SUMMING UP THE WEEK
April 29, 2022
Archive for April, 2022
The Left Is United by Who They Despise, Not What They Support
POSTED BY: SPENCER LINDQUIST | APRIL 29, 2022
Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/04/29/the-left-is-united-by-who-they-despise-not-what-they-support/
The theories of a French philosopher might hold the key to understanding the left’s organizational success – and the means to defeat the woke regime.
SPENCER LINDQUIST
VISIT ON TWITTER@SPENCERLNDQST
While the right continues to undergo a process of factional introspection, it can be easy to forget that our opponents in the culture war aren’t a monolith either. And while it seems that the Cathedral pushes our society to the left via a unified front, the progressive coalition’s unity is not just sustainable, it’s artificial.
The left’s ability to patch together a truly bizarre coalition is, however, undeniably impressive. It’d appear they’ve learned how to apply the Saul Alinsky-esque tactics of community organizing across, rather than just within, communities. How else can one explain the puzzling composition of the coalition? Consider just how divergent the interests and identities of so many of the Democratic Party’s supporters truly are.
What, for example, do the drug-addled Antifa of Seattle, the residents of CHOP, have in common with old money East coast liberals with summer homes in Nantucket? What do the technocratic middle managers in the hills of Palo Alto share with illegal immigrants on the other side of Silicon Valley? What does your average attendee of the Women’s March share with an H1B recipient from China or India, and what do either have in common with a hardcore Black Lives Matter activist? Perhaps more glaring than the rest, what is it exactly that a transgender activist in San Francisco and a traditional Muslim can bond over?
Is the progressive mythos of “global citizenry” really that binding? The reality that this coalition is maintained while leftwing messaging amplifies, not downplays, the role of identity makes it all the more intriguing. Unifying this bloc is no small feat.
Progressivism’s Enemies Provide Scapegoats
In trying to discern how the left has effectively bound together a coalition of disparate interests, it is vastly more useful to examine what they oppose rather than the policies they support. It’s much easier too.
One would think that natural political discord would occur between those who want to “eat the rich” and the rich themselves, or between those who abide by a patriarchal sexual ethic and a movement that endured a collective aneurysm when Florida told them teachers couldn’t talk about sexuality with elementary schoolers. The natural splintering of this leftwing coalition is delayed through what the French philosopher Renee Girard referred to as the scapegoat mechanism.
Through the scapegoat mechanism, internal social conflict between groups or individuals can be deferred by identifying a villain, the scapegoat. The scapegoat is held responsible by the conflicting parties, who mutually, although not always consciously, cast the blame on those who simultaneously fulfill the role of the victim and the villain.
This scapegoat then cannot be regarded as a guiltless Christ figure who dies with the sins of its sacrificers, but is identified as the very source of the sin — the inciter of conflict. Accordingly, overcoming this scapegoat is naturally regarded as a necessary prerequisite to the avoidance of conflict.
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains: “the victim must be thought of as a monstrous creature that transgressed some prohibition and deserved to be punished. In such a manner, the community deceives itself into believing that the victim is the culprit of the communal crisis, and that the elimination of the victim will eventually restore peace.”
Identifying our woke regime’s scapegoats isn’t difficult. Simply observe the cultural messaging from any of the institutions that are owned and operated by progressives. The regime media and their allies throughout much of the government, academia, and the non-profit complex offer frequent reminders of who you are supposed to disdain.
Masculine men are turned into scapegoats when they are dubbed toxic, sexist enforcers of patriarchy. Christians similarly face accusations of oppressing women and those who are LGBT. White people are also approved targets, thought to be inherently racist and privileged, simultaneously the beneficiaries and the managers of an intangible but ever-present system of oppression. Even stable nuclear families are to be viewed with skepticism, either for perpetuating gender roles or straining the environment by daring to have kids.
The terms for the regime’s scapegoats are many. Hostility for the “deplorables,” the sexists and the racists, the rednecks and the retrogrades, the bigots, the “karens” and all different stripes of -phobes, is what holds together such a fragile coalition. Party operatives blame their internal conflicts on those who are regarded as the oppressors and pit Americans against one another. The terms differ but serve the same purpose: to designate a scapegoat as a regime-approved target.
Those who fall into one of the several oppressor identity categories but align with the left are offered the opportunity to prove themselves – but never absolve themselves – as dutiful allies through ritualistic self-degradation. If they’re servile enough, they might even get promoted to the rank of “co-conspirator,” delaying their inevitable designation as scapegoats until their expediency runs dry.
The grand irony is of course that none of these collectives wield significant power and are instead openly maligned by the ruling class. Nevertheless, we are constantly told that America and her institutions are engaging in organized oppression on a mass scale.
In the left’s worldview, our institutions enforce the patriarchy and the gender binary, all while they are governed by white supremacy. It’s a self defeating argument when one realizes that it is these very power structures that pay diversity consultants their exorbitant fees, fund pride parades, push transgenderism, and adopt discriminatory affirmative action policies. It is, of course, vital to note that the right’s gripe should be with these hostile institutions, not the everyday Americans who are influenced by them, to the detriment of all.
Bloc-Busting
The simplest way to expose the incongruity of the leftwing coalition is to merely ask questions that highlight the absurdity of the progressive bloc. Raise ethical inquiries about abortion or transgenderism among Democrat-aligned Muslims, or ask Austin tech workers why they support H1B visa programs that threaten their job security. Ask progressive white women if they truly believe that they and their “white tears” will be able to maintain their rapidly deteriorating status among the oppressed and the immunity that comes with it.
Question radical feminists who rage against toxic masculinity, asking why they support mass immigration from highly patriarchal Islamic countries. Or ask a Seattle communist what the appropriate tax rate is for the millionaire who funded the neoliberal candidate he ended up voting for.
This must be done without trafficking in the same dangerous divisiveness that the left used in their ascent to power, without engaging in scapegoating ourselves. The goal is not to weaponize the coalition’s parts against itself because the coalition isn’t the problem — it is the institutions that sought to bind their base together by haphazardly casting blame on entire collectives.
Done correctly, this approach will offer much needed nuance and obstruct the woke regime’s attempt at fostering conflict. It will also expose how Democrat apparatchiks and their co-conspirators across sectors have taken advantage of their constituency while they constructed it, weaponizing identities in cynical power games.
It’s a necessary step in ensuring that whatever unity our country attains is based on healthy, sustainable foundations — not institutionally manufactured disdain for the regime’s scapegoats.
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.
U.S. Special Forces Veterans Rescue Afghan Family Biden Abandoned, Reunite Them with American Father
REPORTED BY: JORDAN BOYD | APRIL 29, 2022
It had been more than a year since Hashmatullah Niazy, a U.S. citizen, last saw his wife, Freshta, and four young children when they finally reunited in Austin, Texas this month.
JORDAN BOYD
VISIT ON TWITTER@JORDANBOYDTX
While thousands of illegal immigrants pour across the southwest U.S. border daily, Afghan refugees abandoned by the Biden administration during the Afghanistan withdrawal are still struggling to gain legal entry to the United States.
It had been more than a year since Hashmatullah Niazy, a U.S. citizen who emigrated from Afghanistan, last saw his wife, Freshta, and four young children when they finally reunited in Austin, Texas this month. Niazy became a U.S. citizen in 2020 through the Special Immigrant Visa program after working as a translator for the U.S. military in Afghanistan. He began translating and training recruits at the Kabul Military Training Center in 2007 after his older brother died in combat while working with special forces. When Niazy obtained his U.S. visa in 2014, he resigned from his job and flew to the states.
Niazy told me he wanted to bring his family over with him, but every time he tried to initiate the immigration process, his wife was pregnant and wanted to avoid strenuous travel. Freshta and the children eventually joined the backlogged SIV immigration process before the Taliban took over the country, but their quest for permanent U.S. residency was derailed when President Joe Biden initiated the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan last fall.
I first reported on Niazy’s family situation in September 2021 when his brother, wife, and kids were all stranded in a Taliban-infested Kabul. At the time, Niazy was already in the United States, working nights and eagerly building a life for his family in Texas. But his excitement for his family’s new life in America was blunted when he realized they might not make it past the crowds at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul to get on an evacuation flight out of Afghanistan.
“Suddenly the Taliban took over the country and now we were like lost,” Niazy told me.
That’s when “angels from the sky” came in.
The Escape
After weeks of chaos at the Hamid Karzai International Airport, where some translators and their families were among the more than 200 people killed by a suicide bomber on August 26, Freshta and the kids, ranging in age from 3 to 12 years old, finally escaped Kabul at the end of September with the help of a large group of former U.S. soldiers, some trained in special operations.
