies, about the parts that they were born with, about penises and vaginas and whether that makes somebody a boy or a girl.” The speaker explained that students as young as pre-k are asked, “What do they feel like inside? Do they feel like a boy or a girl? What does their head say? Does (sic) their head and their heart and their body match up?”
As the woman spoke, a picture of the “Every” Body Tool appeared on the screen. The image on the left side of the screen featured a human body with icons representing the brain, heart and DNA. A key on the side of the screen had the phrase “gender identity” next to the brain icon, the phrase “sexual orientation” beside the heart icon and the word “sex” alongside the DNA icon. A star appears in the middle of the diagram to represent “gender expression,” which is implied to be a sum of an individual’s gender identity, sexual orientation and sex.
In a statement to The Christian Post, Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for education studies at the Family Research Council, explained that because “parents with children in private schools do not enjoy basic civil rights protections that are afforded in public institutions,” “their recourse is to remove their child from the school since groups like NAIS are training private school teachers and administration to promote LGBT materials even to very young students.”
“Parents of children in private schools often have a false sense of security about the intellectual safety of their children from sexualized materials we see promoted in public schools,” she added. “Whether they are teaching in public or private schools, teachers and administrators are produced by the same university system that’s obsessed with queer theory and critical race theory. The post-Obergefell world is fraught for parents seeking to protect children from sexualized content or instill a worldview based on traditional sexual ethics.”
The 2015 Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. Critics of the decision expressed concern that it would have negative implications for religious liberty and lead to schools promoting same-sex relationships as equally beneficial to children as the nuclear family.
“LGBT interest groups and advocates have significant influence in public education settings”, Kilgannon told CP. “Private institutions are the next step, to the degree some were not early adopters of sexualized identity trends in education. The HRC rating and scores for businesses can easily be applied to private schools.”
Kilgannon warned that “LGBT activists and advocates are ready to name and shame any organization that doesn’t go along with their demands for affirmation and applause, including private schools and the organizations that are part of the private educational infrastructure, like NAIS.”
The video footage of the NAIS conference reveals that the effort to expose young children to LGBT ideology continues throughout the elementary school years. Suggested reading material for first-grade students includes the book, What Makes a Baby, characterized by Amazon as a “twenty-first century children’s picture book about conception, gestation, and birth.”
Amazon’s summary of the book notes that the work “reflects the reality of our modern time by being inclusive of all kinds of kids, adults, and families, regardless of how many people were involved, their orientation, gender and other identity, or family composition.”
The summary also states that “the story doesn’t gender people or body parts, so most parents and families will find that it leaves room for them to educate their child without having to erase their own experience.”
Who Are You? The Kid’s Guide to Gender Identity is listed as recommended reading for second-graders. Second-grade students are taught about gender identity “in terms of your head and your heart and your body parts matching up” and asked, “Does that work for you?” and “What happens if it doesn’t?”
“The kids draw wonderful self-portraits … dealing with all aspects of their identity, including specifically, their gender identity,” the speaker explained. Under this curriculum, fifth-grade students are reintroduced to the “Every” Body tool and told that “hormones and chromosomes” are “something that you can only change with a whole lot of effort.”
The speaker suggested that fifth graders are told that “gender expression” is “something that you can change from day to day.”
Describing fifth grade as “our big year,” the speaker discussed the “Gender Unicorn,” where students are asked to check off their “gender identity” as either “female/woman/girl,” “male/man/boy” or “other genders.” Additionally, students have the option to check off their gender expression as “female,” “masculine” or “other,” their sex assigned at birth as “female,” “male” or “other/intersex” and indicate whether they were physically or emotionally attracted to “women,” “men” or “other gender(s).”
A Google drive account featuring “Workshop Resources” lists “Anything by Planned Parenthood, but especially their Sexuality Education Conference Series” as one of several “recommended resources” for NAIS schools looking to implement similar curriculum. Other recommended resources included the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educators Network, an LGBT advocacy group.
Five pages of recommended reading for students and parents included books promoting transgenderism, such as Jacob’s New Dress and My Princess Boy, and books that promote same-sex relationships with titles like A Tale of Two Daddies and A Tale of Two Mommies. The list also featured a book titled Who Are You?: The Kid’s Guide to Gender Identity.
Another document outlines scenarios for teachers to respond to, including one where “a male kindergarten student wants to wear a princess costume in the Halloween parade” but “his parents have communicated with the homeroom teachers that they do not under any circumstances want their son wearing a princess costume.”
In another scenario, a student comes to the teacher saying that his parents refuse to let him participate in a gay pride parade the school is spearheading and uses “homophobic and transphobic language as well as perpetuating LGBTQ+ stereotypes.”
In each scenario, teachers are encouraged to consider guiding questions asking, “Who does this impact?” “Who do we need to respond to?” “How does the approach change for different constituents?” “What would I like to do vs. what would I probably do?” “Can you use this framework with other scenarios in your school” and “How do you move or encourage others to move from an accomplice to ally?”
Breitbart’s reporting about the NAIS workshop comes as many American families increasingly turn to private schools and other alternative methods of education due to dissatisfaction with the sexually charged curriculum their children are exposed to in public schools. The inclusion of the books Gender Queer and Lawn Boy, which critics liken to child pornography and a promotion of pedophilia, in school libraries has caused particular concern.
Illinois’ recently enacted sex education guidelines teaching children in grades as low as kindergarten about gender identity have also resulted in parental protest. Outrage over public schools’ embrace of critical race theory, “woke” ideology and sexually explicit curriculum has led to the rise of advocacy organizations such as Parents Defending Education and the 1776 Project PAC, which is working to elect school board candidates opposed to such ideology.
Breitbart credited the video footage and screenshots included in its reporting to tips from “Undercover Mother,” a group that describes itself as a “Mom Collective with children in independent schools” seeking to protect their children from “the abuse being inflicted by the schools and the cartels of the regional and National Association of Independent Schools.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
Op-ed: Flynn Exposes Truth About Putin’s Real Plan – Says It’s Time to Pray
Commentary By Michael Flynn | February 24, 2022
Read more at https://www.westernjournal.com/breaking-flynn-exposes-truth-putins-real-plan-says-time-pray/
With the price of oil pushing above $100 per barrel, the U.S. stock market opening with heavy losses, more global economic challenges looming, the real potential for significant loss of life, and the international community in complete disarray with feeble attempts to condemn what was totally avoidable, we face the onset of another very grave and historic period of tension between competing ideologies and worse, the onset of WWIII.
This “invasion” was totally avoidable.
As one friend told me, President Joe Biden and his failed foreign policy team set the table and sent the invitation and Russian President Vladimir Putin came and spoiled the dinner party.
Clearly, there are fault lines on both sides, but for now, we must pray that those affected, without the ability to decide their fate, are able to survive this extraordinary period of world history unfolding (for many, unraveling) on the world stage. Civilians and military forces will be killed, wounded and displaced; those are the real consequences of war.
Pray that this conventional war is limited in scope, purpose and intent.
Yes, there were gross violations of previous agreements due to incompetence, arrogance and ignorance that got us to this point. Beyond this, what happens next is anyone’s guess, but Putin (and Xi — Taiwan?) just laid down a new world order marker.
That said, it is doubtful that the U.S. administration will change its failed foreign policy, and instead, it will make weak attempts to triple down on leveraging this extremely serious situation in Europe to continue to distract from problems here at home.
Given the shutting down of the Keystone pipeline and America’s energy independence while also enabling Russia and Germany (read: Europe) to reopen the Nordstream pipeline, one has to wonder about the discussions in the Oval Office that came to these conclusions.
This is the Biden administration: describing America as a systemically racist nation; appointing Marxists and other radical ideologues to positions of power; allowing millions to surge across our southern border; attempting to federalize our election systems and processes; implementing racist critical race theory in our schools, military and government; and all along, raising the national debt until it is closing in on $30 trillion — spending us toward extinction, all for left-wing causes.
Let us not forget the Afghanistan disaster, the myriad lies about COVID, a certain Biden-owned laptop, a complete refusal to investigate allegations of election irregularities … all while China gets a pass.
It is extremely difficult to trust this administration when they lie with a straight face to the American people daily.
Anyone who questions these rotten foreign and domestic policies is demonized as a racist. We see the unleashing of the federal government on citizens who are simply exercising their constitutional rights and the establishment media covers all this incompetence with a fake smile due to their own deep corruption.
Our president rarely entertains questions or takes responsibility for his tone deafness and failures. The White House ignored — even laughed at — Putin’s legitimate security concerns and ethnic unrest in the Ukraine.
We have yet to hear from the president of the United States an explanation of U.S. national security interests in the region.
Instead, we continue to demonize Russia — reminiscent of the fake Russia-collusion hysteria we now know was perpetrated against the Trump administration by elements of the Clinton campaign and Obama administration (among others).
President Putin calculated this strategic, historic and geographic play and made the decision to move.
And he did.
All that given, there will never be justification for this invasion or any other form of invasion. However, never forget that war results when diplomacy fails.
May God watch over and protect those in harm’s way and may God continue to bless and protect the United States of America.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn served as national security advisor to President Donald Trump. Headshot photo credit: Jewel Samad / AFP via Getty Images.
Daniel Horowitz Op-ed: The new Western fascism: Countries are gradually using jail exclusively for political opponents
Commentary by DANIEL HOROWITZ | February 23, 2022
Read more at https://www.conservativereview.com/horowitz-the-new-western-fascism-countries-are-gradually-using-jail-exclusively-for-political-opponents-2656778951.html/
For all the talk about Putin’s authoritarian grip over former Soviet states, we have our own authoritarian Putins now governing Western democracies and crushing all political dissent. Holding someone without bail for organizing a peaceful protest against the government sounds like something Putin would do, yet it is now happening in Canada and has already been happening here against those who did not engage in violence on Jan. 6. Meanwhile, these same Western leaders support de-incarceration for the most violent criminals, demonstrating that it’s not even about authoritarianism, but a two-tiered society built upon the ideals of fascism.
Last Thursday, Tamara Lich, one of the organizers of the trucker convoy who set up the original GoFundMe account, was arrested in Ottawa for simply opposing the Trudeau regime and organizing a peaceful protest. Not a single person from the hundreds of thousands of truckers acted violently, a few blocked roads, and Lich herself did nothing. She is being charged with “counselling to commit mischief,” which reeks of Iranian-style prosecution.
On Tuesday morning, Ontario judge Justice Julie Bourgeois denied Lich the opportunity to post any bail, even though she promised not to engage in more lawful protests and instead return to her home in Alberta. “I cannot be reassured that if I release you into the community that you will not reoffend,” Bourgeois said. “Your detention is necessary for the protection and safety of the public.”
Those who follow my running column on robbers and gun felons who get released without bail, and even some murderers who get released on low bail despite massive criminal records, can appreciate the rich irony. Lich might reoffend by committing an action that is not only legal but serves as the cornerstone value of dissent in a free and democratic society. If this standard were applied to BLM, there would literally be millions in jail today, and they often engaged in violence, not to mention more widespread blocking of roads.
Justice Bourgeois is a former liberal candidate for parliament and was endorsed by Trudeau in 2009. Thus, we are now at a point in Western (former) democracies when political prisoners cannot get a fair trial because the courts are completely co-opted by regime-supporting judges. Worse, Bourgeois once excused rising violent crime as “desperate people going through desperate times and using desperate measures.”
Hence, the very same judges and politicians who believe that political dissent is a dangerous crime also believe that career violent criminals need to be let out of jail. The same people who want to deny peaceful citizens the right to carry a gun seek to release every gun felon who has committed violence with a gun.
To that end, what is happening in Western countries is even worse than China or a return to pre-enlightenment Western governing values. In China, they wouldn’t tolerate murderers and carjackers. They will at least apply their harshness with equality – to an extent. What we are seeing in Canada and the U.S. is a form of postmodern Western-style fascism that elevates criminal behavior to the highest ideals of society while punishing the expression or utilization of basic human rights if they violate those ideals.
This is the plain definition of fascism. It doesn’t have to always be rooted in race. Merriam-Webster defines fascism as “a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.” This is what we are seeing in Western countries today. It’s not a matter of targeting any one race but creating a standard of national interests and announcing that anyone who doesn’t subscribe to those interests – even if they affect one’s body in the most intimate way – is a threat to the nation and needs to be segregated, discriminated against, persecuted, and suppressed.
It’s not about equal-opportunity authoritarianism, because it is directed solely at those who don’t fit the national standards. Thus, we are witnessing the worst influx of illegal immigration and domestic crime precisely during the time of the most heavy-handed authoritarianism against “some” citizens. At the same time that we have the most autocratic stay-at-home order of all time, we experienced the greatest ubiquitous mass gatherings in history through BLM protests and riots.
It’s easy to rest on our laurels and thank God we are living south of the 50th parallel, but we have already seen political dissidents held without bail for a year with no criminal record for very nebulous charges that are clearly directed at chilling political dissent, not deterring violent or even disruptive behavior. For example, Couy Griffin, a county commissioner in New Mexico and founder of Cowboys for Trump who certainly had no prior criminal record, was initially held without bail for several weeks, despite never having stepped foot in the Capitol or committed assault or vandalism. The unappointed magistrate judge kept him solely because of his political views and used that as pretext to show he is a flight risk.
“I don’t think that the defendant will follow my conditions if he believes I am part of this machine of the democratic process,” proclaimed magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui at a hearing on Feb. 1, 2021. She went on to note that his political views, because she disagrees with them, makes him eligible to be held without bail – something not done for many murderers with massive rap sheets. She said that believing the election was stolen was “no different than people not believing facts or science.” No wonder they now want to criminalize dissent from their illogical and unscientific “public health” ScIeNcE.
It is therefore clear that we already have Canada’s problem of the judicial system criminalizing political opposition and thought crimes. Yet this is occurring at a time when our judicial system has largely done away with pretrial holding even for violent repeat offenders. Here are just a few recent stories to consider when trying to process the breathtaking speed at which we have devolved into an authoritarian state … except for what actually needs deterrent from strong authority!
- James Tubbs, 26, who plead guilty to molesting a child at a Los Angeles Denny’s restaurant restroom, will serve no time in prison and will not have to register as a sex offender, thanks to the new rules put in place by prosecutor George Gascon. Tubbs, who now believes he is really a woman, is instead being held in a female juvenile facility, even though he is an adult male, because he was just shy of his 18th birthday when he committed the crime. Fox News recently released a tape of Tubbs bragging about beating the system. “I’m gonna plead out to it, plead guilty,” Tubbs says in one recording. “They’re gonna stick me on probation, and it’s gonna be dropped, it’s gonna be done, I won’t have to register, won’t have to do nothing.”
- There is a carjacking epidemic in almost every major city. Recently, Chicago police superintendent David Brown revealed that 60% of all incidents were perpetrated by juveniles and that the system offers no real consequences for them.
- Speaking of political crimes, how about attempting to assassinate a mayoral candidate? Well, in our fascist social “equity” system, it depends on the race and motive of the perpetrator. Earlier this month, BLM activist Quintez Brown was charged with attempted murder for stepping into the campaign headquarters of Louisville mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg and opening fire. Luckily, the bullets only grazed the candidate’s clothing and the shooter was stopped and apprehended. He came with extended magazines and clearly was coming as an assassin, but a judge let him out on $100,000 bail, which was posted by national BLM umbrella groups. “There is simply no defense for a would-be assassin to be released on bail, 60 hours after firing on his intended target,” Adam Edelen, the former chief of staff for former Democrat Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear, tweeted. Can you imagine if someone from the trucker movement had done this to a prominent pro-mandate politician?
- Bronx Supreme Court Justice Naita Semaj-Williams just allowed two teenagers charged with murder, manslaughter, robbery, gang assault, and other crimes to be released without posting bail. In a previous case earlier this month, Semaj-Williams walked back a $60,000 bond for a criminal charged with attempted murder and released him on his own recognizance.
- These situations are occurring even in Texas. In 2019, Treveon Tatum, 20, was charged with murder but released by a Houston judge on just $50,000 bond. Despite being arrested again the following April for felony aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, Tatum still did not have his bail revoked. Despite violating the terms of his bail multiple times, he was never re-incarcerated. Then, on Feb. 8, he was charged again with a new murder.