Jim Young, Dan Fickel, Keye Perry, Joe Penkala, and another man named “Tom,” who is still in active government service and declined to give his last name, all graduated from West Point in 1994. When they saw the crisis in Afghanistan, they banded together to do everything they could to rescue Americans and Afghan allies the Biden administration had left behind. They enlisted the aid of several other former service members including Ryan Timoney, West Point class of 1993 graduate Dave Abrahams, retired Special Forces officer Matt Coburn, former Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, and Helen Jbeily of California Republican Rep. David Valadao’s office to actively shepherd Freshta, her brother-in-law, and her kids to the overcrowded, dangerous airport for evacuation while avoiding the Taliban as much as possible.
I talked to Penkala, a retired U.S. Army officer, about the rescue efforts after the Niazy family’s first attempt to seek evacuation at the airport.
“We had sort of an up and down type of situation, even after we had taken over his case, and had managed to get the family back to [the airport]. And it was through no small effort on the part of some folks from the Special Operations community, one individual in particular who was retired,” Penkala told me over the phone. “We actually got them to the North Gate [of the airport] so this is the second time they had made it to the airport. And even though there was an obvious way to bring them in, frankly, they were still left stranded. Nobody would open the gate for them even though at one point we only had about 25 people in front of the North Gate.”
At one point, Penkala told me that, “the Taliban began beating some of the local Afghans,” forcing the on-the-ground rescuers to adapt as the Niazy clan retreated to their apartment.
During that time, Niazy said his wife “never lost her courage.”
“There was the time that I lost my hope. That was the time when my wife said ‘It’s okay. Whatever it takes me to get my kids to their dad, I will do that,’” Niazy said. “So that was a time when she gave me the courage, she gave me the hope and I needed it.”
Efforts to orchestrate the evacuation of the Niazys and hundreds of others from the clutches of the Taliban were largely funded by one of Young’s business partners, Zekelman Industries out of Texas, which donated $1 million out of the $1.1 million required to reunite the Niazy family and other refugees after another sponsor backed out.
After days of chaos, the Niazy family and 528 other American citizens, legal permanent residents, their spouses, and their children were finally able to flee Afghanistan unharmed.
“We’re so thankful for all these great humans. From God first and then from all these humans that helped me and came into my life, me and my wife,” Niazy said.
Evacuation Was Only The Beginning
Even though the Niazy family applied to permanently rejoin the head of their household in the United States, it was a long and difficult process between September of last year and early April this year, when they were finally permitted to set foot on American soil.
“This was a family who was already in the process and had paperwork prepared. And, frankly, the wife was married to a U.S. citizen. This is the immediate family of a United States citizen and it took private efforts,” Penkala said. “And once we got them out of harm’s way, it took an additional five months to come into the country.”
During that time, Freshta and her children were at a refugee camp in the United Arab Emirates. While the family was safe from the dangers the Taliban posed to them, they were stuck in limbo and at the mercy of the American bureaucracy.
Penkala said “there were some folks who were kind enough to work through their connections to get them some additional food and supplies and that type of thing” but that didn’t help reunite the family.
Niazy admitted that the experience induced many “sleepless nights” for him as he anxiously waited for the green light. In total, it took more than five months for Niazy, an American citizen who served with U.S. forces in combat, to legally relocate his wife and kids to Texas.
The American Dream
The Niazy family may have had to jump through multiple hoops that illegal immigrants at the Southern border don’t, but a lack of help from the U.S. government hasn’t hampered their enthusiasm for the American Dream.
While Niazy works as an engineering technician, Freshta and the children are acclimating to their new lives along with Niazy’s parents, who also emigrated to the United States. Once the family moves to a new apartment, three of the four children will start attending school.
In just a couple of weeks, Freshta and the Niazy children are expected to receive their Social Security numbers. But for now he is thankful that his immediate family made it to a free country where his daughters can attend school.
“It’s the teaching of our parents that wherever you live, treat it as your home, keep it clean, and keep the environment clean and also treat your neighbors good,” Niazy said. “With this [Taliban] regime, no one is happy and everybody lost the hope that [Afghanistan] will ever be a free country.”
When I video chatted with the family last week, Niazy had just woken up after working a night shift at his engineering job and Freshta was preparing food in the family’s apartment kitchen. The children were happily chattering with each other as they played with toys. The youngest one gave me a shy wave.
“This is a beautiful life,” Niazy said as he bounced his daughter on his lap. “I’m very excited and very happy. And I am praying for those who helped me, these beautiful humans in my life.”
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
University unlawfully stops Christian students from debating gay marriage: lawsuit
Reported By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor | Thursday, April 28, 2022
Read more at https://www.christianpost.com/news/christian-students-sue-university-of-idaho-for-censoring-speech.html/
Three Christian college students have sued the University of Idaho for alleged wrongful punishment for expressing traditional views on marriage and sexual ethics on campus. Students Peter Perlot, Mark Miller and Ryan Alexander of the Christian Legal Society sued the university in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho, Central Division on Monday.
The defendants named in the suit include University President C. Scott Green, Dean of Students Brian Eckles, Office of Civil Rights & Investigations Director Erin Agidius and OCRI Deputy Director Lindsay Ewan. According to the lawsuit, the three students went to an LGBT event on campus seeking to represent a biblical perspective on marriage and sexuality. When a student approached to ask their views, they offered their perspectives and gave the student a note expressing an interest in continuing the dialogue. Soon after, however, the Christian students were given “no-contact orders” from the OCRI, which prohibited them from communicating with the student.
“The CLS members did not receive notice that anyone had complained about them and were not given an opportunity to review the allegations against them or defend themselves,” according to the suit.
“Instead of allowing the students to disagree civilly and respectfully with one another and to discuss these important issues, the University chose instead to censor Plaintiffs.”
The students are being represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a law firm that has argued religious liberty cases at the U.S. Supreme Court on numerous occasions. ADF Legal Counsel Michael Ross said in a statement released Tuesday that he believed students “must be free to discuss and debate the important issues of our day, especially law students who are preparing for a career that requires civil dialogue among differing viewpoints.”
“Yet the University of Idaho is shutting down Peter, Mark, and Ryan because of their religious beliefs. This is illegal behavior from any government official, and we urge the university officials to right their discriminatory actions immediately,” Ross stated.
Jodi Walker, the university’s senior communication’s director, told The Christian Post that the academic institution “cannot discuss pending litigation or specific student cases.”
Walker explained that the no-contact order was “a supportive measure available to a student under Title IX” and that “these supportive measures must be enacted” when a student requests them.
“When a complaint is made that qualifies under Title IX, the university must make the student aware of the supportive measures available,” noted Walker.
Walker directed CP to a July 2021 guidance document from the U.S. Department of Education titled “Questions and Answers on the Title IX Regulations on Sexual Harassment.”
Under the question on “supportive measures,” the guidance explained that schools have “discretion and flexibility to determine which supportive measures are appropriate.”
“The preamble states that a school must consider ‘each set of unique circumstances’ to determine what individualized services would be appropriate based on the ‘facts and circumstances of that situation,’” stated the guidance.
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All-Star Panelist Roger Simon Discusses the ‘Gay-B-Cs’ eBook on Williamson County Kindergartner Computers
| Julie Carr
Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist and The Epoch Times’ Editor-at-Large Roger Simon in-studio to discuss the recent finding of Woke curriculum on kindergartners’ Epic App in Williamson County.
Leahy: We welcome to our studios, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, novelist, former head of Pajamas Media, my former boss at PJTV, and now the senior editor at The Epoch Times, Roger Simon. Good morning, Roger.
Simon: Good morning! I’m actually up this morning. I don’t know why.
Leahy: By the way, I bring greetings from Jenny Beth Martin. We interviewed her. Jenny Beth Martin, the founder of Tea Party Patriots.
Of course, it was actually you set up the arrangement for the first time that all the Tea Party folks met back in April of 2009. That was 13 years ago. I know.
Simon: Everything is sounding so long ago.
Leahy: I know, but you were out in L.A. You flew us all out, and we had several programs about the Tea Party movement. That’s the first time I met Jenny Beth Martin. She sends you her very best regards.
Simon: Where is she now? She’s in Atlanta running Tea Party Patriots.
Simon: Not that far away. She told me that she’s given this year so far 57 speeches. So, out there and pushing the constitutional populist conservative agenda. Roger, now you are, I think, one of the most popular, if not the most popular columnist at The Epoch Times, a great news outlet.