- While COVID is being used an excuse to jail business owners and political dissidents, the same virus is being used as pretext to release true public safety threats. Earlier this month, Garrett W. Caspino was cited twice by police for criminal trespassing while acting erratically in a residential neighborhood of Corvallis, Oregon. However, he wasn’t arrested “because of COVID-19 protocols.” But just an hour later, he allegedly broke into a home in broad daylight, pulled down his pants, and choked the female homeowner against the wall while showering. He was later chased out of the house by the victim’s boyfriend. Despite the seriousness of the charges and the clear likelihood he will “reoffend,” Caspino will still have an opportunity to post bail, albeit a high amount.
The raison d’etre of the existence of Western governments is plainly spelled out in the preamble of our Constitution – to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Yet we now have a government that ensures tyranny and promotes the curse of violent anarchy while perverting justice based on politics and identity. One could not possibly abrogate the underpinnings of our social contract in a more grotesque manner than what today’s global elites governing Western countries are doing. This is unsustainable and must change. It is our right – our duty – to demand a new government “to provide new Guards for their future security.” The same failed political strategies of the past do not speak to the magnitude of corruption in our government.
John Kerry’s response to Ukraine invasion: ‘I hope President Putin will help us to stay on track with respect to what we need to do for the climate’
Reported by CHRIS PANDOLFO | February 24, 2022
John Kerry cautioned Wednesday that Russia’s war on Ukraine will distract the international community from one of the Biden administration’s top national security priorities: climate change.
The former secretary of state and current U.S. special envoy for climate was discussing Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine during an interview on BBC Arabic when he said the war will have “massive emissions consequences” for the entire world.
“I’m very concerned about, I’m concerned about Ukraine because of the people of Ukraine and because of the principles that are at risk, in terms of international law and trying to change boundaries of international law by force. I thought we lived in a world that had said no to that kind of activity. And I hope diplomacy will win,” Kerry said.
“But massive emissions consequences to the war but equally importantly, you’re going to lose people’s focus, you’re going to lose big country attention because they will be diverted and I think it could have a damaging impact,” he continued. “So, you know hopefully President Putin would realize that in the Northern part of his country, they used to live on 66% of the nation that was over frozen land.”
John Kerry cautioned Wednesday that Russia’s war on Ukraine will distract the international community from one of the Biden administration’s top national security priorities: climate change.
“Now it’s thawing, and his infrastructure is at risk. And the people of Russia are at risk,” he added. “And so, I hope President Putin will help us to stay on track with respect to what we need to do for the climate.”
Kerry’s comments echo comments he made in an interview Sunday, when he told GZERO Media’s Ian Bremmer that a Russian invasion of Ukraine will have a “monumental impact on the ability and willingness of people to do what’s necessary” to fight climate change.
“Ukraine, one way or the other — we’re going to resolve it, ultimately, over X number of years. But the climate crisis remains existential, just as it was before the Ukraine crisis came up,” Kerry said, before the invasion began.
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its sovereign neighbor Ukraine Thursday with ground, air, and naval forces in the largest military campaign by one state against another in Europe since World War II. Ukrainian cities have been attacked with shelling and airstrikes. Civilians have either attempted to flee or made makeshift bomb shelters in subway systems. Reports indicate there are hundreds of casualties, although the exact numbers of injured or dead remain unknown in this chaotic, ongoing war. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed Thursday that the Russian army destroyed 74 Ukrainian military facilities, including 11 airbases, just hours after launching the invasion. Ukraine said Thursday morning that at least 40 soldiers and 10 civilians had been killed in the conflict.
In the context of widespread suffering in Ukraine caused by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war, Republican lawmakers blasted Kerry’s statements about climate change.
“Climate change religious zealot John Kerry is worried that the first major ground war in Europe in 80 years & Putin’s threat of nuclear consequences is getting more attention than his climate agenda,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) tweeted.
“As Sec. of State, John Kerry did nothing to stop the invasion of Crimea, all for an unenforceable agreement to fight the air. Now that his chickens came home to roost, he’s more worried about emissions from war & distraction from the climate than the slaughter in Ukraine,” said Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.).
“Putin is killing innocent Ukrainians and John Kerry is asking him to stay ‘on track’ for the climate? Despicable,” Rep. August Pfluger (R-Fla.) remarked. “Russian energy is some of the worst for the environment. The Biden Admin climate religion has made our world less safe.”
Obama’s White House doc says ‘incoherent,’ ‘confused’ Biden not fit for president during historic Russia-Ukraine war crisis
Reported by SARAH TAYLOR | February 24, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/obamas-white-house-doc-says-incoherent-confused-biden-not-fit-for-president-during-historic-russia-ukraine-war-crisis/
Former White House doctor Ronny Jackson, who served in both the Obama and Trump administrations as well as that of former President George W. Bush, said that President Joe Biden is “not fit to be our president right now” amid the escalating war crisis in Europe.
Jackson, now a Republican U.S. representative from Texas, said during a Wednesday interview with Fox News Digital that Biden’s deteriorating mental state is making the United States look weak in a time of what some people say could result in global war.
“The whole country is seeing his mental cognitive issues on display for over a year now, and there’s really no question in most people’s minds that there’s something going on with him, that he’s not cognitively the same as he used to be and, in my mind, not fit to be our president right now,” Jackson said. “Every time he gets up and talks to the American people, it’s not just the American people that are watching him speak, it’s the whole world, and that’s part of what the problem is here.”
Jackson added, “He looks tired, he looks weak, he looks confused, he’s incoherent, and it sends a message of weakness all over the world, and they’re seizing up on that.”
Jackson — who is now calling for the president to undergo cognitive testing — pointed out that his recurring “gaffes” and “missteps,” which were formerly chalked up to Biden’s sometimes bumbling personality, are increasing in both intensity and frequency and warned that something more nefarious might be afoot beyond just stumbles and mumbles.
“He’s got 40 years of tape, you can go back and look at this man, so it’s not like we don’t have anything to compare it to,” Jackson said. “You can go back and look, he’s always made gaffes, he’s always made missteps, but never like this. This is something different. These aren’t gaffes. … This is something much more serious.”
White House deputy press secretary, Andrew Bates, told Fox News Digital that Jackson’s remarks were nothing but politics.
“I honestly don’t care about Ronny Jackson’s ‘Look at me’ routine,” Bates told the outlet via email. “But if y’all get any mail from Nick Riviera please don’t be a stranger.”
Bates in his head-scratching statement was apparently referring to “Simpsons” character Dr. Nick Rivera — or Dr. Nick — who the outlet described as a “quack medical doctor with shady credentials.”
Stop Talking About Ukraine, Republicans!
Ann Coulter | Posted: Feb 23, 2022
Read more at https://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2022/02/23/stop-talking-about-ukraine-republicans—p–n2603708/
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, and WhatDidYouSay.org.
Source: AP Photo/Andriy Dubchak
Amid the media’s 24/7 UKRAINE UPDATES, perhaps some enterprising journalist could write an article explaining how our esteem for that country’s borders benefits a single American — other than President Joe Biden.
Our own border has become a transmission belt for the third world, bringing in rapists, murderers, future welfare recipients and left-wing activists. The Democratic Party’s brilliant policy of defunding the police and emptying the prisons has, oddly enough, led to a breathtaking surge in violent crime. Our schools have been taken over by lunatics who teach white kids that they are evil — and probably transsexual. Inflation has hit a 40-year high.
U.S. media: Whither Ukraine?
Midterms must be coming!
In 2020, Democratic data scientist David Shor advised his party: “Talk about the issues [voters] are with us on, and try really hard not to talk about the issues where we disagree. Which, in practice, means not talking about immigration.” (Emphasis mine.) After the election, he said that the main way the media’s COVID hysteria hurt Donald Trump was by preventing anyone from “talking about Hunter Biden or immigration.”
Evidently, the only issue where voters don’t vehemently disagree with Democrats this year is the precise border of a country they’d never given a moment’s thought to until five minutes ago.
What Republicans should be doing: talking about the issues Democrats are trying to avoid.
What Republicans are doing: talking about Ukraine.
Whenever you see any media talking about Ukraine, your Pavlovian response should be, Oh, I see. They don’t want me to think about immigration or crime.
It’s not only the Democrats drawing benefits from the media’s sudden Ukraine obsession. There’s also the military-industrial complex.
President Dwight Eisenhower led Allied troops in World War II, but in his farewell address from the White House, he warned of the “unwarranted influence” on the government by “the military-industrial complex.” In the 60 years since, these bloodsuckers have been bleeding our country dry, solely to make themselves rich.
As Americans discovered to their dismay when the pandemic hit, we can’t make our own masks, pharmaceuticals or aspirin. We can’t make our own computer chips, razors, bicycles, toys, sneakers, Levi’s jeans and on and on and on. But boy, do we make weapons! In our ruling class’s ideal country, there will be nothing but defense contractors, Black Lives Matter activists and Latin American gardeners.
Just five companies receive the lion’s share of taxpayer money for “defense” weaponry. In 2020, the U.S taxpayer doled out $75 billion to Lockheed Martin, $28 billion to Raytheon, $22 billion to General Dynamics, $22 billion to Boeing and $20 billion to Northrop Grumman. Since 2001, these five companies alone have cost the taxpayer $2.1 trillion.
To put this in perspective, the annual budget of the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development is a little more than $50 billion. (And we should zero-out that whole budget, too.) During the COVID pandemic, when the government ordered people not to work, the entire supplemental food budget was about $70 billion.
Ronald Reagan’s victory in the Cold War should have been a sad day at Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing. Instead, it was the beginning of endless paydays. Today, the American taxpayer spends more on “defense” than during the Reagan buildup that crushed the USSR; more than during the Vietnam War, more even than the War on Terror after 9/11.
Worse, we’ve added a “think-tank industrial complex” — an army of useless, camera-ready blowhards to explain why our incessant meddling around the globe is always in America’s “vital national security interest.”
Why does NATO still exist? This alliance was the West’s response to Soviet aggression during the Cold War. Once the USSR collapsed (thanks to Reagan) and the Warsaw Pact disbanded, that should have been the end of it. Instead, we keep adding countries to the alliance — with a requirement of admission being that they buy their weapons from American defense contractors.
Everyone acknowledges that Vladimir Putin’s main concern is that Ukraine will be asked to join NATO. How about, as a compromise, the U.S. will pull out of NATO? (Another of Trump’s broken promises.)
Nope! Can’t shut down this utterly anachronistic organization, requiring America to defend the likes of Latvia, should some other pipsqueak nation violate its precious borders. (Why isn’t Latvia down in Texas right now, defending our borders?)
Far from unwinding NATO, our country’s leaders are constantly trying to expand it, thus increasing the odds that Americans will be forced to go to war over some other country’s sacred sovereignty. Pointless wars are the lifeblood of defense contractors! We pay the price and defense contractors get the money.
(Ike should be on Mount Rushmore for his “military-industrial complex” speech.)
This year, the worshipful reverence for Ukraine’s borders has the added bonus of blocking Americans from thinking about immigration and crime. Republicans ought to be talking their heads off about the unprecedented crisis at our border, Afghan “refugees” raping little kids in our country, illegal aliens hauling meth and fentanyl into our country, rampant shoplifting, carjacking and assaults destroying neighborhoods in our country.
Luckily, the GOP is too smart to fall for the media’s latest subject-changer.
Oh, wait —
@newtgingrich: “The Biden Administration talks and Putin acts. This is such a clear replay of Chamberlain trying to deal with Hitler that it is more than a little frightening. Putin is pushing day by day and has no fear of NATO because he has no fear of the United States or its President.”
GOP 2022 Contract With America: “Putin’s like Hitler.”
Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Dirty Hairy-Legs
A.F. BRANCO | on February 24, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-dirty-hairy-legs/
Putin doesn’t look like he’s quaking in his boots like Biden predicted as Russia invades Ukraine.
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.
Why Tech Totalitarianism Threatens To Turn America into Canada or China Unless We Stop It
REPORTED BY: KARA FREDERICK | FEBRUARY 23, 2022
Portions of this article were adapted from the author’s recently published paper at The Heritage Foundation, “Combating Big Tech’s Totalitarianism: A Road Map.”
Last week, our Canadian neighbors mobilized their national security apparatus against working-class citizens protesting government overreach. The Biden administration is no doubt taking notes. In fact, the contours of a similar strategy are already emerging in the United States. First, the FBI reportedly tagged parents opposed to critical race theory with a “terrorism” label under the direction of Biden’s Department of Justice. Then, the DOJ revealed plans to stand up a domestic terror unit fixated on “anti-government or anti-authority” ideologies. Now, a new Department of Homeland Security terrorism bulletin classifies Americans as potential violent extremists if they question the administration’s Covid-19 policies or election integrity narrative by spreading “mis- dis- and mal-information” on social media. This should send a chill up Americans’ spines.
The willingness of the U.S. government to classify movements to the right of leftist ideology as “domestic extremism” lays the groundwork for the purging of these citizens from digital platforms — and all of digital life. We are entering a reality in which tech companies target average conservative organizations, users, and speech as part of this push. Just after Donald Trump’s election in 2016, Google co-founder Sergey Brin referred to Trump voters as “extremists” and suggested using Google’s tech incubator, Jigsaw, to shape their opinions. In July 2021, Facebook began testing “extremism” warnings on users who engaged with popular, mainstream conservative accounts. This problem is a small outgrowth of a broader one shaping the new digital atmosphere: the efforts of companies such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and TikTok to skew the political and cultural environment of this nation and its inheritors.
These corporations interfere in our elections, actively undermine our First Amendment freedoms by silencing speech they don’t like, work together to disadvantage or destroy existing or potential competitors, and partner with government actors to intimidate, surveil, and silence Americans. They’re even purposefully poisoning the next generation, targeting American youth with highly addictive content that has been shown to do legitimate harm.
Governments are not the only actors capable of encroaching on Americans’ individual liberties. Private, monopolistic corporations should be held accountable if they violate these liberties to the degree Big Tech has in the past two years alone. Efforts to rein them in should reflect an imperative to protect Americans’ natural rights against abuses flowing from the consolidation of power — whether by the government, private corporations, or a combination of the two. Big Tech’s willingness to shut off direct access to digital information, their demonstrated pattern of information manipulation, and their effect on America’s culture of free speech have decisive political and cultural ramifications.
Censorship against viewpoints to the right of center runs across platforms and is pervasive and accelerating. The Media Research Center found in September 2021 that Twitter and Facebook censor Republican members of Congress at a rate of 53-to-1 compared to Democrat lawmakers. By its own admission, Facebook created two internal tools in the aftermath of Trump’s 2016 victory that suppressed “very conservative” media reach on its platform. Google stifled conservative-leaning outlets such as The Daily Caller, Breitbart, and this publication during the 2020 election season, with Breitbart’s Google search visibility reportedly shrinking by 99 percent compared to the 2016 election cycle. Finally, at least 17 digital platforms banned Trump or affiliated accounts within a two-week span in early January 2021 — all while Chinese Communist Party, Iranian, and Taliban spokesmen enjoy a voice on these American-owned platforms.
To contest this imbalance, conservatives attempted to take matters into their own hands and “build their own” digital platform. Yet when such a company, Parler, developed an app that reached the top of the Apple store in the early days of January 2021, Apple, Google, and Amazon Web Services acted within approximately 48 hrs of each other to vanquish it. Parler has yet to recover a fraction of the users it gained during January 2021. The “build your own” argument wilted in the face of concerted opposition by these entrenched juggernauts.
Further, the distinction between the coercive power of the government and that of a private company is negated when they work hand-in-glove to achieve the government’s ends. Jen Psaki admitted from the White House podium in July that the government was “flagging problematic posts” for Facebook to censor. Within a month, the accounts she and the surgeon general surfaced were removed from Facebook. And that’s just what the two Biden officials admitted out loud. In fact, Psaki again took to the podium in February 2022 to declare that media app Spotify could do more regarding comedian Joe Rogan, intimating the private company should expand its censorship of the podcasting star for platforming views that buck the administration’s Covid narrative.
Less than a month earlier, Biden had called on tech companies to police Covid-related speech. Even at the state level, at least one lawsuit alleges that the Office of the Secretary of State for California worked directly with Twitter to flag and scrutinize a conservative commentator over his election skepticism, ultimately resulting in his suspension in February 2021.
Suppression of conservative speech as a response to political pressure is not limited to social media alone. Online payment processors and fundraising platforms, email delivery services, and web hosting services are all taking their cues from and following in Big Tech’s footsteps. What happens in the future when your individual environmental, social, and governance score or level of climate change compliance is unsatisfactory for every online banking service intent on staying in the good graces of the government? In effect, our country is sleepwalking into a CCP-style social credit system.