I got to tell you, apparently, Roger, the spirit of Dr. Seuss has resurrected and you’ve got a story coming out. Listen to this, folks. N is for nonbinary, T is for trans.
Simon: (Laughter) Well, that, it turns out, is a local story because it came to me by folks here in Williamson County.
Leahy: Isn’t Williamson County the best public school system in the state of Tennessee?
Simon: Oh, yeah. It’s Republican heaven, except for the schools, because the thing that these folks were complaining about is that there was a book on their kindergarteners’ iPads. Kids take iPads home from school now.
Leahy: I think some take iPads, some take Google Chrome.
Simon: Same difference.
Leahy: They take them home for the weekend. They use them during the day.
Simon: Sometimes it depends on what grade they’re in. Sometimes it’s daily. But anyway, they opened this up and it said they had something called the ABCs. The Gay-B-Cs.
Leahy: Hold on. The Gay-B-Cs? Not the ABCs?
Simon: This is for kindergarten.
Leahy: Oh, my goodness.
Simon: So things are like N is for [non]binary and T is for trans. I know. Dr. Seuss, of course, has been drummed out of the literature by the Left. So if I ran the zoo, said Gerald McGrew, I’d be dying binary too.
Leahy: That’s very good, Roger.
Simon: Well, I write for a living anyway. And none of the success of Dr. Seuss, although I have only been canceled by Facebook.
Leahy: More of your books are in print than his these days.
Simon: Although I was canceled by Facebook. That’s true. It just happened two days ago, and they won’t tell me why, but I don’t care. So further rhetoric in this thing is, C is, needless to say, for “coming out” and D is for drag.
Leahy: This is for kindergartners, on the iPad of kindergartners in Williamson County, public schools?
Simon: All of them, yes. Until yesterday when it was discovered and they went to the authorities there and they go “oops.” And they removed it.
Leahy: It’s been removed now.
Simon: Yeah it got removed in a hurry I guess out of embarrassment. But why it got there in the first place is something people ought to think about.
Leahy: Wow. How did it get there in the first place?
Simon: Well, they bought an app, and the app I think it’s called Epic.
Leahy: Epic, right?
Simon: The app is called Epic, and that app has 40,000 books on it so they couldn’t possibly vet them. That’s ridiculous. There may be more things just as absurd as the Gay-B-Cs on there.
Leahy: Okay, so this for kindergartners it’s been removed now, but it was up there, and the Gay-B-Cs include C is for coming out. D is for drag, N is for non-binary, T is for trans. This is what every kindergartner in Williamson County was exposed to until yesterday.
Simon: You’ll never guess what B is for. B is for bi. They include a doggie along with it so when B is for bi you can shout it out loud, I like boys and girls and that makes me proud.
Leahy: This is for kindergarten?
Simon: Yes. Ages 4 through 8. It says on the book. It goes up to the third grade.
Leahy: At least they had the good sense to remove it.
Simon: Yes.
Leahy: What else is out there?
Simon: We don’t know.
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “The Gay BCs story time” by Parker Schultz.
Court observers believe Chief Justice Roberts just signaled that abortion rights could be overturned
Reported by CHRIS ENLOE | April 29, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/court-observers-believe-roberts-signals-major-abortion-decision/
Court observers suggested Thursday that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has signaled the court will significantly slash abortion rights. In December, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The case is centered on a Mississippi abortion law that prohibits abortion beyond 15 weeks of gestation.
At issue is whether “all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.” The case ultimately challenges the precedent established by Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which both upheld the right to elective abortions under Roe v. Wade and affirmed the unfettered legality of abortion within the first 24 weeks of pregnancy.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision in Cummings v. Premier Rehab Keller, ruling that “emotional distress damages are not recoverable in a private action to enforce either the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 or the Affordable Care Act.”
The case is completely unrelated to abortion. But what is interesting, however, is who wrote the majority opinion: Roberts. This matters because the court heard oral arguments for nine cases in December; thus each justice was most likely assigned to write the opinion of one case. Therefore, if Roberts wrote the opinion in this case, it suggests he is not writing the opinion for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
“Roberts’ authorship of this opinion suggests (but does not guarantee) that he is NOT writing the abortion decision. Otherwise, he would have two majority opinions from the December sitting and some other justice would have none,” observed Bloomberg News Supreme Court reporter Greg Stohr.
Michigan Law School assistant professor Leah Litman pointed out the significance of this: Because Roberts supports narrowing abortion access but not overturning Roe v. Wade completely, the fact that he may not have been assigned the Dobbs opinion hints that a consequential ruling is forthcoming, probably a rolling back of abortion rights.
Stohr, however, cautioned against rushing to assumptions, because Justice Neil Gorsuch authored two opinions for cases the court heard in November. Still, the distribution of opinion-writing is normally balanced.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board theorized recently that Roberts may attempt to recruit at least one conservative justice to uphold the Mississippi law without a wholesale nullification of abortion rights. It has happened once, when Gorsuch joined Roberts and the court’s left-leaning justices to protect LGBT rights, but whether it will happen again remains to be seen.
For what it’s worth, the Journal predicted the outcome of Dobbs will be a 5-4 ruling with Roberts joining the court’s left-leaning justices and Justice Samuel Alito writing the majority opinion.
Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Up in Smoke
A.F. BRANCO | on April 29, 2022 at | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-up-in-smoke/
Chris Wallace left Fox News to jump on the now-canceled streaming channel CNN + costing them 3oo million.
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into 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 President Donald Trump.
This Insane 2020 Time Magazine Article Explains Exactly Why the Left Fears Losing Twitter
REPORTED BY: DAN O’DONNELL | APRIL 28, 2022
An astonishing but largely forgotten story in Time Magazine explains why there is so much leftist concern today about Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter.
DAN O’DONNELL
Of all the hysterical leftist reactions to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter on Monday, MSNBC host Ari Melber’s was easily the most revealing.
“If you own all of Twitter or Facebook or what have you, you don’t have to explain yourself,” he gravely intoned during his show Monday evening. “You don’t even have to be transparent. You could secretly ban one party’s candidate or all of its candidates, all of its nominees, or you could just secretly turn down the reach of their stuff and turn up the reach of something else, and the rest of us might not even find out about it ‘til after the election.”
You don’t say. This was in fact the way the left used social media to win the 2020 presidential election. They even admitted it openly in a stunning yet largely forgotten February 2021 article in Time magazine entitled “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign that Saved the 2020 Election.”
“For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President,” wrote reporter Molly Ball. “Their work touched every aspect of the election.”
And they wanted credit for it, Ball continued, “even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream — a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.”
Their aim, they insisted, wasn’t to rig the election but to “fortify” it against then-President Donald Trump and his allies, whom they believed to be a threat to democracy itself.
“Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.”
The final piece was critical, especially in the waning days of the campaign, when an October surprise in the form of Hunter Biden’s laptop threatened to derail his father’s candidacy and undo the organized left’s hard work.
The New York Post’s exclusive story dropped like a grenade less than a month before Election Day, providing “smoking-gun emails” showing that the younger Biden introduced his father “to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company.”
The emails, the Post explained, were obtained from a computer dropped off and apparently forgotten at a repair shop in Delaware. Under the terms of the repair agreement, the store’s owner took possession of the laptop when it was deemed to be abandoned. Twitter and Facebook, though, determined without any evidence that the emails were actually “hacked materials” and thus distributed in violation of their terms of use agreements.
Facebook quickly acted to limit the reach of the story, while Twitter took the extraordinary step of locking the Post’s account and preventing other users from sharing its story or even pictures from it. Neither Hunter Biden nor the Joe Biden presidential campaign denied that the laptop was Hunter’s, and the younger Biden’s business partner, Tony Bobulinski, went on the record a few days later with documents that confirmed the Post’s reporting, which seemed to uncover an international bribery scheme.
It didn’t matter. Once 50 obviously partisan intelligence officials issued an evidence-free statement calling the laptop materials “Russian disinformation,” it was determined that they would be censored in both legacy and social media.
Of course, more than a year after Biden was safely elected, both The New York Times and Washington Post confirmed that the laptop was genuine, but the censorship did its job: A Media Research Center poll of swing state voters confirmed that 16 percent of Biden supporters would have changed their votes had they heard of the laptop story, including 4 percent who would have switched their vote to Trump. This obviously would have swung the entire election to Trump, but that would have been an unacceptable result for the leftist cabal intent on “fortifying” democracy by stacking the deck against him. In light of the Media Research Center’s findings, social media censorship was very possibly the most effective way they did it. And naturally they had to brag about it in Time.
“Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories, the viral force of social media and the involvement of foreign meddlers made disinformation a broader, deeper threat to the 2020 vote,” Ball reported. “Laura Quinn, a veteran progressive operative who co-founded Catalist, began studying this problem a few years ago. She piloted a nameless, secret project, which she has never before publicly discussed, that tracked disinformation online and tried to figure out how to combat it.”
She ultimately concluded that engaging with this supposedly “toxic content” or trying to debunk it was ineffective, so “the solution, she concluded, was to pressure platforms to enforce their rules, both by removing content or accounts that spread disinformation and by more aggressively policing it in the first place.”
This research armed liberal activists to pressure social media companies like Twitter and Facebook to far more aggressively and creatively enforce their rules, prompting a crackdown on “disinformation” that was in fact completely accurate. Because it was harmful to the effort to “save democracy” and defeat the “autocratic” Trump, it was censored.
“Democracy won in the end,” Ball concluded. “The will of the people prevailed. But it’s crazy, in retrospect, that this is what it took to put on an election in the United States of America.”
This reveals the real threat of Musk’s Twitter takeover: If it is no longer possible to suppress factual information in the name of rescuing democracy from its alleged enemies, then those enemies (read: Republicans) might start winning more elections. And that is simply unacceptable.
Dan O’Donnell is a talk show host with News/Talk 1130 WISN in Milwaukee, Wis. and 1310 WIBA in Madison, Wis., and a columnist for the John K. MacIver Institute.
The Washington Post’s Repulsive Defense Of Twitter Execs Makes Even Elon Musk Look Good
REPORTED BY: MARK HEMINGWAY | APRIL 28, 2022
In buying out Twitter, Elon Musk is more important for what he has revealed than what he has done.
MARK HEMINGWAY
VISIT ON TWITTER@HEMINATOR
Yesterday, amid the ongoing bladder loosening that has accompanied Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, leaks started coming from inside the tech company. Politico reported that “Twitter’s top lawyer reassures staff, cries during meeting about Musk takeover.”
The lawyer, Vijaya Gadde, has played a major role in some of Twitter’s most controversial decisions, such as removing former President Trump and censoring The New York Post from the platform for reporting an accurate story about the damning Hunter Biden laptop weeks before his father was elected president amid real questions about his involvement in his son’s corruption. Gadde’s political motivations don’t seem to be a mystery. Six days before the 2020 election, Politico profiled her under the headline, “Is Twitter Going Full Resistance? Here’s the Woman Driving the Change.” And it’s pretty clear that she contributed to Twitter making at least one terrible decision. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey would later admit the company made a “total mistake” in censoring the story.
By any reasonable measure, Gadde has earned her fair share of criticism — quite literally. Twitter is reportedly paying her just shy of $17 million a year, and one of the main justifications for such exorbitant executive pay, however flimsy, is public accountability. If you must fall on a sword, I imagine an eight-figure bank balance cushions the blow quite a bit. So on Tuesday, Saagar Enjeti, the co-host of the popular online political show “Turning Points,” tweeted a screenshot of the Politico headline about Gadde crying and observed, “Vijaya Gadde, the top censorship advocate at Twitter who famously gaslit the world on Joe Rogan’s podcast and censored the Hunter Biden laptop story, is very upset about the @elonmusk takeover.” Musk himself decided to reply to Enjeti, adding, “Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate.”
That same day, Mike Cernovich, who has a large right-leaning Twitter account, noted that Twitter’s deputy general counsel is Jim Baker, who was previously general counsel of the FBI. While at the FBI, Baker played a very controversial role in the FBI’s discredited investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia. (In fact, here’s Baker being asked about the process for FISA warrants, which were used by the FBI to spy on the former president: “Do I need to have every one of those details? I mean these things are already quite long. Look, it’s an art, not a science.”)
Musk responded to Cernovich’s tweet: “Sounds pretty bad…”
These two interactions would be pretty thin gruel for a news story on their own merits, but Musk is the richest man in the world, and obviously what the new owner says about Twitter is noteworthy.
Anyway, you wouldn’t believe what the Washington Post did next! Or maybe you will.
Stifling Dissent
At 3:03 a.m. Wednesday, the Post dropped its story on the matter: “Elon Musk boosts criticism of Twitter executives, prompting online attacks: The targeting of employees by Musk’s massive Twitter megaphone is a major concern for workers.”
The horror only compounds from there. “Musk’s response Tuesday was the first time he targeted specific Twitter executives by using his nearly singular ability to call attention to topics that interest him,” intoned the Post. “Supporters of Musk, a prolific and freewheeling tweeter with 86 million followers, tend to pile on with his viewpoints.”
To be clear, Musk never said anything specific about Gadde, except to imply her role in the decision to ban The New York Post was wrong — an opinion that isn’t controversial and was publicly stated by Twitter’s previous CEO. As for Baker, Musk was commenting on his previous conduct as a public official, which by any accurate assessment was defined by poor judgment. Regardless, “sounds bad” is not exactly committing to a definitive judgment of the man, much less in his current role at Twitter.
(As for what it says that the FBI’s former general counsel went from a disgraceful role in a spy scandal meant to influence the 2016 election to a lucrative gig at a tech company perhaps best known for its clumsy and dishonest attempts to influence the 2020 election… well, let your imagination run wild. There’s no explanation that isn’t disheartening.)
Neither person was “targeted.” The entire story is more accurately restated by the Washington Post expressing shock and dismay that millionaire tech executives might find themselves receiving public criticism from billionaire tech entrepreneurs. That’s a pretty questionable premise for one of the nation’s most influential news outlets to endorse.
As Mike Solana, no stranger to observing the tech industry, put it, “This is a country of over 300 million people. If the rule for acceptable criticism of powerful executives and state propagandists is ‘can’t lead to *someone else* saying something awful,’ you effectively end all vital dissent. Then, that is of course the point.”
Believe me, when you learn how this story was reported, the notion the Post was trying to stifle dissent is not an outrageous assumption. The Post almost entirely ignored the substance of the criticisms leveled at Baker and Gadde and did not make good-faith attempts to include alternate perspectives.
On Wednesday, Enjeti took to Twitter and blasted the Post’s story, which hinged on his interaction with Musk: “WAPO says I did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Complete BS, they emailed *my producer* at 2am EST…7 hours after @elonmusk replied to my tweet with the following RIDICULOUS questions.” Without waiting for Enjeti to respond, the Post published the story in the middle of the night, less than an hour after asking him for comment.
The questions the Post asked were hilariously loaded. Essentially, Enjeti was asked to explain his villainous behavior:
Does [Enjeti] have any concern that mentioning a specific Twitter exec could result in attacks on that exec? What are the responsibilities here? For example, one of the commenters on the tweets made racist comments against Gadde, and said she should be fired.
What does [Enjeti] hope to accomplish by calling out Gadde and getting Musk involved?
Enjeti was rightly disgusted: “This is a great example of how the media smears you. I make a substantive point, randos say something. Now myself and @elonmusk are somehow racist/responsible for them! All to cover up the fact that they substantively agree with censorship.”
Class Warfare
Aside from their desire to prop up an opaque regime of algorithmic censorship produced by an unholy collusion of tech executives and state propagandists, the more benign explanation for the Post’s motivations — and this in no way negates both motives being true — was summed up by Josh Barro: “The idea that the important thing here is the feelings of Twitter employees (especially senior executives) is just so unhinged. Pure class affiliation on the part of journalists, they consider existing Twitter management to be their partners.”
Indeed, class affiliation increasingly explains this bizarre and indefensible media behavior, as well as their growing inability to describe basic realities. Batya Ungar-Sargon has written a very good book on the problem.
However, if there’s a line between class affiliation and class warfare, the corporate media’s pro-censorship crusade has obliterated it. For a long time, I balked at Trump daring to call the media “the enemy of the people,” but it is becoming impossible to ignore that the media’s motives reflect an “Us” vs. “You” mentality. In this case, as Tim Carney notes, “The best way to understand the media is to ask who do they consider ‘us.’ The college educated progressive high-level tech employees are ‘us’ to the average tech reporter.”
As long as we’re talking about class solidarity, it should also be clear that it would be foolish of anyone critical of the current censorship regime to assume that Musk will be a reliable champion of a set of particular values or whatever else you think might be necessary to preserve America’s legacy of prosperity and ordered liberty. There is no need to go out of your way to defend him, he’s just one very wealthy man, and odds are high he will disappoint you. Maybe he won’t sell his soul to China. Maybe he will get us to Mars. But here and now, Musk is more important for what he has revealed than what he has done.
By merely expressing support for a conception of free speech that Americans almost universally agreed on 15 years ago, he threatens to take a battering ram to the doors of The Cathedral. He is a threat to an existing order that corruptly benefits progressive elites, an unaccountable government, and a media too dumb and pliable to realize there’s no glory in defending someone who makes $17 million a year from mean tweets.
It’s not that any thoughtful American doesn’t have serious reservations about an eccentric billionaire presenting himself as a guardian of the right to free speech. The problem is that we’ve been given a choice between Elon Musk and the demented and hostile worldview chronicled in the Washington Post, and the choice is obvious.
Mark Hemingway is the Book Editor at The Federalist, and was formerly a senior writer at The Weekly Standard. Follow him on Twitter at @heminator
Parents’ lawsuit claims school secretly helped kids adopt new gender identities
Reported By Samantha Kamman, CP Contributor | Wednesday, April 27, 2022
Read more at https://www.christianpost.com/news/parents-sue-school-for-helping-kids-adopt-new-gender-identities.html/
Two pairs of parents are suing the staff of a Massachusetts middle school for allegedly encouraging their children to adopt new gender identities without their knowledge or consent.
Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri, alongside Jonathan Feliciano and Sandra Salmeron, filed the lawsuit on April 12 in a Massachusetts federal district court with the help of the Child and Parental Rights Campaign and the Massachusetts Family Institute. The organizations help parents navigate issues surrounding gender identity and parental rights. Several school officials at Baird Middle School are named defendants in the lawsuit, including Interim Superintendent Lisa Nemeth, former Superintendent Todd Gazda, Baird Middle School Principal Stacy Monette, school counselor Marie-Claire Foley and former librarian Jordan Funke.
Ludlow Public Schools Interim Superintendent Lisa Nemeth did not immediately respond to The Christian Post’s request for comment.
Foote and Silvestri claim that they were unaware of the “transitioning” of their young son and daughter, referred to as G.F. and B.F., respectively, in the filing. They say they became aware after their daughter’s teacher, Bonnie Manchester, told them in December 2020 that their daughter was struggling with her self-esteem. The teacher forwarded the parents an email in which their 11-year-old daughter claimed she was “genderqueer,” citing her new name and pronouns as “he/him.” The parents contacted the school, requesting that the school refrain from discussing the issue with their children and allow them to “direct the mental health care of their children.”
The complaint states that Foote and Silvestri “have sincerely held religious beliefs that human beings are created male or female and that the natural created order regarding human sexuality cannot be changed regardless of individual feelings, beliefs, or discomfort with one’s identity, and biological reality, as either male or female.”
The parents claim they made it clear they would provide their daughter with the help she needed from a “mental health professional,” but they believe the school disregarded their instructions.
Foote and Silvestri claim their daughter “changed her preferred name at least twice since December 2020” without their knowledge and claim the school continues to address B.F. by “whatever iteration of her name she has indicated she prefers” despite their request not to do so. The lawsuit also alleges that the couple’s son has “identified as transgender and requested to be called by a female name,” accusing the school of helping him hide this information from his parents. The lawsuit also describes an assignment given to students in September 2019 by librarian Jordan Funke, which allegedly asked students to create videos of their preferred gender pronouns. B.F. and possibly G.F. participated in the assignment without their parents knowing or consenting to their kids’ participation.
The other set of parents, Feliciano and Salmeron, claim that they “are deliberately hindered from ascertaining whether their children are being secretly counseled about and affirmed in discordant gender identities without their knowledge or consent.”
“[Efforts] to affirm a discordant student gender identity at school violates parents’ fundamental rights under the United States and Massachusetts constitutions and violates children’s reciprocal rights to the care and custody of their parents, familial privacy, and integrity,” the filing states.
The parents also alleged that the school superintendent at the time, Todd Gazda, publicly referred to opposition to gender transitions as “intolerance of LGBTQ people” disguised as “parental rights.” Gazda also reportedly implied that school is the only “safe pace” for students struggling with gender identity. The plaintiffs pointed out that the School Committee did not refute Gazda’s remarks.
The lawsuit accuses Ludlow Public Schools of having a “protocol and practice of concealing from parents information related to their children’s gender identity.”
Ludlow School Committee Chair James P. Harrington told MassLive that the school district’s teachers and staff are looking out for their students’ best interests.
“It’s a slippery slope,” he was quoted as saying. “We want to support our students the best we can. But we should bring parents to the table, and hope they respond in a loving and supportive way as well.”
Bruce Hausknecht, a judicial analyst for the Christian organization Focus on the Family, told The Christian Post that “gender ideology in many of the nation’s public schools is premised upon secrecy and furthered by school policies that consider parents to be the problem, not the solution.” Hausknecht noted how the secrecy in schools regarding students’ gender identities has sparked pushback from parents in some states. He cited Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act as an example, a law that requires schools to inform parents about changes in services that could impact their child’s well-being. Hausknect asserted that the situation in Massachusetts is not unique and that parents “everywhere” must stay “vigilant” when it comes to protecting their children from the “harmful ideologies” their schools may be pushing.
“It is our primary obligation as parents to ‘train up a child in the way he should go…’ (Proverbs 22:6 ESV),” he wrote. “School policies that set schools, not parents, as the final authority are in direct contradiction of that biblical imperative.”
Sage Steele sues ESPN and Disney for treatment following her comments on vaccine mandates, Obama
Reported by PHIL SHIVER | April 28, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/sage-steele-sues-espn-disney/
Longtime ESPN anchor Sage Steele has filed a lawsuit against the network and its parent company, Disney, for allegedly retaliating against her following comments she made about COVID-19 vaccine mandates and former President Barack Obama’s racial identity during a podcast interview.
In her lawsuit, Steele claims ESPN and Disney breached her contract and violated her speech rights by sidelining her and failing to stop colleagues from disparaging her over the remarks.
The suit was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Steele — who has worked as an anchor for ESPN since 2007 — came under fire after an interview with former NFL quarterback Jay Cutler on his podcast, “Uncut with Jay Cutler,” in September, when she criticized Disney’s strong-arming over the vaccine.
“I didn’t want to do it,” she told Cutler. “But I work for a company that mandates it, and I had until Sept. 30 to get it done, or I’m out.”
“I respect everyone’s decision, I really do, but to mandate it is sick, and it’s scary to me in many ways,” she added. “But I have a job, a job that I love and, frankly, a job that I need.”
Steele also criticized former President Barack Obama’s decision to identify as a black man even though he, like her, is biracial.
“Well, congratulations to the president, that’s his thing,” Steele said in the podcast. “I think that’s fascinating considering his black dad is nowhere to be found, but his white mom and grandma raised him, but OK. You do you. I’m gonna do me.”
Front Office Sports reported in October that Steele had been removed from the air by ESPN over the comments, and Steele was also required to issue a public apology. Around the same time, she tested positive for COVID-19, resulting in her missing “SportsCenter” for one week. Steele also was pulled from hosting the espnW: Women + Sports Summit.
“In a knee-jerk reaction, ESPN and Disney relied on the misleading characterizations of her comments, bowed to groupthink and forced Steele to publicly apologize and suspended her for a period of time in October 2021,” the lawsuit alleges, according to the New York Post.
It goes on to say that ESPN “violated Connecticut law and Steele’s rights to free speech based upon a faulty understanding of her comments and a nonexistent, unenforced workplace policy that serves as nothing more than pretext.”
In a statement, Steele’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, said, “ESPN violated her free speech rights, retaliated against her, reprimanded her, scapegoated her, allowed the media and her peers to excoriate her and forced her to apologize simply because her personal opinions did not align with Disney’s corporate philosophy of the moment.”
ESPN responded to news of the lawsuit with a statement of its own.
“Sage remains a valued contributor on some of ESPN’s highest profile content, including the recent Masters telecasts and anchoring our noon ‘SportsCenter,'” a spokesperson said. “As a point of fact, she was never suspended.”
Steele is expected to remain on air while the lawsuit goes through the legal system.
DHS creates ‘disinformation governance board,’ appoints leader who peddled disinformation about Hunter Biden laptop, Trump dossier
Reported by CHRIS ENLOE | April 28, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/dhs-creates-disinformation-governance-board/
The Department of Homeland Security was criticized Thursday over the creation of a new department whose mission is to combat the spread of “disinformation.” According to Politico, the DHS has established the Disinformation Governance Board, which will “coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security, focused specifically on irregular migration and Russia.”
The agency appointed Nina Jankowicz as executive director of the board.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas confirmed the board’s creation on Wednesday after Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.) asked him what steps the DHS is taking to combat the manipulation of black Americans and Hispanics, including migrants, through “misinformation” and “disinformation.”