This type of control also tears at the cultural underpinnings of our society. The disposition toward freedom of expression is central to the American way of life. Supporting an unpopular opinion in the digital public square or donating to political causes should not mean risking your livelihood. These practices erode our culture of free speech, chill open discourse, and engender self-censorship. In a more concrete sense, Big Tech’s practices result in measurable, destructive effects on the next generation of young citizens. Author Abigail Shrier documents social media’s influence on social contagions of the moment, stating that these sites offer an “endless supply of mentors” to fan the flames of gender dissatisfaction among teen girls.
According to Facebook’s own research, 6 percent of teen Instagram users who reported suicidal thoughts traced their emergence directly to Instagram. Teenage girls in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia are likely developing verbal and physical tics by watching influencers on TikTok who exhibit the same habits, in addition to being fed eating-disorder videos, according to The Wall Street Journal. (As of early 2021, 25 percent of TikTok users in America were teenagers or younger.)
Big Tech companies have proven themselves irresponsible stewards of their government-enhanced power. A recalibration of their relationship to the American people is warranted. The answer exists in solutions that promote human flourishing and arrest the infringement of God-given rights by private entities, such as freedom of speech. American policymakers and representatives should take on Big Tech as uniquely deleterious to a healthy body politic and invest in a diversity of tactics to meet the moment. The aggregate effect of these measures should be far more scrutiny, pressure, and oversight over Big Tech companies.
A comprehensive agenda to end Big Tech’s undue influence over Americans’ daily lives and subversion of their rights is necessary. Measures should confront legitimate anti-competitive behavior by these global oligopolies by enforcing antitrust laws and reforming them where necessary. Lawmakers must also ensure that the government does not continue to use tech companies as their agents to chill speech. The deployment of Big Tech’s ad-tech models — the heart of what allows these companies to manipulate and exploit the data of Americans — merits particular congressional scrutiny.
Additionally, Big Tech executives should be held civilly liable for legitimate instances of fraud and breach of contract, just as GoFundMe’s decision to refund the Freedom Convoy donations instead of dispensing them to charities of their choice was likely influenced by threats of a fraud investigation.
Transparency in content moderation practices, algorithmic impacts, and data use should be non-negotiable for these companies. Americans have a right to know how their data is collected, stored, and shared in plain English. Data privacy and a national data protection framework are also critical to righting Big Tech’s wrongs.
In tandem, Americans should be given new ways to fight back when their rights are infringed upon, as well as obtain prompt and meaningful recourse from Big Tech companies. All companies and tech founders should institute expanded user control mechanisms and design privacy-preserving technologies from the outset in their products.
And finally, these tech companies should no longer be permitted to work directly with our adversaries such as the Chinese Communist Party.
Sovereign citizens of the United States do not exist solely to serve the economy or maximize gross domestic product. Despite their success in the stock market, Big Tech companies are actively eroding citizens’ ability to maintain a self-governing republic. Absent drastic measures to arrest the progress of this march toward totalitarianism with a tech face, we risk the welfare of a nation. It must end here.
Kara Frederick is a Research Fellow in the Center for Technology Policy at The Heritage Foundation. Her research focuses on Big Tech and emerging technology policy. She helped create and lead Facebook’s Global Security Counterterrorism Analysis Program and was the team lead for Facebook Headquarters’ Regional Intelligence Team. Prior to Facebook, she was a Senior Intelligence Analyst for a U.S. Naval Special Warfare Command and spent six years as a counterterrorism analyst at the Department of Defense.
Leftists Want To Control Your Money So They Can Control You
REPORTED BY: KYLE SAMMIN | FEBRUARY 23, 2022
Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/23/leftists-want-to-control-your-money-so-they-can-control-you/
Last week, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the suspension of Canadians’ rights last week in his invocation of the Emergencies Act to stop the Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa and elsewhere. Among the restrictions announced are greater controls over the online crowdfunding sites that help to fund the protesters and attempts to control the flow of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. According to news reports, “credit card processors and fund-raising services will be required to report any blockade-related campaigns to Canada’s anti-money laundering agency.” Canadian banks quickly fell in line with the decrees, with Toronto-Dominion Bank freezing two personal bank accounts containing C$1.4 million ($1.1 million) they said was intended to support the truckers.
It bears a striking resemblance to the Biden administration’s recent efforts to intensely monitor what goes in and out of Americans’ bank accounts. The president’s expected announcement this week of an executive order to explore greater regulation of cryptocurrency is likewise an attempt to stick the state’s nose ever deeper into the average citizen’s business.
You Don’t Control Your Money Like You Used To
We’ve grown used to the idea that the government has a monopoly on money. Coining money is one of those powers of the state that most people never consider, like building roads or controlling national borders. Our money has dead presidents on it — it’s plainly a government operation. Where else would money come from, right?
But before the rise of electronic money transfers — the electronic bill-pay, direct deposit, and credit and debit card purchases we make every day now — whether the dollar bill in your wallet was issued by a bank (as in the early days of the republic) or by the Federal Reserve (as they are now) did not much matter. It was yours. No one knew what you spent it on unless you chose to tell them. That meant greater privacy, both from your neighbors and from your government. But it also entailed risk. Cash could be stolen, lost, or destroyed, and there was no way to get it back. And it was cumbersome, especially as inflation ate away at the value of a dollar. Could you bring cash for a down payment on a house? Sure. It still happens. But hauling a suitcase full of cash invites the scrutiny of thieves and the state — even when it’s completely legal.
The convenience of electronic money has been clear for decades now, but the dark side is showing itself this year like never before. All of the convenience of moving money around effortlessly comes at the cost of losing control over it.
How Goverment Uses Control of Your Money to Control You
These digital transfers feel, to most of us, like magic. A volley of ones and zeros flies through the cybernetic ether and — poof! — your electric bill is paid. But in truth, the data is routed through banks, and there are fewer of them all the time. Those remaining, many-times-merged financial giants that handle our affairs are, for all their clout and power, susceptible to government pressure.
We have seen it already when the Obama administration leaned on banks to refuse to deal with people involved in marijuana or the sex trade, even where those businesses were legal at the local level. No federal law gave them this power: the threat was enough. And where people keep money in cash, the government often finds a way to take it without even bothering to charge the owners with a crime.
Trudeau’s emergency measures take advantage of these pressure points and lean on banks to choke off the complete flow of money to and from those he deems enemies of the state. No charges, no trial, just shutting it down. Now Trudeau’s government wants to make these “temporary” measures permanent. The slippery slope is usually not so steep, but these are strange times.
Governments have always used the word “emergency” to do what they want and to trample the liberties of the dissenting minority. Control over our money makes that easier than ever. Even the more self-sufficient among us engage in trade and unless you choose to live like a hermit, money is a part of that.
How Crypto Challenges the Government Monopoly on Money
Governments understand that alternatives to state-issued money, like cryptocurrency, are a threat to that hegemony. Trudeau and Biden demonstrate that in their recent efforts to control Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. But the beauty of these new systems is that they are made, purposely, to be beyond the control of any person or government.
When Bitcoin launched more than a decade ago, most of us (myself included) barely understood what it was or how it worked. Fake money for dark web mischief, I figured, an eventual failure at best, a scam at worst. Yet here we are in 2022, where government-issued money is eroded by inflation and controlled by statist decrees. They leave peaceful opponents with a choice between the old (gold) or the new (crypto). And crypto is a heck of a lot easier to carry around.
In deciding an earlier banking law question in McCulloch v. Maryland in 1819, Chief Justice John Marshall said that “the power to tax involves the power to destroy.” Two centuries on, we could apply a modern twist: the power to regulate involves the power to control.
Cryptocurrency was just a passing fad until government overreach made it a necessity. Decades of deficit spending have inflated the currency and decades of creeping statism have given the government massive power over how money is used. The government’s monopoly on money has failed and, like it or not, cryptocurrency is at least part of the answer.
Kyle Sammin is a senior contributor to The Federalist, the senior editor of the Philadelphia Weekly, and the co-host of the Conservative Minds podcast podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @KyleSammin.
Georgia SOS Brad Raffensperger Secretly Hired Salesforce.com to Manage Voter Rolls on the Cloud – Lawmakers Must Speak Out and Resist This Dangerous Move!
Reported By Jim Hoft, Founder | Published February 23, 2022
In a no-bid contract, Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced the outsourcing of Georgia’s Voter Registration System to Salesforce.com. The implementation is to be managed by the MTX Group. The new system is called the Georgia Registered Voter Information System (GRVIS). It sits on Salesforce servers which happen to be cloud services provided by AWS (Amazon/Bezos). Salesforce is a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) vendor that provides online software as a subscription service (SaaS). It allows companies to manage and track their customers, sales leads, and customer support tickets. The users of this service range from car dealerships to clothing manufacturers.
Salesforce has helped only Democrat operatives like Democracy Works to track and register voters, then claim its “non-partisan”. MTX Group has not been in any election-type business. Both groups are now responsible for replacing ElectioNet, Georgia’s current voter registration system.
The election integrity group VoterGA provided a press release on this bizarre partnership. In their live press conference last week, VoterGA, its co-founder Garland Favorito, and its volunteer investigators provided stunning details on Salesforce, CEO Marc Benioff, and MTX. This was a no-bid contract, with no requests for proposals, and no selection criteria. Benioff is a known liberal activist and opponent of conservatism and Republicans. He is on the Board of Trustees for the WEF (World Economic Forum) founded by Klaus Schwab, which has an agenda provided by George Soros. Salesforce.com is also involved with the “New Georgia Project” and its founder Stacy Abrams.
According to SOS Raffensperger: “County and local elections officials around the state have already been introduced to the new system and will be trained on it in the coming weeks and months”. The public image alone should prevent any rational SOS from partnering with Benioff or Salesforce. Among their numerous political statements, Salesforce and Benioff publicly disparaged Georgia’s new election integrity laws SB202 and HB301.
Knowing all this, Raffensperger still partnered with them. Garland Favorito of VoterGA said: “This makes no technical sense, and it makes no business sense. So, then you have to start asking, what sense does it make. The only thing I can think that’s left is that the Georgia Secretary of State has been compromised…..It’s time for the Governor and Attorney General to step up. It’s time for the legislature to ban this”.
According to VoterGA: MTX is a four-year-old India-based company, with no election experience. Their employee list shows one and only one employee in Georgia. After obtaining a no-bid contract in Texas to develop a contract tracing system, workers were found to have used their own personal computers and Email addresses on the project. That raised privacy concerns about data security and the project was criticized by a legislator for having “one fumble after another.”
Also disclosed during the press conference was a 2020 class-action lawsuit by Salesforce customers. Malware had infected Salesforce.com and allowed a breach of their users’ customer data, including credit card information. When Salesforce discovered the was scraped from their system, they did not notify any customers. The data was later found for sale on the dark web.
During the VoterGA press conference, one individual stated: “I’ve read countless studies on cloud computing, either the Amazon platform or countless others, that it’s extraordinarily easy to hack. Anyone with a Sys Admin password or login can get into anybody else’s data that is on the shared server. Is this a ploy by the GA Secretary of State to allow easy access to manipulate voter files? “
Georgia election employees will never know exactly where the voter registration data resides. Salesforce.com might disclose to certain GA officials a city, possibly someplace in California. But every piece of information must be accessed online. Georgia election officials will not be able to walk up to the voter registration server and make a physical inspection, replace a hard drive, and so on. Only those employed by AWS will have this type of access. These AWS people will most certainly not be residents of Georgia, or employees of the Georgia elections department.
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.
Texas attorney general calls trans surgeries, puberty blockers ‘child abuse’ in formal opinion
By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor | Tuesday, February 22, 2022
Read more at https://www.christianpost.com/news/texas-ag-says-puberty-blockers-for-trans-kids-child-abuse.html/
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has released a formal opinion concluding that performing certain gender reassignment procedures on children constitutes child abuse under state law. In Opinion No. KP-0401, released last Friday, Paxton said that certain sex-change procedures and treatments “can legally constitute child abuse under several provisions of chapter 261 of the Texas Family Code.” Such procedures and treatments include castration, the removal of healthy body parts as well as the prescription of puberty-blocking drugs among others.
“Beyond the obvious harm of permanently sterilizing a child, these procedures and treatments can cause side effects and harms beyond permanent infertility,” the opinion states.
“The medical evidence does not demonstrate that children and adolescents benefit from engaging in these irreversible sterilization procedures.”
Paxton argued that such invasive gender reassignment procedures, like removing private parts, “would deprive the child of the fundamental right to procreate, which supports a finding of child abuse under the Family Code.”
“Because children are legally incompetent to consent to sterilization, procedures and treatments that result in a child’s sterilization are unauthorized and infringe on the child’s fundamental right to procreate,” the opinion continued.
“The lack of authority of a minor to consent to an irreversible sterilization procedure is consistent with other law. The federal Medicaid program does not allow for parental consent, has established a minimum age of 21 for consent to sterilization procedures, and imposes detailed requirements for obtaining that consent.”
In a statement Monday, Paxton said that there was “no doubt that these procedures are ‘abuse’ under Texas law, and thus must be halted.”
“The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) has a responsibility to act accordingly. I’ll do everything I can to protect against those who take advantage of and harm young Texans,” he added.
Last August, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services Commissioner Jamie Masters published a letter asserting that “genital mutilation of a child through reassignment surgery is child abuse, subject to all rules and procedures pertaining to child abuse.”
Masters’ letter came after Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott requested that the agency “issue a determination of whether genital mutilation of a child for purposes of gender transitioning through reassignment surgery constitutes child abuse.”
Last December, Paxton’s office announced an investigation into Endo Pharmaceuticals and AbbVie Inc. under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act due to the promotion of medications as puberty blockers. The Food and Drug Administration has not approved the use of puberty-blocking drugs for the sake of gender transition but has approved such medication for children who start puberty at a very young age. Some medical organizations, however, contend that puberty blockers and other gender transition procedures for minors can be beneficial to children suffering from gender dysphoria.
The American Medical Association, for example, released an open letter last April arguing that state governments should not prohibit gender reassignment procedures for youth.
“Such decisions must be sensitive to the child’s clinical situation, nurture the child’s short and long-term development, and balance the need to preserve the child’s opportunity to make important life choices autonomously in the future,” stated the AMA in a letter.
“We believe it is inappropriate and harmful for any state to legislatively dictate that certain transition-related services are never appropriate and limit the range of options physicians and families may consider when making decisions for pediatric patients.”
According to the Mayo Clinic, the benefits of puberty-blocking medicines for gender dysphoria “might” include reducing depression among youths and preventing the need for future surgery. Nevertheless, the clinic warns that taking puberty blockers remains a “big step” that can have a long-term impact on bodily growth, bone density and fertility.
“In addition, delaying puberty beyond one’s peers can be stressful,” the Mayo Clinic explained. “Your child might experience lower self-esteem.”
The conservative American College of Pediatricians, an association of physicians and healthcare professionals “dedicated to the health and well-being of children,” has long voiced its opposition to using puberty-blocking drugs on children with gender dysphoria.
“There is not a single long-term study to demonstrate the safety or efficacy of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for transgender-believing youth,” the association says in an online statement. “This means that youth transition is experimental, and therefore, parents cannot provide informed consent, nor can minors provide assent for these interventions. Moreover, the best long-term evidence we have among adults shows that medical intervention fails to reduce suicide.”
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Mike Rowe rails on Canadian officials for turning on truckers: They went from ‘hero to villain’ in the ‘course of 2 weeks’
Reported by PHIL SHIVER | February 22, 2022
Read more at https://www.conservativereview.com/mike-rowe-rails-on-canadian-officials-for-turning-on-truckers-they-went-from-hero-to-villain-in-the-course-of-2-weeks-2656771237.html/
Mike Rowe on Tuesday criticized Canadian government officials for their response to Freedom Convoy truckers amid a national protest over COVID-19 vaccine mandates. For weeks, thousands of demonstrators have camped in Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, and blocked border crossings with the U.S. in protest of the mandate and other coronavirus restrictions placed on truckers crossing the border.
In response to what the Canadian government deemed an “unlawful assembly,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, a measure that grants authorities sweeping power to restrict travel, disperse crowds, arrest demonstrators, and freeze their bank accounts, among other actions considered necessary to stop assembly. Over the weekend, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson even suggested selling off dozens of vehicles seized during the Freedom Convoy protests to cover the city’s costs incurred during the demonstrations.
During an interview with BlazeTV host Glenn Beck on Tuesday, Rowe pointed out how quickly the situation has changed now that some truckers find themselves on the bad end of state directives. Truckers, once considered essential to the economy during the pandemic, have in short order become enemies of the state, the “Dirty Jobs” star suggested.