Making matters worse, Jankowicz is by no measure an objective leader. In fact, the Washington Examiner reported that Jankowicz disseminated information contained in the debunked Christopher Steele dossier and repeatedly downplayed the Hunter Biden laptop story with claims that it was part of a foreign interference campaign. She even described the laptop hard drive — which has been repeatedly authenticated — as a “Trump campaign product.” Jankowicz even appears to oppose free speech. Last week, she told NPR that she “shudder[s] to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms.”
The announcement generated a wave of backlash, both against the creation of the board itself and against Jankowicz as its leader. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has already sent Mayorkas a letter demanding that the board be dissolved immediately.
“I confess, I at first thought this announcement was satire. Surely no American Administration would ever use the power of Government to sit in judgement on the First Amendment speech of its own citizens,” Hawley said. “Sadly, I was mistaken. Rather than protecting our border or the American homeland, you have chosen to make policing Americans’ speech your priority. This new board is almost certainly unconstitutional and should be dissolved immediately.”
Meanwhile, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (R) described the board as the “ministry of truth,” aka the government’s own propaganda office.
“I’m also going to let a cat out of the bag — you’re about to get a lesson in federalism because the free state of Missouri will NEVER let you administer a federal Ministry of Truth. Buckle up!” Schmitt said.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said, “During the worst border crisis in history, Biden’s DHS is creating an Orwellian ‘disinformation governance board’ led by a partisan Democrat who herself spread disinformation. What a disgrace. When Republicans take control, we will fix this.”
Ann Coulter Op-ed: Liberal Doomsday Scenario: Free Speech on Twitter
Commentary by Ann Coulter | Posted: Apr 27, 2022
Read more at https://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2022/04/27/liberal-doomsday-scenario-free-speech-on-twitter—p–n2606452/
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, and WhatDidYouSay.org.
Source: AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File
I want to send flowers and chocolates to the Twitter employee who permanently suspended The Babylon Bee. Maybe a car. Apparently, it was the inanity of that decision that incensed Elon Musk, whereupon he decided to purchase the entire platform to stop the censorship.
Liberals, until five minutes ago: Elon Musk is a climate hero! Electric cars! Solar power! He loves Obama!
Liberals, five minutes ago: He believes in free speech? Fascist!
Loads of liberals are threatening to leave Twitter if Musk’s deal goes through. To those who will miss The New York Times’ Charles Blow, I understand. I will try to ease the pain by tweeting, every day for the rest of my life: “[FILL IN THE BLANK] is racist!”
If you’re wondering why liberals are freaking out over the idea of free speech on one single internet platform, it’s because their ideas are so well thought-out and compellingly argued that they must have total control of all social media, mainstream media, entertainment, elementary schools, colleges, universities, nonprofits, corporate PR departments, government funding agencies, advertising firms and on and on and on. Any interruption to Big Brother being pumped into our brains 24 hours a day, and everything falls apart.
A hysterical Twitter employee in the “toxicity and health” department (I’m not making that up) denounced Musk to a Times reporter, saying, “he doesn’t know anything about our policies and what we do … his statement about our [algorithm] was f—-ing insane … Were (sic) just gonna let everyone run amok?”
Running “amok” is defined as: calling a man in a dress a “man.” That’s the Babylon Bee tweet that led to a Twitter death sentence, with no trial, no due process, no appeal.
Twitter employees, the Times reports, are “worried that Mr. Musk would undo the years of work they have put into cleaning up the toxic corners of the platform.” (Yes, you are correct: These are the same people mocking 4-year-olds trapped in kindergarten classrooms with teachers telling them whiteness is evil and they can be any gender they want.)
Do Twitter employees know how Twitter works? Take a theoretical hate-speaker — a fat-shaming Klanner, an anti-vax Nazi or Dave Chappelle. Their literally murderous tweets are invisible — unless you intentionally, willfully, mindfully click their “follow” buttons. In order to avoid seeing “toxic” tweets, this is what you have to do: NOTHING!
But Twitter moderators are terrified that someone, somewhere, is laughing at a tweet. They are the mutant baby of medieval scolds and the East German Stasi.
Conservatives can only dream of a Twitter without constant, daily self-censorship, without their followers being secretly removed, their feeds hidden, their accounts being shadow-banned — or completely banned.
But what if this is all just Musk doing an elaborate troll?
Somebody should buy Twitter, as I explained last November to the richest person I know under 70. (The richest people I know over the age of 70 are giving all their money to Sen. Tim Scott and Candace Owens to prove they’re not “racist.”)
Here it is, my personal private email, names redacted:
Date: Nov. 30, 2021, at 2:04:51 a.m. EST
Subject: You should buy Twitter and I’ll tell you why …
ALL news comes from Twitter. Facebook is for getting in touch with high school friends and the “topic” groups are mostly nuts — anti-vax, stop the steal, black conspiracy theories. Same w/the newer platforms like Telegram. Snapchat and Instagram are for “influencers,” wannabe Kardashians.
Twitter is where the NYT, Politico and Fox News etc. get their stories and find their guests. Have one of your ppl read my Twitter feed and then watch XXXXX for a week. I’m his unpaid booker and content provider, except, sadly, when I get lazy and he goes off on his own with some moronic “expose” …
No one under 60 watches cable news, but YYYY, who’s about 90, calls me after XXXXX’s show every night and breathlessly tells me about stories that are 12 to 36 hours old on Twitter, half the time from my Twitter feed.
Even w/Twitter’s censorship of conservatives, the smartest right-wing pushback on the news has all come from Twitter. e.g. this week, HUGE meme on Twitter about the establishment media describing the BLM terrorist mowing down the lovely xmas parade in Waukesha as a “car crash,” or “SUV runs into parade.” There was also the msm’s decision to describe every rt-wing response to lib lunacy as “Republicans Pounce …”
There are a lot of smart ppl on Twitter (also idiots, but no one has to follow the idiots) who could never be employed by the NYT, National Review or Fox. Andy Ngo exposing antifa, the anti-CRT guy posting school teaching materials, the guy who keeps graphing mask-wearing vs. covid cases (“I.M.” on Twitter), the real-time videos of BLM riots and arson — none of this would exist but for Twitter.
Before that, the defense of Rittenhouse, Jake Gardner and Nick Sandmann — it all came from Twitter. (Recall National Review was nastily ANTI-Sandmann and anti-Rittenhouse.)
We used to have Drudge, but he’s not serving the function of vox populi anymore. Without Twitter, the only thing Fox News would talk about is the Middle East [We may now substitute “Ukraine”]. All important news comes from Twitter.
Twitter is …
1) where the action is, massively influential;
2) perfect for someone else to take it over and make it better, merely by firing the Twitter censors — Twitter aggressively banned tweets that were pro-Rittenhouse (accurate as it turned out), about Hunter Biden (ditto); plus there’s the aggressive censorship of specific popular conservatives, who are either thrown off (e.g. Gavin McInnes and Milo) or shadow-banned (me and others);
3) it would be pretty easy to turn into a money-making operation! The big issue for all news — TV, cable, Amazon Prime, and all online content is how to get ADVERTISING in front of consumers. No one wants to click through ads. The great thing about Twitter is that you could insert ads in people’s Twitter feeds — and it wouldn’t be annoying. I’ve never understood why Dorsey doesn’t do that. It doesn’t distract much, you just keep scrolling if you’re not interested.
Twitter is a fabulous product. It is, as Musk says, the nation’s public square. With a few minor tweaks — stop being Nazi block-watchers and allow ads in people’s Twitter feeds — instead of Tesla funding Twitter, someday Twitter could fund Tesla.
Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Old Yeller
A.F. BRANCO | on April 28, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-old-yeller/
Biden ending tile 42 is sending a loud and clear message that the border is wide open to all.
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Daniel Horowitz Op-ed: TN legislature passes bill to finally lock up violent criminals
Commentary by DANIEL HOROWITZ | April 26, 2022
In recent years, sentencing for violent criminals has been like common core math. You start out with a sum of 20 years, for example, but somehow even the worst career offenders wind up turning 20 years into 8 years’ time served. Tennessee has become the first state to finally implement truth in sentencing to make sure that a sentence is actually served.
Last week, after a decade of red states promoting the Koch/Soros jailbreak agenda, the Tennessee legislature put victims first and passed true criminal justice reform. HB2656 / SB2248, as amended, requires people convicted of one of nine criminal offense categories to serve 100% of their sentences – no exceptions. This means no good time credits or parole are available for those found guilty of homicide, vehicular homicide, attempted first-degree murder, robbery, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated burglary, or carjacking.