“You know what strikes me about all of this?” Rowe asked, adding, “And maybe this is somewhat of a silver lining [because] I kind of feel like we’re about to close the loop.”
“When this started, truckers were right on the leading edge of heroes. They were the very definition of essentiality,” he said. “[But] in the course of two weeks, they literally went from hero to villain.”
That’s how fast things can change in today’s chaotic socio-political climate.
Beck noted that protesters have yet to be convicted of crimes or even appear in court. Nevertheless, the government is floating an auctioning off of property. The Canadian government responded quickly and harshly to continued protests in Ottawa over the weekend.
Police descended on the crowds, arresting at least 191 protesters and towing at least 76 vehicles since Friday. In one scene caught on video, police are seen charging on horseback into a crowd of demonstrators and knocking down at least two people, including an elderly woman on a mobility scooter.
One trucker recounted to Fox News host Tucker Carlson the moment that police repeatedly struck him while he was on the ground, complying to orders.
“They drag me in, they lie me down on my belly, and I don’t — I don’t recall how many were on top of me … I felt like I was beaten, but I took it like a man,” the trucker recalled.
“They broke my body a little bit, but not my spirit,” he added.
‘Dangerous by design’ metaverse apps allow children to access immersive digital sex clubs
Reported by SAMUEL MANGOLD-LENETT | February 23, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/metaverse-apps-children-immersive-digital-sex-clubs/
A researcher who went undercover in the metaverse as a 13-year-old girl witnessed grooming, graphic sexual material, and threats of rape. The researcher, the BBC reported, used an app with a minimum age rating of 13 and visited virtual reality rooms where other users’ avatars were simulating explicit acts. The researcher, whose online presence depicted that of a 13-year-old girl, was shown sex toys and condoms and approached by several adult men. One man told the researcher that in the metaverse, users’ avatars can “get naked and do unspeakable things.” Other users approached the researcher while in the metaverse and discussed “erotic role-play.”
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, a British charity dedicated to the welfare of Great Britain’s children, warned that some of the apps in the metaverse are “dangerous by design” as there is very little content moderation in the metaverse.
For instance, the app used by the researcher to access the metaverse, VRChat, allows its users to access any number of immersive chatrooms. Some of these rooms are as innocuous as digital McDonald’s, while others allow users to watch and participate in pole dancing or even attend digitally immersive strip clubs.
Mr. Burrows of the NSPCC said, “It’s children being exposed to entirely inappropriate, really incredibly harmful experiences. This is a product that is dangerous by design, because of oversight and neglect. We are seeing products rolled out without any suggestion that safety has been considered.”
Jess Sherwood, the researcher who went under cover, said, “I was surprised how totally immersed in the spaces you are. I started to feel like a child again. So, when grown men were asking why I wasn’t in school and encouraging me to engage in VR sex acts, it felt all the more disturbing.”
She said, “VRChat definitely felt more like an adult’s playground than a child’s. A lot of the rooms were overtly sexualized in pink neon, similar to what you might see in the red-light district in Amsterdam or in the seedier parts of London’s Soho at night. Inside, sex toys were on display.”
Catherine Allen, founder of a UK-based augmented and digital reality consulting firm, said that while VR can be “fun and surreal,” it also tends to be “quite traumatic and disturbing.” She described an incident in a Meta-owned app where she and a 7-year-old girl were surrounded by a group of men who joked about raping them.
VRChat said that it was “working hard to make itself a safe and welcoming place for everyone” and that “predatory and toxic behavior has no place on the platform.”
Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Still Leading from Behind
A.F. BRANCO | on February 23, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-still-leading-from-behind/
Biden continues to lead from a position of weakness emboldening our enemies like Russia, China, and Iran.
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.
Why Parents Should Assume Government Schools Will Sexually Abuse Their Children Until Proven Otherwise
REPORTED BY: ELLE REYNOLDS | FEBRUARY 22, 2022
This article features explicit material unsuitable for all readers.
Coaxing 10-year-old girls away from their parents, promising a fun and safe environment, and then forcing them to sleep in the same room as grown men is the kind of behavior you’d expect from a sexual predator. It’s child endangerment at best and traumatizing abuse at worst. Yet that’s exactly what California’s Los Alamitos Unified School District forced little girls at a school-organized science camp to do for three nights in San Bernardino, according to outraged parents.
“No parent should feel the way I feel after knowing what could have happened to my daughter,” parent Suzy Johnson told local news. “If I was aware of it and I had initialed something saying this was going to be done at this outdoor science camp, I would have kept my children home.”
When confronted about the sleeping arrangements, the camp’s defense was, “Per California law, we place staff in cabins they identify with,” and the two men refer to themselves as “they/them.”
While the science camp incident is enraging, it’s far from the first or only indication that government schools likely harm children more than they benefit them. Before entrusting their kids to a behemoth that has repeatedly subjected children to abuse, parents should demand proof that schools are trustworthy — and assume they aren’t until proven otherwise.
Public schools’ insane obsession with the transgender agenda has physically endangered young girls before. Just look to Loudoun County, where a boy in a skirt raped a young lady in the women’s bathroom and the school board covered it up to keep the incident from sinking their transgender bathroom policy. What else don’t parents know about?
When these far-left pipe dreams about erasing sex don’t subject kids to physical abuse, they often inflict mental abuse. Even in a red state like Idaho, a report earlier this month found that “School administrators in Coeur d’Alene manipulated an 11-year-old girl into believing she was a boy and should undergo gender transition surgery” behind her parents’ backs. “The elementary school counselor had coached the young girl into believing she was transsexual and instructed her how to tell her parents about her new identity,” the Idaho Freedom Foundation reported.
In Virginia, a public school made kindergarteners sit and listen to a “transgender rights advocate” — a man dressed as a woman who goes by “Sarah” — read them a book about a transgender teen.
In Iowa, a school district used the “Black Lives Matter at School Guiding Principles” to teach kids as young as four years old to “free[] ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking,” “dismantle cis-gender privilege,” and “disrupt[] the Western prescribed nuclear family structure requirement.”
A school in a small Colorado town outside of Boulder showed elementary students a play about a transgender raven, accompanied by videos like “He, She, and They – What is Gender” and “No More Gender Roles.” The videos include conversations with a gender-confused teddy bear that conclude gender roles are “mean, they are not fun and they are big problems.” One parent of a first-grader reported that, after showing one of the videos, his daughter’s teacher paired kids up to talk about their preferred pronouns.
Leaked audio from a conference of California’s largest teachers union revealed teachers being instructed on how to stalk middle schoolers and coax them into LGBT groups behind their parents’ backs. “Speakers went so far as to tout their surveillance of students’ Google searches, internet activity, and hallway conversations in order to target sixth graders for personal invitations to LGBTQ clubs, while actively concealing these clubs’ membership rolls from participants’ parents,” Abigail Shrier reported.
School libraries like the one at Baird Middle School in Massachusetts feature sexually explicit books like “Sex Is A Funny Word” by Cory Silverberg. Not only does the book cover “subjects of transgender identity, intersex conditions, and masturbation,” its author is a sex shop owner who specifically targets kids.
A Rhode Island mom filed a police report over a local high school’s promotion of a gay porn book to minors in its library. The book “features discussion of gay sexual fantasies and is incredibly graphic, including scenes of gay men having sex and a scene of one man performing oral sex on another.”
These examples are only some of the incidents that have been brought to light — and they merely scratch the surface. Exposing vulnerable children to sexually explicit material and indoctrinating them to question their own identities, often against their parents’ wishes, is nothing less than mental abuse and exploitation.
A Harvard study in 2015 found youth who identified as transgender were at more than double risk for depression, anxiety, attempted suicide, and self-harm. Last year, Forbes reported that more than half — 52 percent — “of all transgender and nonbinary young people in the U.S. seriously contemplated killing themselves in 2020.” Even aside from students’ exposure to the trans agenda, the toxic environment of public schools has tragically been linked to child suicides, which have escalated in recent years.
This isn’t to say every student in the public school system will be tempted to suicide, subject to pornography, placed in danger of sexual assault, or mentally abused. There are wonderful, truth-loving teachers out there who remain in the system to do as much good as they can for children they care deeply about. I know several. But the examples from all across the country, from known crazies in California to small-town red state school districts, should be enough to convince parents to be wary. Especially of what schools don’t tell them.
Nothing should be more paramount for parents than protecting their children. If a stranger offers to babysit your child, you don’t accept the offer with the rationale that your child might be fine. You expect anyone to whom you entrust your child to first prove he is worthy of stewarding your most sacred possession. Public schools are no different, and the repeated instances proving their abuses should drive your trust even further away. Maybe, like many Americans, you don’t feel you have what you think are feasible alternatives. Or maybe your local school district is sheltered from some of the most radical exploitation. But it behooves you to verify that first before betting your child on it.
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 Centers for Disease Control’s Lies Have Destroyed Its Legitimacy
REPORTED BY: Dr. GREGG SCHMEDES | FEBRUARY 22, 2022
Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/22/the-centers-for-disease-controls-lies-have-destroyed-its-legitimacy/
On August 6, 2021, the Centers for Disease Control released a report that the agency claimed showed “Vaccination Offers Higher Protection than Previous COVID-19 Infection.” This assertion came amidst a public battle with Sen. Rand Paul, as the CDC released this data from Kentucky, Paul’s home state.
Yet after indisputable scientific evidence continued to pile up in favor of natural immunity, the CDC finally capitulated on January 19, 2022, recognizing the superiority of natural immunity over vaccination alone: “Between May and November 2021, people who were unvaccinated and did not have a prior COVID-19 infection remained at the highest risk of infection and hospitalization, while those who were previously infected, both with, or without prior vaccination, had the greatest protection.”
The CDC’s reversal came after its previous discounting of natural immunity caused mass layoffs, nursing home resident isolation, and hospital staffing shortages. It must not be forgotten or overlooked, and the CDC must be held accountable.
Last summer, guided by the CDC, President Biden claimed, “If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in the IC unit, and you’re not going to die.” Biden also spread misinformation about vaccinations preventing the spread of Covid-19 by stating, “You’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations.”
Who is harmed the most by health misinformation produced by our president and his agencies? Those with low health literacy. Our rich-poor gap is growing in this country and lying about health issues only exacerbates it.
A Positive Test Doesn’t Always Mean Infectiousness
A deeper dive into the August natural immunity study reveals methodology that can be recognized as illogical, even to those without medical experience. The CDC researchers created two groups. The case group included people who tested positive in 2020 and then tested positive again during a two-month window in 2021. The control group included people who had a positive test in 2020 without another positive test during this artificial two-month window.
The study observed that non-vaccinated group registered a positive test 34.4 percent of the time, compared to 20.3 percent of fully vaccinated individuals. The CDC falsely defined the case group’s second positive test as a “reinfection.” This is the central lie of the study. This data conveniently omitted data on people actually becoming symptomatic or what a common person would call “reinfected.”
To illustrate this point, consider if a Covid-recovered person comes into contact with Sars-Cov-2 in their community. They might test positive on a PCR test. Their body can remember the virus, fight it off, and the person never becomes ill. However, shortly after the exposure, a PCR swab can detect bits of genetic material (even if it’s unviable virus). Therefore, this study could be more of a reflection of people’s likelihood of re-exposure to Sars-Cov-2, not reinfection, as the CDC claimed.
By conflating exposure and reinfection, the CDC misled the public. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky stated, “This study shows you were twice as likely to get infected again if you are unvaccinated. Getting the vaccine is the best way to protect yourself and others around you, especially as the more contagious Delta variant spreads around the country.”
This guidance came when mounting evidence indicated Covid vaccines quickly lose their effectiveness against infection and transmission, which the CDC loathed to admit. Unfortunately, Walensky’s guidance undermined the credibility of the CDC for generations to come.
As a physician, it’s frightening that a public health official made a policy recommendation based on such a flawed study. We should encourage critical thinking and scientific skepticism, but such a blatantly flawed study design should not be tolerated in our leading health institutions.
Not an Isolated Incident for the CDC
This isn’t the only time the CDC has been caught misleading the public. Drawing ire from the medical community, the was an uncontrolled study of students in Arizona that Walensky referred to in discussing the CDC’s mask guidance for schools. This study defined a “covid outbreak” as “two or more” positive lab tests among students or staff. So, if your school had two asymptomatic third graders, you’ve got a “covid outbreak” on your hands. Even worse, the study weighted such an “outbreak” equally to a school with dozens of symptomatic teachers or students. According to the CDC, two equals 50—at least for “covid outbreaks.”
In a Georgia study that actually had a sufficient control arm, the CDC minimized the fact that there was no statistically significant difference between masked and unmasked student groups. They’ve also minimized the importance of diet and exercise during the pandemic. They failed to effectively communicate evidence-based, life-saving outpatient treatment protocols. The list goes on.
Why This Matters So Much
How does minimizing natural immunity cause harm in the real world? There are at least three deadly repercussions.
First, many hospitals following the CDC’s guidance mandated that only vaccinated health-care workers be allowed to work at their facilities. This means naturally immune health-care workers were wrongly excluded from the workforce. Based on a toxic lie fabricated by the CDC, hospitals continue to experience staffing shortages, contributing to the hospitalization overcapacity narrative they’ve used to demonize the unvaccinated.
Second, the same problem arose for nursing homes, where seniors were denied visitation rights from unvaccinated, naturally immune family and friends, even though less protected vaccinated people were allowed in. Lack of care workers also prevents patients from being discharged from hospitals to care facilities.
Third, the natural immunity lie also stripped countless Americans of their health coverage and livelihoods. During the delta wave, for example, a worker at Los Alamos National Laboratories was fired from his job for religiously objecting to vaccination, despite working entirely from home and having recovered from a previous Covid infection. The CDC now admits this worker’s immunity provides protection superior to that of his co-workers who had merely vaccine-induced immunity at that time. He lost his job while the less protected did not. By denying natural immunity’s superiority to vaccine-induced immunity, how many others have been fired and lost health-care access the moment we need our population to be at its healthiest?
Punishing People We Should Have Praised
Naturally immune people should have been identified early in the pandemic as the most protected, ushered into hospitals and nursing homes to serve our vulnerable, and certainly should have been allowed to keep their jobs. By refusing to acknowledge the harms of lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccination, the CDC has brought everlasting shame to itself. There is clear evidence these types of interventions carry measurable risk. A better approach would have been to honestly discuss the risks and benefits with the public, much like I discuss surgical risks and benefits with my patients. This is the very tenet of informed consent, and better communication always results in a better relationship.
Americans need an unbiased, incorruptible, and credible CDC that provides reliable and scientifically sound public health guidance. These lies have de-legitimized and undermined public confidence in the institution of the CDC itself.
The consequences of lying about Covid-19 will spill into other areas of health care. Millions of Americans have lost trust in our hospitals and institutions and are now resorting to “under the table” health care. In health care, loss of trust equals lack of access. The CDC must return to the basics of evidence-based medicine to overcome its crisis of legitimacy.
Brace Yourself: Expert Says Gas Prices Could Reach $7 Per Gallon in Biden’s America
Commentary By Warner Todd Huston | February 22, 2022
Read more at https://www.westernjournal.com/brace-expert-says-gas-prices-reach-7-per-gallon-bidens-america/
The price of gas continues to soar in this era of Bidenflation. It is getting so bad, some experts are warning that we could see prices as outrageously high as $7 per gallon in some parts of the country. The current high prices are not new, either. Gasoline has been on the rise for seven straight weeks, according to GasBuddy data reported by Fox Carolina.
“Veteran energy strategist Dan Dicker said he can see gas prices going up to $5 a gallon. Dicker said some areas might even get to $6.50 or $7,” Fox Carolina added.
GasBuddy noted that the national average is almost twenty cents a gallon higher than a month ago and is nearly a dollar higher than one year ago. Worse, per gallon prices have already nearly doubled in just two years. Gas was only $2.17 a gallon average at the end of 2020. And it is no coincidence that 2020 was the last full year we had a president who wanted the U.S. to be energy independent. But already, in deep blue states, gas is getting perilously close to double those prices seen in 2020. In deep blue Illinois, for instance, gas now averages $3.60 a gallon for regular (nearly $4.50 for premium), while the national average is $3.50, according to traveler assistance group AAA.
It is even worse in California where the average price per gallon for regular is an unheard of $4.75 — more than a dollar higher than the national average!
Left-wing news sources continue to lay the blame for these skyrocketing prices at the door of Russia’s threatened invasion of Ukraine. Indeed, the Associated Press is only worried over the high costs of gasoline because it will likely have a political impact for Biden and the Democrats in the 2022 elections, ……………………………
READ THE REST OF THIS COMMENTARY AT https://www.westernjournal.com/brace-expert-says-gas-prices-reach-7-per-gallon-bidens-america/
Putin orders ‘peacekeeping’ troops to invade Ukraine, US to respond with sanctions
Reported by CARLOS GARCIA | February 21, 2022
Vladimir Putin, the president of the Russian Federation, ordered an invasion of Ukraine on Monday after declaring the “independence” of two separatist regions of the country. Russia has accused Ukraine of oppressing Russian-speaking populations in Donetsk and Luhansk, two regions in southeastern Ukraine. Putin on Monday said Russia would send “peacekeeping” troops into the separatist areas, which critics say is a brazen excuse to invade a sovereign neighbor state. Russian-backed rebels in regions of Ukraine have called for separation since 2014, but in recent months Russia has placed more than 150,000 troops on its border with the country. In response, Ukrainian citizens have armed themselves in anticipation of the expected invasion.
A senior Biden administration official reportedly told journalists that Russia sending “peacekeeping” troops into Ukraine didn’t necessarily constitute an invasion.
“We will observe and assess what actions Russia actually takes and respond,” the official said.
Biden also spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a call after the announcement from Putin.
President Joe Biden has warned that the United States would hit Russia with punitive economic sanctions if they invaded. Those sanctions are expected to be announced on Tuesday.
The United States agreed to defend Ukraine in 1994 after the country agreed to dismantle more than 5,000 nuclear weapons left over from the fall of the Soviet Union.
Putin has reiterated many times his belief that the fall of the Soviet Union was the worst geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. In his speech Monday, he said it was “madness” that former Soviet republics were allowed to leave the USSR.
Here’s more about the decree from Putin:
Vladimir Putin declares two Ukraine regions independent www.youtube.com
Longtime NBA ref banned over league’s vaccine mandate talks to Jason Whitlock on ‘Fearless’
Reported by JASON WHITLOCK | February 22, 2022
Ken Mauer, one of the longest-tenured referees in NBA history, says he was forced out of the league at the beginning of the current season because of his religious objection to the COVID vaccines.
During a wide-ranging, two-hour interview on “Fearless with Jason Whitlock,” Mauer, a 36-year veteran known for his slicked-back, Pat Riley-style hair, revealed the reason for his season-long absence.
“I never thought that my faith in our Lord Jesus Christ would prevent me or stop me or get in the way of me refereeing NBA basketball games. … That’s what’s happened,” Mauer said. “Not to just me, but other people.”
Mauer, a lifelong Catholic, has done his own research and has concerns and reasons for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine, including his belief that aborted fetal tissue was used in the development of the vaccine. (Many experts dispute Mauer’s contention. Pope Francis has endorsed use of the vaccines.)
Mauer said that as many as 17 referees objected to the vaccine mandate the NBA squeezed into its collective bargaining agreement with the National Basketball Referees Association before the season. There is no mandate for players. He said nine refs initially organized and hired a lawyer to fight the mandate on religious grounds. By the start of the season, Mauer, Mark Ayotte, Leroy Richardson, and Jason Phillips (head of replay center) were the final holdouts. Richardson agreed to arbitration and lost his appeal. Phillips, according to Mauer, is paid to work from home. Mauer and Ayotte filed appeals with the EEOC.
“I’m not ashamed of what I’m doing,” Mauer said in the interview that will air early Tuesday evening. “In fact, I’m very proud of what I’m doing. I’m very proud of my faith. … I’m no different than the truck driver, than the schoolteacher, than the health care worker, than the person working construction or whatever. They either medically or religiously don’t feel like taking the vaccine, and now they’re being forced to or else they’re going to lose their job. And I think that’s a shame.”
PODCAST LINK https://megaphone.link/BMDC8489746071
“There are many referees that didn’t want to take the vaccine. And there are many referees who were forced to because they have children, they have families, and they have bills to pay. … They’re scared and I’m not. I’m never going to take (the vaccine).”
In the history of the NBA, only Dick Bavetta and Joey Crawford attained more service time than Mauer. Bavetta and Crawford retired after 39 years of service. Mauer, 66, said he planned to eclipse Bavetta’s and Crawford’s standard.
Over the course of the interview, Mauer addressed several NBA-related topics, including the league’s embrace of Black Lives Matter. He relayed a story about a five-hour Zoom meeting among referees that was titled “Black Lives Matter.” “It was one of the worst experiences I’d ever experienced as a professional referee,” he said.
Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Predatory Politics
A.F. BRANCO | on February 22, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-predatory-politics/
Hillary can smell blood in the water with Biden’s rapidly bleeding poll numbers.
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.
4 Special Counsel Revelations Tying Spygate To Hillary Clinton’s Campaign
REPORTED BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | FEBRUARY 21, 2022
Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/21/4-special-counsel-revelations-tying-spygate-to-hillary-clintons-campaign/
Last week saw the corrupt media spinning explosive revelations from Special Counsel John Durham’s office as a big ol’ nothingburger. Yet, as I explained on Friday, none of the narratives pushed by the Durham deniers countered the evidence in court filings showing that “enemies of Donald Trump surveilled the internet traffic at Trump Tower, at his New York City apartment building, and later at the executive office of the president of the United States, then fed disinformation about that traffic to intelligence agencies hoping to frame Trump as a Russia-connected stooge.”
Although The New York Times, CNN, and other legacy media outlets failed to refute the significance of the details revealed in Durham’s latest filing, their concerted efforts highlighted their previous lack of coverage of the investigation and the many stunning revelations that have come from Durham’s team to date. One of the most significant aspects of the ongoing investigation ignored or downplayed by the supposed standard-bearers of journalism concerns the extensive role the Hillary Clinton campaign played in the Russia collusion hoax. “Russia, Russia, Russia” was a Hillary Clinton enterprise. Here are four revelations demonstrating that from the recent special counsel filings.
The Clinton Campaign Paid for Russian Disinformation to Be Peddled to the Feds and Media via the Steele Dossier
It has long been known that the law firm representing the Clinton campaign, Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS to provide opposition research on Donald Trump, and that in return Fusion GPS hired Christopher Steele and Glenn Simpson’s company, Orbis Business Intelligence, to compile negative information on Trump. In charging Russian national Igor Danchenko in November 2021 with five counts of lying to the FBI related to his role as Steele’s “Primary Sub-Source,” Durham publicly elaborated on those connections in a 39-page speaking indictment. The indictment did more than confirm the Clinton campaign’s responsibility for funding the Steele dossier: It alleged the Russian national fed Steele false “intel” that Steele then provided to FBI, as well as several other agencies in the Obama administration.
One category of false intel Danchenko, as Steele’s Primary Sub-Source, provided concerned Sergei Millian, a New York-based real estate broker who in 2016 had served as the president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. Millian “had occasion to work on real estate projects with Trump and staff at the Trump Organization,” the indictment explained.
Danchenko reported to Steele purported conversations he had with Millian, which Steele then included in his dossier. The dossier then maintained that Millian, “an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump, admitted that there was a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between them and the Russian leadership.” The dossier asserted this conspiracy “was managed on the Trump side” by his then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, who used Carter Page as an intermediary.
According to the indictment, when questioned about these claims, Danchenko falsely stated to the FBI that in “the summer of 2016, he received a phone call from an anonymous Russian male who did not identify himself to Danchenko but who Danchenko claimed to believe was” Millian. Danchenko also falsely claimed, Durham alleged, to have arranged to meet Millian in New York, and that Millian never showed. Danchenko would later repeat those lies on multiple occasions.
Millian denied ever speaking with Danchenko. The indictment included excerpts from emails indicating Danchenko never spoke with or intended to meet Millian. Nonetheless, according to Steele, Danchenko claimed he met Millian in person on two or three separate occasions. Steele also claimed Danchenko sourced, in part, the claims about “Trump’s purported salacious sexual activity” to Millian.
Danchenko’s alleged lies to the FBI about Millian served as the basis for four of the five false statement charges leveled against the “Primary Sub-Source.” But more significant than the criminal charges pending against Danchenko is the bottom line of what those charges mean about the Clinton campaign’s role in Spygate.
In addition to allegedly lying to the FBI, the indictment asserts that Danchenko also fed Steele similar falsehoods about Millian—which Steele then included in the dossier. In other words, the Clinton campaign paid for negative and false information about Trump that was sourced primarily to a Russian national.
The Clinton campaign then paid for those false claims to be seeded in the media. Steele also provided the Clinton campaign-funded dossier to the FBI, which then sought and obtained four FISA court orders to surveil former Trump campaign advisor Page—and as a result of that surveillance, the Crossfire Hurricane team obtained Trump campaign communications.
The Clinton Campaign Paid for Fake Intel Supplied by a Clinton Crony and Long-Time Democrat to Feed to the FBI and Press
Not only did the Clinton campaign pay for a report primarily sourced to a Russian national who allegedly lied about Trump and his associates, the Steele dossier also included fake intel supplied by long-time Clinton associate and faithful Democrat, Charles Dolan, Jr., called PR Executive-1 in the Danchenko indictment. Dolan’s connection to the Steele dossier became public when Durham charged Danchenko with lying to FBI agents about his conversations with the long-time Democrat. Specifically, the indictment charged that Danchenko claimed he had not spoken with Dolan about any material contained in the Steele dossier, when in fact Danchenko used Dolan as a source for a portion of the dossier related to Manafort’s departure from the Trump campaign.
According to the indictment, Danchenko, telling Dolan that he was working “on a project against Trump,” asked if he had “any thought, rumor, allegation” about Manafort’s resignation. Dolan later emailed Danchenko that a “GOP friend of mine who knows some of the players” told him that a campaign staff member who hates Manafort played a role in Manafort’s firing. “I think the bottom line is that in addition to the Ukraine revelations, a number of people wanted [Manafort] gone.”
What Dolan told Danchenko about Manafort’s termination ended up in the Steele dossier. But, as Dolan would later admit to the FBI, Dolan invented the entire conversation and merely repeated details he had read about in the news.
The indictment also alleged Danchenko fed Steele details about Trump’s stay at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton that also originated with Dolan. Dolan, who had extensive connections in Russia, had traveled to Russia in June 2016. Hotel staff members gave Dolan a tour of the Presidential Suite, telling him Trump had stayed there. None of the hotel staff suggested Trump had engaged in any sexual or salacious activities there, however.
According to Durham’s team, several other aspects of Steele’s reporting included details that “bore substantial similarities to information that [Dolan] received during the 2016 time period.”
Danchenko’s allegedly false statement to the FBI—that he had not discussed any of the material he had provided Steele with Dolan—served as the basis for the final count on which the special counsel indicted Danchenko. But, again, the significance of these new revelations is much broader: The public now knows “a Clinton crony in the person of Dolan fed Danchenko false information that Danchenko then presented to Steele as intel. Steele then regurgitated Danchenko’s claims in the Clinton campaign-funded dossier the former MI6 agent provided the FBI.”
The Clinton Campaign Peddled More than the Steele Dossier
The revelation that the Clinton campaign financed the Steele dossier and the false “intel” sourced to a Russian national and a Clinton crony with extensive Russian connections is shocking enough, but there is more. The special counsel’s indictment of attorney Michael Sussmann revealed allegations connecting the Clinton campaign to the peddling of a second fake scandal about Trump—this one involving the Russian-connected Alfa Bank. Sussmann, a lawyer for Perkins Coie, served as an attorney for both the Clinton campaign and tech executive Rodney Joffe. In September 2021, the special counsel’s office charged Sussmann with making a materially false statement to the FBI. Specifically, the indictment alleged that on September 19, 2016—less than two months before the 2016 U.S. presidential election—Sussmann met with the FBI General Counsel James Baker. During that meeting, Sussmann provided Baker “purported data and ‘white papers’ that allegedly demonstrated a covert communications channel between the Trump Organization and a Russia-based bank [Alfa Bank].” The indictment further alleged that Sussman lied in that meeting, falsely telling Baker “that he was not providing the allegations to the FBI on behalf of any client.” In fact, though, Sussmann “had assembled and conveyed the allegations to the FBI on behalf of at least two specific clients,” namely Joffe and the Clinton campaign.
The details of Sussmann’s work for the Clinton campaign on this second Russia hoax related to Alfa Bank prove just as appalling as the Clinton campaign’s financing of the Steele dossier. Here’s what we know from the indictment.
In July 2016, Joffe, whose tech company had hired Sussmann for other legal work, informed Sussmann of data purporting to show a secret communication network existed between the Trump organization and Russia. According to the indictment, over the next few weeks, Joffe and Sussmann worked with the Clinton campaign’s general counsel, Marc Elias, “and individuals acting on behalf of the Clinton Campaign to share information about the Russian Bank Data with the media and others, claiming that it demonstrated the existence of a secret communications channel between the Trump Organization and [Alfa Bank].” The indictment then detailed several of the meetings between Sussmann, Joffe, and Elias that occurred from late July to about mid-August 2016, during which they discussed how to coordinate and communicate the Alfa Bank allegations.
According to the indictment, the Clinton campaign was billed for the time Sussmann spent working with others to draft, review, and revise a paper that summarized the Alfa Bank allegations, which Sussmann later provided to the FBI and reporters. The Clinton campaign was likewise billed for the time Sussmann spent meeting with Fusion GPS and with the media about the Alfa-Bank allegations. Sussmann also charged the Clinton campaign for time he spent coordinating with a Georgia Tech researcher about speaking to a reporter about the Alfa Bank allegations.
In indicting Sussmann, Durham stated that Sussman, Joffe, and Perkins Coie “had coordinated, and were continuing to coordinate, with representatives and agents of the Clinton Campaign with regard to the data and written materials that Sussmann gave to the FBI and the media related to the Alfa-Bank allegations.”
Elias likewise billed the campaign for time spent discussing the Alfa-Bank allegations and Sussmann’s efforts to seed the story to the media. Elias later exchanged emails with “the Clinton Campaign’s campaign manager, communications director, and foreign policy advisor” concerning the Alfa-Bank allegations Sussmann had fed to the reporter.
Additionally, Fusion GPS, also a paid agent of the Clinton campaign, drafted a second white paper related to the supposed secret communication network, which Sussmann also provided to the FBI, again while indicating he was not working on behalf of any client. The indictment makes all these points clear. In total, they translate to the Clinton campaign paying for the entirety of the Alfa Bank hoax, from crafting the theory, to drafting the “white papers,” to peddling of the papers to both the FBI and the media.
Even Sussmann saw the story in these revelations, with him seeking “to conceal the Clinton Campaign’s ties to the [Alfa Bank] allegations from the FBI and others,” according to Durham’s team, going back to October 2018. That month Sussmann reviewed and acquiesced in his former law firm, Perkins Coie, issuing a statement professing that when he met with Baker, “it was not connected to the firm’s representation of the Hillary Clinton Campaign, the DNC or any Political Law Group client.” The then-Managing Partner at Perkins Coie likewise declared the same in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in October 2018, with Sussmann’s apparent approval of the PR move.
Yet the media provided scant coverage of the Clinton campaign’s responsibility for the Alfa Bank hoax.
Joffe’s Pro Bono Support of Clinton
To downplay the Clinton campaign’s responsibility for the Alfa Bank hoax, the press both limited its discussion of the evidence showing Sussmann was acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign and focused its attention on Tech Executive-1, Joffe.
Here, the Clinton defenders note that while the special counsel’s filings show the Clinton Campaign hired Perkins Coie and Joffe hired Perkins Coie, there is nothing to suggest that the Clinton campaign paid Joffe to work on its behalf. That aims to absolve the Clinton campaign from the scandal. But while the Clinton campaign did not pay Joffe, the evidence Durham uncovered indicates the tech guru was nonetheless acting for her benefit.
For instance, the Sussmann indictment alleged that Joffe told individuals working at one of his tech companies “that he was working with someone who had close ties to the Democratic Party and to Hillary Clinton.” “They’re looking for a true story that could be used as the basis for closer examination,” Joffe explained in discussing what was needed for the Alfa Bank angle.
Then, when Joffe obtained the data he believed would benefit Clinton, he provided the information to Sussmann so Sussmann could draft and disseminate the materials to the media and the FBI. Joffe also assisted Sussmann and others as they drafted, reviewed, and revised a paper summarizing the Alfa Bank allegations. While Joffe didn’t bill the time to the Clinton campaign, Sussmann billed the campaign for the time he spent with Joffe on these tasks.