Additionally, those found guilty of 20 slightly lower-level but still significant crimes, such as aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated robbery, burglary, and arson, would still be eligible for good time credits, but only after serving 85% of the sentence.
This bill has reversed the decade-long tide of weak-on-crime legislation percolating through red-state legislatures. For years, we’ve been told that there is somehow an over-incarceration problem with people serving draconian sentences for nothingburger crimes. The reality is that even the most violent career criminals often serve a few months here and there and constantly get out to reoffend. With the growing crime wave in cities like Nashville and Memphis, the role of the de-incarceration agenda is hard to deny.
To begin with, most of the sentencing these days is very lenient. For example, in 2019, out of 17,355 felony convictions in Minnesota, only 3,612 were fully sentenced in accordance with the sentencing guidelines. Once you add all the parole and good time credit programs to that, even the worst career criminals are only serving a fraction of the sentence. This doesn’t even account for all of the ways they plead down throughout their criminal career, thereby incurring a sentence well below the threat level of their criminal proclivities. At a minimum, this bill ensures that violent and dangerous criminals will at least serve the entire sentence they are given. This bill should serve as a model in every other state, as the crime wave continues to grow.
The American Conservative Union, which hosts the annual CPAC gathering for alleged conservatives, vigorously opposed this bill because it apparently still believes there are too many, rather than too few, criminals behind bars. However, no sane person can believe we need to let more people out of prison.
Those who think we don’t have an under-incarceration problem should consider the following statistics from the FBI in 2019. Just 61.4% of the 14,325 homicides, 32.9% of the 124,817 rapes, 30.5% of the 239,643 armed robberies, and 52.3% of the 726,778 aggravated assaults were “cleared” cases. That means that in 5,529 murder cases, 83,752 rape cases, 166,552 armed robbery cases, and 346,673 aggravated assault cases, there was no arrest. Hence, just in the four violent categories alone, there were over 758,000 violent crime cases that went without a resolution just in one year.
What about duration of incarceration? According to BJS, among the prisoners released from state prison in 2018 – before some of the recent “reform” – they only served, on average, 44% of their sentences. Even for murder, it was only 58% of their sentences. The median length of time served for murder was less than 10 years in 30% of the cases and was more than 20 years in only 42%. The median time served for rape was less than 10 years in 64% of prisoners. In total, 71% of those serving time for a violent crime category served less than five years, and nearly half served less than two years.
In reality, the bromide of “criminal justice reform” for “low-level, nonviolent offenders” was always a ruse. Now groups like the ACU openly admit they oppose even truth in sentencing, much less enhanced sentencing, for the most violent and career criminals.
The truth in sentencing bill passed the Senate 20-6 and the House 86-9 with bipartisan support and now heads to Governor Bill Lee’s desk. The bill was sponsored by House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who made a rare speech from the well of the House chamber to present his bill. This legislation piggybacks on last year’s truth in sentencing law, which closed the early release loopholes for crimes traditionally committed against women and children, such as rape and child abuse.
Reminiscent of some of the debates over COVID, proponents of weak sentencing are demanding to see “studies” showing more jail time leads to less crime. Speaker Sexton believes no such study is needed when common sense dictates fewer criminals on the street equals less crime. “This solution creates the toughest penalties in America for violent criminals; it also establishes a firm line for criminals not to cross,” said the speaker in a statement to TheBlaze. “If they do, punishment will be swift and severe under our new law. I do not need a fancy study to tell me more bad guys in jail with longer sentences reduces crime.”
It is shocking how red-state governors and legislatures have failed to pursue these ideas until now. Even blue-state governors are now vulnerable to defeat because of the growing crime wave. A recent Gallup poll showed that 53% of Americans worry a “great deal” about crime and it ranks as the third most important issue on the minds of voters. A Pew Research poll showed that crime is the number-one issue among black voters.
With surging crime in cities like Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee had the sixth highest murder rate in 2020. In both 2020 and 2021, Memphis set new homicide records and now boasts the ninth highest homicide rate in the country and is ranked the most violent metro area in the country. The homicide rate in Tennessee has gone from a low of 5.2 per 100,000 in 2013 to 9.6 in 2020. Motor vehicle thefts have spiked from 183 per 100,000 to over 300. Even smaller cities like Chattanooga have become increasingly dangerous.
Kudos to the Tennessee legislature for recognizing that weak-on-crime policies plague red states just as much as blue states and need to be rectified. Along with the passage of robust medical freedom bills and a new ivermectin over-the-counter bill, the Tennessee legislature is on its way to forging an agenda of freedom and public safety that should be emulated in every red state. If every GOP supermajority state would use its power to its fullest, we wouldn’t have to wait for ineffective GOP majorities in the irremediably broken federal system to make a difference.
Transgender HS science teacher tells US Education Dept. senior adviser: Students should be taught that ‘not all egg producers are women’
Reported by DAVE URBANSKI | April 27, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/teacher-eggs-women-doe/
A transgender high school science teacher — during a video conference that included a U.S. Department of Education senior adviser — declared that students should be taught that “not all egg producers are women” along with other gender-inclusive principles.
In a Twitter video posted by Libs of TikTok, the teacher in question — Sam Long — tells other conference participants — including Christian Rhodes, senior adviser to the secretary at the Department of Education — that it’s necessary to be a “stickler for inclusive language” in the classroom. Rhodes — who previously served as chief of staff for the DOE’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education — is seen nodding as Long speaks about inclusivity. Long adds that “I mostly taught biology,” which is about “life and living things” — and that “we need to be clear that we’re including all living things, including all people …”
Long then says when teaching about “cell division or reproduction, a lot of textbooks, a lot of existing teaching will say, ‘Women produce eggs; males are more likely to be colorblind; the mother carries the fetus for this many months.'” Long then says “some ways we can show our support for trans and non-binary students is to clean up that language … we can be more accurate and be more inclusive.”
The teacher then declares, “I would say, ‘No, it’s not women that produce eggs; it’s ovaries that produce eggs.’ That’s accurate. That’s precise. We’re acknowledging that not all women produce eggs, and not all egg producers are women, for example. And we’re teaching students that language matters.”
Long — the only individual heard speaking in the video — is in the bottom-left square in the following screenshot; Rhodes is in the bottom-right square:
The date and purpose of the video conference aren’t clear, although Libs of TikTok said in the text accompanying the video that the Department of Education “held a training for teachers to learn how to be inclusive” toward “tran[s] and non-binary K-12 students.” Libs of TikTok also said the USDE is “promoting” the ideas the teacher espoused in the clip:
The Department of Education on Wednesday didn’t immediately reply to TheBlaze’s request for comment regarding its position on gender-inclusive language — such as “not all egg producers are women” — or the video conference’s purpose.
In the video, Long mentions a website — Gender-Inclusive Biology — that Long founded with “two other trans-identified high school teachers” as well as the site’s “language guide“ that helped inform Long’s inclusive-language push stated in the clip.
Long wrote last month in a National Education Association member spotlight that “when students learn biology, they are entitled to see their lives reflected in this so-called study of life. I grew up learning that a baby is made when a sperm cell from the dad meets the [egg cell] from the mom and that’s not good enough. For today, that language doesn’t represent our diverse genders, sexualities, and families in our schools. So, I created genderinclusivebiology.com, a growing collection of resources and training on how to teach accurate inclusive and future-ready biology, and I look forward to continuing the work of creating classrooms where every student belongs.” The essay’s bio states, “Sam Long is a Science Teacher in Denver, Colorado.”
California ninth graders taught that ‘gender identity’ is ‘one’s innermost concept of self’
AMERICAN NEWS | Apr 26, 2022 | Hannah Nightingale, Washington DC
Read more at https://thepostmillennial.com/california-ninth-graders-taught-that-gender-identity-is-ones-innermost-concept-of-self/
The school states that it’s important to understand sexuality so that students can “establish a culture of respect,” “reduce bullying, harassment, and violence,” and “better understand others and ourselves.”
April 26, 2022 10:47 AM2 Mins Reading
A gender and sexuality lesson for Los Alamitos Unified School District ninth graders was recently posted to Twitter, revealing what students in the California school district are learning regarding the subject.
In a thread of screenshots posted by Ian Prior, the school states that it’s important to understand sexuality so that students can “establish a culture of respect,” “reduce bullying, harassment, and violence,” and “better understand others and ourselves.”
The slide show explains different gender identities, explaining that the term itself means “One’s innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither — how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves. One’s gender identity can be the same or different from their sex assigned at birth.”
It also explains that Gender Dysphoria is “strong, persistent feelings of identification with the opposite gender and discomfort with one’s own assigned sex that results in significant distress or impairment.”