The special counsel’s investigation also revealed evidence suggesting Joffe assisted with the Alfa Bank canard to please Clinton: Joffe allegedly told the two Georgia Tech researchers assisting him that his goal in obtaining internet data showing potential ties between Trump and Russia was to support an “inference” and “narrative” regarding Trump that would please certain “VIPs.”
Joffe also “claimed to have been previously offered a position in the government in the event Hillary Clinton won the Presidency, stating in an email days after the U.S. Presidential election: ‘I was tentatively offered the top [cybersecurity] job by the Democrats when it looked like they’d win.’”
In short, Joffe may not have been on the Clinton campaign payroll, but he was acting as if he were—with the full knowledge of the Clinton campaign lawyers with whom he was working hand-in-hand. So, rather than exonerate the Clinton campaign in the Alfa Bank scam, Joffe’s pro bono assist to the campaign’s lawyers provides another layer of responsibility.
More Clinton Revelations to Come
As the special counsel investigation continues, and the Danchenko and Sussmann criminal cases proceed to trial, Americans can expect the reveal of more evidence connecting the Clinton campaign to the Russia collusion hoax. The special counsel’s office has already gone public with the fact that Durham’s team has subpoenaed the Democratic National Committee, the Clinton campaign, and Perkins Coie, as well as “an investigative firm” that translates to Fusion GPS and obtained tens of thousands of relevant documents. Government investigators have also prepared reports of approximately 100 interviews conducted by the special counsel’s office, including with a person identified as “a former employee of the Clinton Campaign.”
But sadly, when the details of those aspects of the investigation become known, the public can also expect the legacy media to bury or downplay any news that hurts the Clintons or Democrats—or that vindicates Trump.
Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
More on Kamala’s Horrible Performance in Europe – She Looked Weak While Making Claims that Made No Sense
Reported By Joe Hoft | Published February 21, 2022 at 8:45am
Read more at https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/kamalas-horrible-performance-europe-looked-weak-making-claims-make-no-sense/
Kamala Harris said in Europe that sanctions would absolutely deter Putin from invading Ukraine. This was after she first said he made up his mind on invading Ukraine?
The people running the White House are way out of their league. Joe Biden is senile and is being led by handlers after stealing the 2020 Election. VP Harris might be even worse.
Over the weekend, Harris went to Europe and gave a major speech about the situation between Russia and Ukraine. Her speech was a trainwreck. In his speech, President Zelinsky said that someone is lying between either Biden and Harris or Putin. We’re not sure who he believed was lying.
Harris during her speech showed no courage and made no sense.
FOX News reports:
Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday said she believes sanctions on Russia would absolutely deter President Vladimir Putin, despite she and President Biden saying that he has already made up his mind on a potential invasion.
Harris made her remarks to reporters at the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, amid fears of a Russian invasion in Ukraine. The vice president called the sanctions “some of the greatest sanctions, if not the strongest,” that the U.S. has ever issued.
“As I articulated yesterday, it is directed at institutions — in particular, financial institutions — and individuals, and it will exact absolute harm for the Russian economy and their government,” Harris said…
…Harris was asked by a reporter if she felt the looming threat of sanctions would deter Putin, despite saying the president has already made a decision on Ukraine.
“Absolut- — we strongly believe — and remember also that the sanctions are a product not only of our perspective as the United States but a shared perspective among our Allies. And the Allied relationship is such that we have agreed that the deterrence effect of these sanctions is still a meaningful one, especially because — remember, also — we still sincerely hope that there is a diplomatic path out of this moment,” Harris said, according to the White House.
FOX concluded by reporting:
Russia has said that it has no plans to attack Ukraine.
What a mess our government is in. Biden and Harris are horrible.
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.
Jason Whitlock Op-ed: Michigan coach Juwan Howard feels ‘untouchable’ in racist world liberal elites constructed
Commentary by JASON WHITLOCK | February 21, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/whitlock-michigan-coach-juwan-howard-feels-untouchable-in-racist-world-liberal-elites-constructed/
Michigan basketball coach Juwan Howard believes he’s untouchable.
And why shouldn’t he? The rules imposed by our China-influenced institutions of government, education, sport, media (corporate and social), and art grant him a bigoted form of privilege.
Howard is black, elite, and a supporter of left-wing social justice. He checks all the boxes for the elimination of standards, accountability, and adult expectations. Our current culture immunizes Howard from real consequence. He took the blackcine, the alleged experimental cure for bigotry that injects people with the mindset that black people are inferior and can’t be held to the same standards as white, Asian, and Latino people.
Howard is fully blackcinated and boosted. He can’t be touched.
We saw that yesterday in the handshake line after the Wisconsin Badgers routed Howard’s Wolverines. Incensed that Wisconsin coach Greg Gard called a timeout with 15 seconds to play, Howard yelled at and attempted to walk past Gard without the customary handshake. Gard placed his hand on Howard’s elbow and tried to explain his use of a timeout. Howard responded by grabbing Gard’s shirt in the center of his chest and then pointing a finger in Gard’s face while repeatedly shouting, “Don’t f—ing touch me!”
Players and assistant coaches separated Howard and Gard. Moments later, Howard reached across several people and struck Wisconsin assistant coach Joe Krabbenhoft. Howard’s blow ignited a fracas among players from both teams.
Howard’s on-court, postgame behavior was embarrassing and justifies a season-ending suspension.
Howard’s postgame interview was troubling and justifies his firing.
“I didn’t like the timeout being called,” Howard told reporters, “and I’ll be totally honest, I thought it was not necessary in that moment, especially being a large lead. And then to have the timeout being called with 3, 4 seconds to go I thought that was – what I felt – wasn’t fair to our guys. So that’s what happened.”
There was no timeout called with 3 or 4 seconds to play. Howard is confused. Given time to collect his thoughts, Howard had no real idea what happened at the end of the game. With 48 seconds to play and leading by 19 points, Wisconsin emptied its bench and inserted its scrubs, including several walk-ons. Howard instructed his players to compete until the final second. The Wolverines pressed full court and caused a Badger turnover.
“It wasn’t a press,” Howard told reporters. “We were just five, pressure defense man to man. That’s what five is for us.”
So, it wasn’t a press. It was pressure defense man to man. Got it. Howard was in a total fog during his postgame media session. It’s like he blacked out. He lost a game and lost his mind.
“For someone to touch me, and I think that was very uncalled for him to touch me as we were verbalizing and communicating with one another,” Howard said. “That’s what ended up happening. That’s what escalated it.”
Getting touched in a handshake line is not unusual. It’s customary. Howard escalated the situation when he hit a Wisconsin assistant coach in the face.
“Oh yeah, it was more than that,” Howard responded when a reporter pointed out the point of a handshake line is to touch. “Yeah, he touched me unnecessary. There wasn’t cause for that when we were talking. At that point I thought it was time to protect myself.”
Five to 10 seconds after being touched by Gard, Howard protected himself by attacking Joe Krabbenhoft. It makes no sense. Howard sounded like a 12-year-old playground bully at best and a violent criminal with no emotional control at worst.
What he did not sound like was a leader, an adult capable of counseling young people not to be easily provoked. You can’t strike a man because someone touched your elbow or stepped on your favorite gym shoes. Striking the Wisconsin assistant was bad. The rationalization of the act was far worse.
How can Michigan have confidence in Howard’s ability to lead? Howard has less emotional control than his players.
Indiana University fired Bobby Knight 22 years ago, ending the era of out-of-control bully coaches. Twenty-years before Knight’s dismissal, Ohio State dumped its legendary football coach, Woody Hayes, for throwing a punch at a Clemson player.
Things we tolerated and/or overlooked decades ago, we no longer do. The Don Draper, Roger Sterling, Pete Campbell, and “Mad Men” era is gone. Juwan Howard can’t be retroactively grandfathered in. Replacing “Mad Men” with “Mad and Untouchable Black People” is a mistake and equally harmful and racist.
But that’s what we’re doing. We’re codifying cultural norms that lower or eliminate all standards of behavior and achievement for black people. You can see it in the education system, the criminal justice system, and the sports world. Leftists are defining black people as incapable of meeting traditional cultural norms. We’ve been defined as a special group worthy of a capital B that distinguishes us from the masses. The behavior of black people has been deemed irrelevant. Only the actions of white people matter. From the use of the N-word all the way to murder, we only care about the behavior of one group – white people. That’s why it’s forbidden to talk about the behavior George Floyd exhibited that contributed to his death. Discussing Colin Kaepernick’s career-destroying and illogical behavior is frowned upon. Criticizing LeBron James or Barack Obama is an unforgivable sin. Floyd, Kaepernick, James, and Obama are untouchable.
When people believe their actions are above scrutiny and irrelevant, their behavior typically becomes more erratic. That’s what we’re witnessing with Juwan Howard.
I first met Juwan when he was a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Michigan and the most mature member of the famed Fab Five. I covered the team for the Ann Arbor News. Howard was an impressive young person. He was mature, respectful, and classy. He had a huge heart. He brought his best friend from childhood – a kid everyone called “Juice” – to Michigan. Juice was small and smart. He and Howard were inseparable. At the time, it seemed understood that Howard used his athletic gift to empower and educate his best friend from home.
I’ve always been impressed with Howard. I’m shocked to see Howard struggle with his emotions and behavior. A year ago, he had an over-the-top, on-court confrontation with Maryland coach Mark Turgeon. Turgeon says Howard threatened to kill him.
It was an ugly scene. Michigan took no disciplinary action against Howard. The team was nationally ranked and would eventually advance to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament. Howard should’ve been disciplined a year ago.
But he’s untouchable and knows it.
That’s why he was so offended that Gard had the audacity to protect his bench players from Michigan’s endgame, full-court press. Gard’s walk-ons were getting overwhelmed and embarrassed. The final 48 seconds of a blowout are a walk-on’s reward for practicing every day. Upset by the loss, Howard decided to ruin the reward Gard gave his scrubs. When Gard countered with a timeout, Howard emoted and eventually erupted.
Joe Krabbenhoft is white. Had he struck Howard, Krabbenhoft would have been fired Sunday night. He would be portrayed as the second coming of Derek Chauvin.
Howard has somehow been cast as the victim. Calls for his removal as Michigan head coach are being framed as a racist overreaction. For white bigots and black supporters of black inferiority, holding Howard to the same standard as a white coach would be racist. Like Al Capone, Howard is untouchable. He will not be punished for his bad behavior. In a year or two, Michigan will fire Howard for NCAA Tournament evasion.
Today’s TWO Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Jail Bail Fail
A.F. BRANCO | on February 20, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-jail-bail-fail/
Minnesota Freedom Fund allows criminals like rapists and murderers bail to continue victimizing society.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Nothing Against the State
A.F. BRANCO | on February 21, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-nothing-against-the-state/
Trudeau called the Trucker protesters terrorists and Fascists while he acts like a totalitarian Fascist.
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.
California Man Arrested Three Times in One Day After Being Freed Under Los Angeles County’s “Zero-Dollar” Bail Policy
Reported By Cristina Laila | Published February 18, 2022
Meanwhile in the Democrat hell hole of Los Angeles County…
A SoCal man was arrested three times in 16 hours after being freed under Los Angeles County’s “zero-dollar” bail policy. James Langdon, 47, was arrested on February 13 by Glendale police officers at 3 am, 9:30 am and again later that night at 7 pm.
Langdon was arrested the first time for jaywalking, arrested a second time for trespassing with a screwdriver in his hand inside of a Glendale business and arrested again for breaking into an apartment.
According to Fox 11, Langdon caused over $6,000 in property damage to the apartment before he was arrested. Langdon is currently being held on $150,000 bail after being arrested for burglary and felony vandalism.
Fox 11 reported:
On February 13, just after 3 a.m., Glendale police officers observed the man, identified as 47-year-old James Langdon, pacing in a parking lot near the intersection of Colorado St. and Louise St.
Langdon run out of the lot and across a crosswalk against a solid “Don’t Walk” sign. Officers say they attempted to stop Langdon for the infraction but he fled from officers. Officers chased him on foot and after a brief struggle they detained Langdon for the violation. He was then arrested for obstruction.
According to a statement from Glendale police, before Langdon was arrested he requested medical attention and was transported to the hospital. He was then issued a notice to appear in court at a later date and released at the hospital.
Later that morning around 9:30 a.m., Glendale officers responded to a business on the 1400 block of E. Chevy Chase Dr. after receiving reports of a man trespassing. Once officers arrived on scene, they located Langdon who was trying to enter a closed part of the business.
Langdon was then arrested and booked for trespassing.
According to police, due to L.A. County’s emergency “zero-dollar” bail order, Langdon was released from custody within three hours of being booked.
Later that day, around 7 p.m. Glendale officers responded to an apartment building on the 600 block of Balboa Ave. regarding a burglary. Residents told officers they arrived home to find their doors open with several items inside displaced.
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon is currently being recalled for causing crime to spike with his Marxist policies.
Cristina began writing for The Gateway Pundit in 2016 and she is currently the Associate Editor.
Daniel Horowitz Op-ed: The lies about vaccine efficacy are exposed, so Scotland stops publishing data
Commentary by DANIEL HOROWITZ | February 18, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/horowitz-the-lies-about-vaccine-efficacy-exposed-so-scotland-stops-publishing-data/
If the truth hurts your narrative, you must censor it. But what if your own information harms your own narrative? Well, then you stop publishing it. For the past few months, Scotland has been publishing age-stratified case rates by vaccination status in a very well broken-down chart every Wednesday afternoon, similar to the way the U.K. published the data every Thursday. The common thread observed from these trends was that the unvaccinated had the lowest case rate, the double-vaccinated had even higher death and hospitalization rates, and the triple-jabbed gradually had increasingly higher case rates, which clearly doesn’t portend good news even for hospitalization and death in the long run. When people like me started using their data, we were lambasted by the “fact-checkers” paid for by Big Pharma. Now Scottish health officials announced they will not be publishing the data at all.
“Public Health Scotland will stop publishing data on covid deaths and hospitalisations by vaccination status — over concerns it is misrepresented by anti-vaxx campaigners,” reports the Glasgow Times.
The notice of change was published on page 29 of the latest, and evidently final, Wednesday report from Feb. 16. “PHS is aware of inappropriate use and misinterpretation of the data when taken in isolation without fully understanding the limitations described below,” they decried.
You mean like screenshotting their own charts?
Obviously, there can be confounding factors, but those factors actually cut both ways. However, at the end of the day, these are age-stratified adjusted case rates per 100,000 and are completely fair game to use. No vaccine that is anywhere near as effective as they make it out to be should be netting these results.
Here is the latest case rate chart from the final report:
As you can see, for the past two weeks they have been placing disclaimers at the bottom of the charts.
What the chart clearly shows is what we have been seeing throughout the world — from the U.K., Canada, and Israel, for example — namely, that the second shot has gone negative a long time ago and the third shot is gradually following in the same direction. The public health officials themselves are demanding that people get boosters because they say the other shots wane. Well, logic would dictate that now that we are three to five months into the boosters in most places, they are waning as well. We also know that waning efficacy is potentially associated with a Trojan horse effect of antibody dependent disease enhancement, something the FDA admitted was never studied in the long run (at the time they thought the shots wouldn’t wane) but would be a risk “potentially associated with waning immunity.”
The main argument of those who are against us screenshotting their own charts to point out what they themselves have admitted is a speculative theory that perhaps the vaccinated test more often than the unvaccinated. That is a purely speculative confounding factor in the favor of the vaccine, but here is a concrete proven confounder against the vaccine: Scotland counts the first 21 days of the first vaccine as unvaccinated and the first 14 days of the third vaccine as double-vaccinated. We already know from Alberta’s data (which of course they also took down since we cited it) that roughly 40% of cases, 47.6% of hospitalizations, and 56% of deaths among the vaccinated occurred within 14 days of vaccination! So if anything, many of the cases and deaths ascribed to the unvaccinated are caused by the immune suppression of the first shot, and many cases and deaths ascribed to the double-vaccinated makes that cohort look even worse than it already is in order to ameliorate the image of the boosters.
Furthermore, if the higher case rates among the vaccinated are the result of a higher testing rate, then why would the double-vaxxed also be worse off than the unvaccinated for hospitalizations and deaths, as PHS has been showing for weeks in its other charts?
It’s quite evident that everyone is tested in the hospital. If anything, it stands to reason that the unvaccinated would be more aggressively tested even when admitted for other ailments and therefore potentially be roped into incidental hospitalization counts more often than the vaccinated. For example, in June 2021, Scripps Health in San Diego announced it would only test unvaccinated asymptomatic patients but not the vaccinated. Clearly, the testing requirements of the unvaccinated and the counting of the (immune-suppressed) partially vaccinated as unvaccinated would be confounding factors for woefully overestimating unvaccinated hospitalizations, not the other way around.
Also, why would the triple-vaxxed test less often than the double, who test more often than the single or unvaccinated? And why would the waning always continue in the same direction throughout the pandemic? As you can see from the U.K. Health Security Agency weekly reports, the efficacy of the shots constantly wanes with every new weekly report, a phenomenon that cannot be explained away by testing rates.
Clearly, this picture points to dangerous waning efficacy that plagues every cohort within a few months.
The bottom line is that during the final week of reporting in Scotland, just 12% of the deaths are among the unvaccinated, and that is including the 21-day grace period of counting the single-jabbed as unvaccinated. Nobody is suggesting that there is no efficacy for some people for a period of time against serious illness before the shots wane. But to suggest that this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, to ignore the negative efficacy on infection which has been true across the board since last summer, and to obfuscate the concern of waning efficacy on critical illness even as they themselves demand boosters defies willing suspension of disbelief.
Unbelievably, PHS admits that the shots first suppress the immune system before they ramp up antibodies. But instead of using this as a strike against the shots, they use that is a strike against the unvaccinated and assert that it is a factor for why you can’t even compare hospitalization or death rates. “Individuals who have not completed their vaccine schedule may be more susceptible to a severe outcome and could result in higher COVID-19 case, hospitalization and death rates in the first and second dose vaccine groups,” claims PHS in the report.
But if that is true, that is the fault of the manufacturers who made a shot that first makes you vulnerable during an ongoing pandemic. It’s one thing to have a shot that makes you more vulnerable for a few weeks during the off-season of a virus. But to do so during the pandemic is akin to telling someone in a foxhole during a firefight that they will be safer in a bunker 100 yards ahead but must first run across the field to get there. The risk of making that run should be counted against the bunker option, not the foxhole.
In other words, as I wrote in my original piece on the Scottish data that was “fact-checked,” “You have to look in totality where we are headed rather than manipulating a snapshot of time.” You can’t just pull out one period of time of some efficacy for some people. You need to consider the following:
- Vaccine injuries short term and long term, known and unknown;
- Other safer treatment options for COVID itself;
- A leaky vaccine that wanes in efficacy and runs the risk of enhancing the virus itself even while offering temporary protection for some;
- The cost to the immune system of constantly boosting people to deal with the abovementioned concern of waning efficacy and enhancement.
The bottom line is that the social media guardians are looking at a snapshot of time. If they were to study the trajectory and progression of the virus and the vaccine throughout the year, they would recognize an unmistakable pattern of waning and then negative immunity. A large study published in the New England Journal of Medicine by Weil Cornell Medicine-Qatar found (table 3) that the Pfizer vaccine waned very quickly after four months. By seven months, when adjusted for those in Qatar who already had prior infection, the Pfizer shot was -4% effective against transmission and just 44.1% effective against severe illness. Also, effectiveness against asymptomatic infection was -33% after seven months.
A Swedish preprint study in October 2021 looked at 1.6 million people in Sweden to examine infection rates and critical illness rates by vaccination status. They found a sliding scale of efficacy that wanes with time, but eventually turns negative. Here is a presentation of fully adjusted vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection for various demographics after 210 days:
Clearly, it was known early on that the vaccine wanes and has the potential to go negative even with Delta, for which both natural infection and the vaccines offered better immunity. It stands to reason that this is certainly the case with Omicron, making it abundantly clear that the negative efficacy rate has more to do with potential Trojan horse antibodies than it does with vaccination-status bias of testing rates.
So what’s the solution? Go for a fourth and fifth shot? This week, Israeli researchers published a preprint study on the efficacy of the fourth shot, which found that after just one month, Pfizer’s shot is down to 30% efficacy and Moderna is down to 11%. At the same time, “Local and systemic adverse reactions were reported in 80% and 40%, respectively.” They conclude, “Low efficacy in preventing mild or asymptomatic Omicron infections and the infectious potential of breakthrough cases raise the urgency of next generation vaccine development.”
Remember, the FDA’s industry guidance for EUA status (p. 13) requires a 50% threshold of efficacy to even get emergency use authorization, much less full approval!
Thus, who is actually misreading or inappropriately using data here?
The Israeli study also concluded that “most of these infected HCW [health care workers] were potentially infectious, with relatively high viral loads. Thus, the major objective for vaccinating HCW was not achieved.” Full stop. The biggest public policy debate is over the fact that somehow you not getting the shot affects other people. Here we see that even people with four shots were still infectious with high viral loads. To what degree the shot offers some degree of protection from serious illness for some people for some period of time should be a decision left to the people. Perhaps other people would like to choose therapeutics that offer protection that don’t run the risk of severe adverse reactions. But none of that should have bearings on another human being, and none of that should justify human rights violations.
This entire saga began with censorship of the work of others because the narrative assertions could not withstand peer review. Now we’ve come full-circle, in which the governments’ own data must be censored because the narrative assertions cannot withstand the scrutiny of their own data.
Amazon takes action against Black Lives Matter’s official nonprofit, boots org from charity program
Reported by CHRIS ENLOE | February 18, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/amazon-boots-blm-nonprofit-from-charity-program/
Amazon has booted the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation from its charity platform amid scrutiny over the group’s finances and glaring lack of fiscal transparency. AmazonSmile — a corporate program that donates money from eligible Amazon purchases to designated charities and nonprofits — suspended BLMGNF from the platform this week for being out of compliance with nonprofit standards in many states, the Washington Examiner reported.
A representative for Amazon explained:
We offer the AmazonSmile program to make it easy for our customers to support their favorite charitable organizations, and we work to offer a broad spectrum of organizations, including those working to end racial injustice. States have rules for nonprofits, and organizations participating in AmazonSmile need to meet those rules. Unfortunately this organization fell out of compliance with the rules in several states, so we’ve had to temporarily suspend them from the program until they come into compliance.
We hope that happens soon, and in the meantime, customers who have already selected them in AmazonSmile are able to continue supporting them, and we’ll hold any funds accrued until they’re back in compliance.
The news comes after Black Lives Matter shut down its online fundraising platform upon receiving legal threats from attorneys general in California and Washington, who demanded that the group explain what happened to $60 million the organization had at the end of 2020.
Not only are those states questioning the group’s finances, but BLMGNF remains out of compliance with nonprofit financial standards in Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Virginia.
However, instead of disclosing the truth about where the finances went, the Washington Examiner reported on Wednesday that BLM is using an “unusual accounting maneuver to further delay reporting” of its 2020 finances. By changing the group’s accounting period from a calendar year to a July to June fiscal year, BLMGNF has until mid-May to explain its undisclosed financial data.
According to the Examiner, the move also “enabled BLM to report a sparse, short-year Form 990 to the IRS that covered its activities during only the first half of 2020,” an important detail considering donations to the group exploded after May 2020 upon the protests stemming from George Floyd’s murder.
Since BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors resigned as head of the group last year, BLMGNF has remained without a stated leader, and thus it remains legally unknown who controls the $60 million in assets.
Laurie Styron, executive director of CharityWatch, has described BLMGNF as “a giant ghost ship full of treasure drifting in the night with no captain, no discernible crew, and no clear direction.”
Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Who’s Your Daddy?
A.F. BRANCO | on February 18, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-whos-your-daddy/
Trudeau is acting more like a communist dictator reminiscent of Mao, Stalin, and Castro.
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.
Jason Whitlock: ‘Freedom, opportunity and self-determination’ go ‘hand-in-hand with Christianity’
Reported By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter | Wednesday, February 16, 2022
Read more at https://www.christianpost.com/news/jason-whitlock-slams-demonization-of-canadas-freedom-convoy.html/
A prominent political commentator suggested that government opposition to the “Freedom Convoy” of truckers protesting the Canadian government’s ongoing coronavirus mandates stems from a “demonization” of “freedom, opportunity and self-determination” that goes hand-in-hand with Christianity.
On Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Tuesday, the eponymous host devoted his opening monologue to addressing the crackdown imposed by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the truckers who have formed a “freedom convoy” in the nation’s capital of Ottawa. The truckers have gathered in Ottawa to protest the requirement that truck drivers who travel over the United States-Canada border as part of their job have to either get the coronavirus vaccine or quarantine upon re-entry into the country.
Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act on Monday in response to the protest, which has gone on for multiple weeks. The never-before-used law gives the Canadian government the authority to implement “special temporary measures to ensure safety and security” in a “critical situation of a temporary nature” that “seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it.”
The Emergency Act also allows the Canadian government to implement “special temporary measures to ensure safety and security” in a situation that “seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada.” Trudeau elaborated on what the invocation of the Emergencies Act will mean in a press conference on Monday.
“The police will be given more tools to restore order in places where public assemblies … constitute illegal and dangerous activities such as blockades and occupations,” he said. “These tools include strengthening their ability to impose fines or imprisonment.”
Trudeau further stated his intention to direct financial institutions to begin “regulating and prohibiting the use of property to fund or support illegal blockades.” He then insisted: “We’re not suspending the fundamental rights or overriding the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We are not limiting people’s freedom of speech. We are not limiting freedom of peaceful assembly. We are not preventing people from exercising their right to protest legally.”
After Carlson contended that Trudeau had “canceled democracy” by invoking the Emergencies Act against peaceful protesters, he brought on sports reporter and host of the “Fearless” podcast Jason Whitlock to react to the Canadian government’s treatment of the truckers.
“The things going on in Canada are foreshadowing or working in parallel, in concert with the events happening here in this country,” Whitlock said.
Whitlock classified both the Freedom Convoy and Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot as demonstrations of “opposition to the Left and their secularization of American society,” and described the governments’ responses to those events as examples of “demonizing freedom.” He maintained that the U.S. government’s response to peaceful protesters on Jan. 6 was very similar to Trudeau’s response to the Freedom Convoy: “They’ve thrown people in dungeons, in dungeons, for trespassing in the Capitol.”
“America has been built upon freedom, opportunity and self-determination,” he added. “That’s what made us the envy of the world.”
Whitlock also contrasted the qualities that built the U.S. with what he views as the new objective of the government, namely, to ensure “equity, inclusion and diversity.” Whitlock explained that while “freedom, opportunity and self-determination” are on “you and me as individuals to go get,” equity, inclusion and diversity are “controlled by elites and governments.” He maintained that “freedom, opportunity and self-determination” go “hand-in-hand with Christianity.”
Whitlock suggested that the continued secularization of Canada has played a role in the government’s apparent hostility toward “freedom, opportunity and self-determination.”
“And if you go look at Canada and in the ’50s and ’60s, that country, like 65% of them, went to church regularly on Sundays. They dropped that down to about 10% now. And we don’t even value freedom right now because we don’t understand its importance and they’ve handed us equity, diversity and inclusion.”
Whitlock also condemned the push to label those who value freedom as “racists” and “sellouts.” He warned that “We need to pay attention to what’s going on in Canada and pay attention to what’s going on in this country, we are being bulldozed right now, those of us that love freedom, opportunity and self-determination and Jesus Christ.”
“Secular societies have a very tough time preserving human rights,” Carlson concluded. “They talk about human rights constantly, but they are always the most repressive societies.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
Twitter suspends popular account dedicated to highlighting liberal hypocrisy
Reported by CARLOS GARCIA | February 16, 2022
Twitter was hammered after suspending a very popular account for simply posting screenshots of contradictory tweets that highlighted liberal hypocrisy. The anonymous account was named “Defiant L’s” and had over 350,000 followers when it was suspended.
The creator of the account reportedly sent a message to his social media followers explaining that Twitter had accused them of trying to evade a ban by using a second account, which is against Twitter’s rules.
“So about an hour ago my account @DefiantLs was suspended. The word currently is ‘ban evasion’ though I’ve never had an account suspended so I’ve never had to ban to evade. Regardless, I’ve appealed the suspension and will keep everyone updated,” read the statement.
“Thanks for all the support and kind words. I hope to chat with you all again soon,” they added.
The move by Twitter was denounced by many on the social media platform, including Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).
“Twitter suspending Defiant L’s is the most defiant L of all,” he tweeted.
“Absolutely ridiculous that twitter suspended @DefiantLs. Twitter has a right to make ridiculous moderation decisions but that doesn’t mean they aren’t ridiculous.” replied attorney Casey Mattox.
“So Twitter suspended @DefiantLs for posting nothing but screenshots of public account’s actual tweets,” responded Dana Loesch.
“So @DefiantLs made the crucial error of screenshotting tweets people on the Left didn’t like — and then got suspended for that. Sounds legit,” tweeted Ben Shapiro.
“I am so mad right now. There is no way @DefiantLs broke any of Twitter’s rules. How dare he expose Liberal hypocrisy!” read another tweet.
On Wednesday, the account was restored. By then it had garnered more than 458,000 followers.
Here’s more about big tech censorship:
Here’s Why Twitter and Facebook Are Silencing Conservatives www.youtu
BLM-connected bail fund secures release of activist accused of trying to murder politician, supporters sing ‘Oh Happy Day’
Reported by CHRIS ENLOE | February 17, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/blm-connected-bail-fund-secures-release-of-activist-accused-of-trying-to-murder-politician/
A community bail fund connected to Black Lives Matter has financed the bail for an activist accused of attempting to murder a Louisville mayoral candidate. Quintez Brown, 21, was charged with attempted murder and four counts of wanton endangerment after police say he attempted to assassinate Democratic mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg on Monday.
Greenberg explained that he and four staff members were meeting Monday morning when a man entered his campaign office, “pulled out a gun, aimed directly at me and began shooting.” Fortunately, no one was killed or injured in the incident, although a bullet allegedly grazed Greenberg’s clothing. Brown was quickly detained after the incident, when a police officer spotted a man who matched the description of the perpetrator. Brown was located less than a half-mile from Greenberg’s campaign headquarters, and he was carrying a loaded 9mm magazine in his pants pocket when police detained him.
The Louisville Community Bail Fund, which is supported by Black Lives Matter Louisville, secured Brown’s release from jail by posting his $100,000 bond, WHAS-TV reported. Brown was released from jail Wednesday evening. As he was being led outside, supporters sang, “Oh Happy Day.”
Chanelle Helm, co-founder of the Louisville Community Bail Fund and a BLM Louisville activist, told WHAS that Brown’s case is about “mental health issues.” She reportedly claimed that activists suffer from PTSD because of their activism. Helm also explained that posting Brown’s bond was necessary to both keep him safe and provide him with mental health assistance.
“They are calling for this individual, this young man who needs support and help, to be punished to the full extent,” Helm told WHAS. “It is a resounding message that people are down for the torture that has taken place in our jails and prisons.”
Metro Council president David James (D), however, said Brown should not have been bonded from jail and said the group that secured his release will be responsible for his actions should he violate the terms of his bond. While awaiting trial, Brown will be subject to a home incarceration program, which includes wearing a GPS monitoring device, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer (D) said.
“Quintez Brown’s bond and release have been decided independently by a judge. Mr. Brown will be monitored by the Department of Corrections, consistent with Home Incarceration Program rules and regulations and any conditions set forth in the court order, including use of a GPS monitoring device and home checks. Alerts will notify HIP personnel if the device is tampered with or goes outside the geofence,” Fisher explained in a statement.
Ann Coulter Op-ed: Have At ‘Em, Antifa! The New Free Speech
Commentary by Ann Coulter | Posted: Feb 16, 2022
Read more at https://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2022/02/16/have-at-em-antifa-the-new-free-speech—p–n2603402/
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com., and WhatDidYouSay.org.
Source: AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus
In 2017, as fear and loathing of Donald Trump seized the nation, a U.S. mayor got a four-star resort to cancel a conservative conference by threatening to withdraw police and fire protection.
With all the media blubbering about “attempts to DESTROY our democracy” and violations of “constitutional norms,” it’s remarkable that this Howitzer blast to the First Amendment has received barely any attention, much less the front-page coverage it deserves, not even from the conservative press.
The banned conference, you see, was about immigration.
Wow, our elites really don’t want Americans thinking about immigration! (Remember, kids: It’s a right-wing conspiracy theory — and racist, to boot! — to think that liberals are using mass immigration to change the country.)
The sponsor of the conference was VDARE, a long-standing immigration website espousing ideas that are basically identical to Trump’s 2016 immigration promises — both before he made them and after he broke them. The main difference is that the arguments on VDARE are expressed in proper English, and the writers actually believe what they say.
As the 2016 election demonstrated, these ideas are quite popular with a certain segment of voters. Not everyone, just enough to elect a president no one thought could ever be elected, who was loathed by the media, and who was outspent 2-to-1.
Named for Virginia Dare, the first European born on U.S soil, VDARE promotes the novel idea that U.S. immigration policy should benefit Americans. (Obviously, that includes white, Hispanic, Asian and black Americans — whom, by the way, mass immigration hurts the most.) Naturally, therefore, it has been designated a “white supremacist” website by the country’s largest hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Four months after VDARE signed a contract to hold its annual conference at the Cheyenne Mountain Resort in Colorado Springs, the local mayor, John Suthers — nominee for the Liz Cheney Profiles in Courage Award! — issued a public announcement accusing VDARE of engaging in “hate speech” and urging the resort to cancel (OK, whatever), but also vowing to deny “any support or resources to this event” if the resort honored the contract.
Hey Antifa, in case anybody’s interested — if you firebomb this conference, we won’t be sending any firetrucks. And if you want to attack the attendees, there won’t be any police showing up to stop you.
The next day, the resort canceled the contract and, per the agreement, paid a kill fee. VDARE sued the mayor, alleging a violation of its First Amendment rights.
Here’s the frightening part: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit (one Obama judge and two G.W. Bush judges; one dissent) found for the mayor on the grounds that it’s possible that the resort canceled NOT because the mayor announced that there would be no police or fire protection, but because of … CHARLOTTESVILLE!
Which VDARE had nothing to do with. (Again, VDARE is an immigration website, not a street protest organization.)
If the Supreme Court does not agree to take up this case and brutally slap down the 10th Circuit, “free speech” will be officially limited to speech acceptable to Antifa, working hand-in-hand with liberal mayors and governors.
I have long maintained that the left never truly cared about free speech. They merely pretended to in order to protect the people they actually supported: communists and pornographers. That was the sort of “speech” that used to get banned.
But today, the speech that gets banned includes statements like: There are only two genders; Maybe we shouldn’t defund the police; Affirmative action is unjust; Masks don’t work — No they work! No, they don’t work! Also, apparently, speech asserting that mass immigration has not been an unalloyed good for our country, contributing to our prosperity, cohesiveness and happiness.
One of Justice William Brennan’s hallowed quotes is: “[T]he government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” Those stirring words were in defense of flag-burning. And here’s a famous one from Justice William O. Douglas: “Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.” That was about communists.
But ever since conservative speech became the target of censors, liberals adore governmental suppression of speech. (The one, lone exception that proves the rule: Nadine Strossen, former president of the ACLU and author of “HATE: Why We Should Resist It With Free Speech, Not Censorship.”)
As the 10th Circuit explained, conservative speakers should have no expectation of police and fire protection. Specifically, the majority opinion declared: “What VDARE wanted, it had no right to demand — municipal resources to monitor a private entity’s private event.” (Monitor? How about “That the city not refuse to send police officers and firetrucks”?)
So I guess we can forget that sonorous horse crap about the First Amendment protecting ideas that “society finds … offensive or disagreeable.” The left’s new model is a public-private partnership to prohibit speech unacceptable to Joy Ann Reid.
Henceforth, blue states and cities will be free to shut down conservative speakers, MAGA meetings, Daughters of the American Revolution gatherings or anti-mask protests. Some jackass mayor will claim that the conservatives are threatening to engage in “hate speech” and deny them police and fire protection (then sit back and wait for the accolades from the media).
With midterms approaching, conservatives are feeling giddy. Everything the left holds dear — open borders, “racial equity,” Defund the Police, critical race theory — is toxic to voters. Woo hoo! We’re winning!
Not so fast, patriots. While you fist-pump, liberals are busy institutionalizing the censorship of conservatives throughout the nation. You want to talk about “institutional bias”? How about the systemic bias against any ideas unacceptable to progressives being baked into American society?
If the Supreme Court fails to overturn the outrageous opinion in VDARE Foundation v. City of Colorado Springs, free speech’s gravestone will read: “Bedrock principle of a nation; 1791-2022.”
Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Fowl Play
A.F. BRANCO | on February 17, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-fowl-play/
Democrat Chickens are coming home to roost like Defund Police, Crime, Inflation, CRT, Russia Collusion.
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.
Meet The Sex Shop Founder Who Is Grooming Children Through Books In School Libraries
REPORTED BY: SPENCER LINDQUIST | INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM | FEBRUARY 16, 2022
This article features obscene quoted material.
As parents across the nation wake up to the threat that the American educational system poses to children, many have taken note of the sexually explicit, politically motivated literature that has made its way into public and school libraries.
In Wyoming, community members notified the police department about explicit books in the local library’s youth section. “Sex is a Funny Word,” written by Cory Silverberg and illustrated by Fiona Smyth, is one such book. It was placed on the American Library Association Reading List for 2016. Intended for those as young as 7-year-old second graders, the book has been featured in middle school libraries and discusses the “subjects of transgender identity, intersex conditions, and masturbation.” It also erroneously claims that “having a penis isn’t what makes you a boy. Having a vulva isn’t what makes you a girl. The truth is much more interesting than that!”
This type of propagandizing has become standard for the left-wing extremists embedded in our education system. But what makes it all the more astonishing is both the thoroughly unnerving — and previously unreported — history of this book’s author and the institutional support that’s propelled him to notoriety.
From Sex Shops To School Libraries
Cory Silverberg’s website links to the four books he’s written. Each one focuses on the same thing: sex. With the exception of “The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability,” which he coauthored with Miriam Kaufman and Fran Odette, the author’s work is aimed at children. His latest book, “You Know, Sex,” another collaboration with Smyth, is available for pre-order and discusses “pornography,” “stigma,” and “gender.” He calls the book “essential for kids.” His website bio states, “Cory’s life is full of kids. All of them know where babies come from. Some know more.”
Who is this man so intent on informing your children not only about sex, but about pornography, transsexuality, and masturbation? On his website, which advertises children’s books, the author cites himself as a “founding member of Come As You Are Co-operative,” an anti-capitalist sex shop in Toronto, which he also links to.
As the Toronto Star noted years ago, this isn’t just any sex shop. This is a “beginner’s sex store.” The outlet noted that the store hoped “to hold an off-site sex-education workshop for parents of children aged 7 to 12, one that will focus on more than reproduction.” The Star went on to quote Silverberg as saying, “Our overall focus is pleasure-based rather than fear-based.”
The shop’s website includes a section that catalogs the owners’ media appearances. One edition of Fab magazine, published on February 7, 2007, includes an article titled “Come As You Are Celebrates 10 Years.” It spares no details, highlighting a “Japanese rope bondage” workshop, while also graphically describing a real life, in-person “workshop” that featured sexual demonstrations from two naked men.
The disturbing focus on children that is so clear on Silverberg’s personal website is just as apparent on the sex shop’s website. Right next to ads for the exact type of products you’d expect a sex shop to sell, is a “Kids, Parents, and Teens Books” section. The section boasts “sex positive guides for younger folk.”
The kid’s section carries books like “Gender Creative Child,” a guide to masturbation, and “Woke Parenting,” which seeks to help readers “raise your kids to be feminist, anti-racist,” and “gender-inclusive.” Silverberg’s own books are also featured on the site.
Involvement In Curriculum Development
The author’s involvement in Ante Up reveals a conscious desire to embed his distorted worldview into schools. The organization advertises “socio-emotional learning” curriculum that “focuses on supporting educators of color and working-class educators in unlearning the white supremacist ableist heteropatriarchal ways of writing and educating others.”
The sex shop co-founder is joined by such esteemeed co-collaborators as Clarissa Francis, who cut squarely into the Babyon Bee’s marketshare when her bio explained that she “developed the Let Freedom C.U.M. Sexuality Workshop Series to equip Black sexuality professionals, and the aspiring sexually liberated, to recognize and utilize multi-disciplinary approaches to discussing Pleasure Activism as a tool for Black Sexual Liberation.”
The organization seems to have courted favor with various political bodies in New York. Ante Up’s founder Bianca Laureano “wrote the sexual and reproductive justice discussion guide for the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene,” according to her bio. Silverberg spoke on “Sex Is a Funny Word” for the NYC Department of Education’s Office of Curriculum, Instruction, and Professional Learning.
Institutional Support of Extremism
It isn’t a fluke that a leftwing sex shop founder has been propped up as an authority on sexuality, with direct access to children. Media and education institutions, alongside several leftwing activists, have helped mainstream such fringe beliefs. The author is praised because of, not in spite of, the extremism of his sexual worldview.
That “Sex is a Funny Word” was lauded by Kristin Russo on behalf of BuzzFeed as “revolutionary” tells you everything you need to know, but the outlet was one of many institutions to lend its support.
The book won the American Library Association’s Stonewall Award and was celebrated by the School Library Journal, which called the book “exceptional” specifically because of “its introduction of the subjects of transgender identity, intersex conditions, and masturbation.” The organization publishes roughly 6,000 book reviews every year and bills itself as “the premiere publication for librarians and information specialists who work with children and teens.”
Lambda Literary, which “nurtures and advocates for LGBTQ writers,” heaped praise on the book, noting that it took “his radical approach to sex education” featured in his first book even further. It goes on to discuss the role that the book can have in cementing cultural shifts. During an interview with the organization, the author pointed out that some of his critics believe that he is “warping people’s ideas of gender.” He flatly responded, “Maybe I am.”
Various activists, each of whom is committed to overthrowing healthy conceptions of sex, lauded the book alongside these institutions in reviews posted on Amazon.
Andee Hochman is an accomplished leftwing activist who wrote a book all about upending traditional notions of family. It was named “one of the 100 most important feminist books of the 20th century by Sojourner magazine.” Hochman celebrated “Sex Is a Funny Word’s” “radical and urgent message – sexuality with a side of social justice,” also expressing glee that one of the children in the book was portrayed as non-binary. Her lone critique? The text was too small.
Transgender activist and author of “My New Gender Workbook” Kate Bornstein was similarly impressed, writing a review that proposed the book as a viable alternative to college, graduate school, and even “years of therapy.” This is high praise, especially from an activist who wrote the “Step by-Step Guide to Achieving World Peace Through Gender Anarchy and Sex Positivity.”
Aidan Key, who leads trainings in schools, remarked that the book enables readers to “step out of today’s binary gender paradigm,” while Slate’s Rachelle Hampton lauded the book because it “humorously tackles topics from gender to masturbation” and was “leaps and bounds ahead” of other books “in terms of how progressive it is.”
But Huffington Post outdid both Slate and BuzzFeed years ago when they offered the author a platform and even hosted a symposium on reshaping America’s sexual norms with him and more established leftwing activists. The author’s extreme views were given the patina of normalcy through the presence of more mainstream activists like notable author Esther Perel and the widely published Ian Kerner, who talk less of childhood masturbation and more of feminism and relationships. They were also joined by academic Leonore Tiefer, who was involved in the leadership of an organization intent on keeping perversity like “Sex is a Funny Word” in school libraries. Tiefer won an award named after Alfred Kinsey, a hero of the pro-pedophile group NAMBLA.
What’s so telling isn’t the book itself, but that the beliefs behind it, undoubtedly considered reprehensible by massive swaths of the world, have been intentionally mainstreamed by both an activist base and an institutionally backed political movement that’s hostile to traditional notions of decency. No wonder parents are getting active.
Cory Silverberg did not respond to a request for comment.
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.
What Are You Hiding, Joe? Biden Admin Begs Court to Bury Bombshell Report on Dominion Voting Machines
Reported By Jack Davis | February 15, 2022
Read more at https://www.westernjournal.com/hiding-joe-biden-admin-begs-court-bury-bombshell-report-dominion-voting-machines/
The Biden administration is urging a federal judge not to issue any form of a report about potential flaws in the Dominion Voting Systems’ equipment used in Georgia, even though both sides in a court case over the machines want at least a version of the report to get out.
U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg is considering releasing a redacted version of a report from J. Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer science professor, according to Just the News.
Totenberg shipped the full, unredacted report to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, which is part of the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security, and has indicated she wants to give the public a redacted version of what Halderman wrote, Just the News reported.
CISA opposes that step, even though Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger supports the report becoming public, if only to prove his argument that the report isn’t credible.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the case have suggested Totenberg release a redacted version of the report within 30 days of when it was sent to CISA, according to The Associated Press.
However, in a filing last week, CISA attorneys urged that the court hold off giving anything to anybody until the agency decides what should be released based on its Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure process.
The filing states that “premature disclosure of Dr. Halderman’s report, even in redacted form, could, in the event any vulnerabilities ultimately are identified, assist malicious actors and thereby undermine election security.”
The filing states that CISA will let the court know when that review might be completed, and how much information the public ought to have.
The filing also warns that “CISA typically would not release a report such as Dr. Halderman’s at the conclusion of the CVD process; it would, however, disclose necessary information about any vulnerabilities and associated mitigations.”
Even the idea of releasing a redacted version did not find favor with CISA.
“CISA is particularly concerned about dissemination of potential vulnerabilities—even in redacted form—before CISA and the vendor have been able to address them through appropriate mitigation action. Such premature disclosure increases the risk that malicious actors may be able to exploit any vulnerabilities and threaten election security. CISA respectfully submits that, in order to best promote the security of the nation’s critical infrastructure, any vulnerabilities should be disclosed,” the filing said.
The agency said it will offer a timeline at a later date but suggested nothing would happen quickly.
“CISA is thus committed to taking these steps expeditiously and will seek to complete the process as promptly as possible. But the timeline also depends on the actions of a range of other actors outside CISA’s control. A 30-day timeline may be impractical in this situation, despite best efforts and prioritization of this work,” the filing said.
“CISA understands the urgency given the upcoming elections in which this voting equipment is presently planned to be used. Yet CISA can neither control how quickly any necessary mitigation measures are developed, made available, and implemented, nor at this time can CISA anticipate with any degree of reasonable certainty how long the process may take,” the filing said.
In the filing, CISA said that part of its review it must “coordinate between and work with the reporting source of the potential vulnerabilities (here, Dr. Halderman) and the vendor (here, Dominion), to analyze the potential vulnerabilities, including the risk they present; develop mitigation measures to mitigate the risk of the potential vulnerabilities, as needed; facilitate sufficient time for affected end users to obtain, test, and apply any recommended mitigation measures prior to full public disclosure of the potential vulnerability; and strive to ensure accurate and objective disclosures by the vendors.”
The report in question is part of a long-running lawsuit that seeks to change Georgia’s system for voting. More importantly, it is a piece of the wider discussion about potential election fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
To date, no one has produced any evidence or documentation that proves the machines were tampered with in 2020. Dominion, which was the target of multiple post-election allegations, has fought back, suing several of those who claimed its machines were part of an election fraud conspiracy.
In its reporting, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has indicated that the Halderman report, completed last year, describes how someone could, in theory, hack the system to change votes, without saying whether or not this was ever accomplished.
“Georgia voters face an extreme risk that [ballot marking device]-based attacks could manipulate their individual votes and alter election outcomes,” Halderman declared in a signed statement filed with the court last year, as The Daily Beast reported in January.
In a news release posted to the Georgia Secretary of State Office website on Jan. 27, Raffensperger called for releasing the report — to show that its criticisms of the state’s voting methods is unwarranted.
The report is “not an objective, academic study by a non-biased actor. It is assertions by an individual who is paid to espouse opinions supporting the elimination of electronic voting systems to help a lawsuit brought by liberal activists, including one funded by Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight Action,” the news release stated.
“Sensationalized media articles and misleading reports from paid activists notwithstanding, Georgia’s election system is safe and secure,” Raffensperger said in the release.
The release included a statement from Dominion President and CEO John Paulos, criticizing the Halderman review.
“Security assessments of any system, including voting systems, should always include a holistic approach of all safeguards in place, including procedural and technical safeguards,” Poulus said in the release.
“There is a reason why U.S. voting systems rely on bipartisan election officials, poll-watchers, distributed passwords, access controls, and audit processes,” Poulus said, adding that Halderman’s review “did not take this approach.”
“Dominion supports all efforts to bring real facts and evidence forward to defend the integrity of our machines and the credibility of Georgia’s elections.”
Contributor,
Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.
Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco
A.F. Branco Cartoon – In Deep Schiff
A.F. BRANCO | on February 15, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-in-deep-schiff/
The Durham Investigation is pointing at the Hillary Campaign for likely spying on 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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