The slide show notes that Gender Expression refers to outward expressions of femininity or masculinity, and notes the condition of being born intersex as one in which “a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male.”
The lesson also describes different sexual orientations, including heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, and asexual.
The lesson includes the popular gender unicorn graphic from Trans Student Educational Resources, which explains gender, sex, and different types of attraction. While Prior initially said that the lesson was for seventh and eight graders, he later corrected it to say that it’s for ninth graders, and included a link to the lessons for those earlier grades.
In one lesson, middle schoolers are taught similar concepts of gender identity and sexual orientation.
Another lesson discusses HIV and AIDS, saying students should, by the end of the lesson, be able to describe the impact of the diseases on families and individuals, and says students should be able to “Express concern for persons with disabilities or illness, including those infected with HIV.”
A following lesson teaches students about the prescriptions used to prevent and treat HIV, and teaches students about the ways to prevent catching the illness.
Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Ghost of Theories Past
A.F. BRANCO | on April 27, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-ghost-of-theories-past/
Some are asking about the ghost Biden was shaking hands with, by the looks of his policies it was Karl Marx.
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into 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 President Donald Trump.
Thousands of ‘Ballot Mules’ Delivered Tens of Thousands of Votes for Biden? NY Post Publishes Devastating Claims
Reported By Jack Davis | April 25, 2022
Read more at https://www.westernjournal.com/thousands-ballot-mules-delivered-tens-thousands-votes-biden-ny-post-publishes-devastating-claims/
A new report that analyzed the forthcoming movie from conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza warns that based on the 2020 election, Democrats have a “cunning plan” for the future.
After previewing the documentary “2,000 Mules,” New York Post columnist Miranda Devine wrote that “pesky evidence is starting to emerge of systematic schemes to subvert the electoral process — which must not be allowed to happen again if we are to restore faith in elections.”
Devine called the movie — which debuts next month — “the most compelling evidence to date” concerning the race between then-President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden and said research conducted by the election integrity group True the Vote reveals what appears to be “suspicious ballot harvesting.”
The Western Journal reached out to the Biden White House for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
The research Devine cited relied on sophisticated tracking and surveillance video to reach its conclusions.
True the Vote acquired 3 trillion geo-location signals from cellphones that were near ballot drop boxes and election nonprofits in the weeks leading up to the Nov. 3, 2020 vote.
“Then they went searching for ‘mules,’ operatives who picked up ballots from election NGOs — such as Stacey Abrams’ outfit, ‘Fair Fight Action’ — and then carried them to different drop boxes, depositing between three to 10 ballots in each box before moving to the next,” Devine wrote.
Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, said she chose the term “mule” for the people involved in the operation because “it felt a lot like a cartel, it felt like trafficking … This is in its essence ballot trafficking … You have the collectors. You have the stash houses, which are the nonprofits. And then you have the mules that are doing the drops.”
Devine wrote that the network included individuals in battleground states who collected ballots from organizations that were ostensibly out to help everybody vote and then put them in drop boxes, a few at a time.
“The extent of the operation is jaw-dropping,” she said.
“When a mule is matched with video, you can see the scheme come to life,” she wrote.
Devine noted one snippet from the film.
“A car pulls up at a drop box after midnight. A man gets out, looks around surreptitiously, approaches the box, stuffs in a handful of ballots and hightails it out of there. Then he goes to the next box, again and again,” she wrote.
D’Souza said the efforts of the mules could have swung the election based on his contention that at least 380,000 potentially fraudulent votes were tracked by the project.
“Shockingly, even this narrow way of looking at just our 2,000 mules in these swing states gives Trump the win with 279 electoral votes to Biden’s 259,” he said.
Devine said that’s hard to prove. “There is no way to scrutinize those ballots now and see if they are fraudulent but if we must have drop boxes at election time, they need to be secure and under 24/7 surveillance,” she said.
She said Republicans cannot spend all of their time on the 2020 election because it “makes them look like sore losers.”
However, she also noted an interview with Trump in which he compared the election to a diamond theft at Tiffany’s.
“There’s no getting the diamonds back now. But we can stop the store being robbed again,” Devine wrote.
Contributor, News
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.
Supreme Court debates if football coach’s on-field prayer is religious exercise or ‘coercion’
Reported By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor | Monday, April 25, 2022
Read more at https://www.christianpost.com/news/supreme-court-debates-right-for-football-coach-to-pray-on-field.html/
A high school football coach fired for praying on the field after games had his case argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, with justices debating whether his religious practices were coercive or constitutionally protected.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, with coach Joe Kennedy being represented by former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement.
In 2015, Kennedy, an assistant coach at Bremerton High School in Washington state, was punished and eventually fired by the Bremerton School District for praying on the 50-yard line after games. In his opening argument, Clement said that the coach’s prayers were “doubly protected by the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses” of the First Amendment of the Constitution.
“When the school district fired him for that fleeting religious exercise out of endorsement concerns, it not only violated the First Amendment, but it ignored a veritable wall of this court’s precedents that make it clear that a school does not endorse private religious speech just because it fails to censor it,” said Clement, who served as the U.S. solicitor general and later acting attorney general during the George W. Bush administration.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor pressed Clement about when a school official’s religious practices can be considered private and when they are considered public, such as if a teacher is reading the Bible aloud before class begins.
Clement answered that if a teacher read her Bible “before the bell” or “after the bell” and did so “either silently or barely audibly,” that would be protected as “private speech.”
Sotomayor argued that a teacher is “on duty” while remaining “in the classroom” and their actions could be curtailed by their employer. Sotomayor brought in the example of Kennedy, asking why he should not be considered “on duty” while remaining on the football field after games.
“The school has a fair amount of flexibility to determine what the duties of the coach are,” replied Clement. “Here, they did not say that his duties were an all-encompassing supervisory role.”
“It’s in the record, and I think undisputed, that the coach could do other things, other private things of a comparable amount of time because this is a fleeting religious exercise.”
Justice Elena Kagan expressed concern with Kennedy’s prayers putting “a kind of undue pressure, a kind of coercion on students to participate in religious activities when they may not wish to.” Clement countered that the school district did not cite “coercion concerns” when they punished Kennedy years ago but instead expressed concern over “endorsement” issues.
Justice Neil Gorsuch referenced the 2000 case of Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe. The high court ruled that a Texas town’s practice of having students holding prayers over a loudspeaker before high school football games was unconstitutional. Clement said Kennedy’s practice was “radically different” from the situation in the Santa Fe case, noting that the loudspeaker and the process of determining who gave prayers involved a more blatant example of government speech.
Clement compared Kennedy’s actions to professional athletes who cross themselves before a play or kneel with thanks to God after scoring a touchdown, noting that these were recognized as individual actions.
Richard B. Katskee, legal director at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, presented oral arguments on behalf of the school district.
“No one doubts that public school employees can have quiet prayers by themselves at work, even if students can see,” said Katskee. “If that were the issue, there wouldn’t be a case here because the district allowed that. But that wasn’t good enough for Mr. Kennedy. He insisted on audible prayers at the 50-yard line with students.”
Katskee said that “some of these kids were just 14 years old.”
“Mr. Kennedy’s actions pressured them to pray and also divided the coaching staff, sparked vitriol against school officials, and led to the field being stormed and students getting knocked down.”
Justice Clarence Thomas asked Katskee whether a high school football coach taking a knee during the national anthem to protest racism was also an unacceptable form of government speech. Katskee answered that if, for example, “the coach goes to the center of the field in front of everyone during the national anthem,” then it is “absolutely” constitutes “government speech.”
Thomas asked for a clarification on how it was government speech, with Katskee responding that it was a “public act and public statement” and could not be considered a private action.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked Katskee if a coach was allowed to do the sign of the cross before a game, to which Katskee replied that “if the coach is doing it while not making himself the center of attention at the center of the field, it’s perfectly fine.”
“I don’t know how we could write an opinion that would draw a line based on not making yourself the center of attention as the head coach of a game,” Kavanaugh countered.
In 2015, Bremerton officials suspended and then fired Kennedy for his practice of praying on the football field after games, with the coach suing the school district in 2016. A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Kennedy in 2017, with the Supreme Court initially refusing to intervene in 2019. In 2020, Judge Ronald Leighton ruled in favor of the school district, concluding that it had a right to restrict religious expression to prevent government endorsement of religion. In March 2021, a 9th Circuit panel again ruled against Kennedy, with Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. authoring the unanimous court opinion in favor of Bremerton.
“BSD’s efforts to prevent the conduct did not violate Kennedy’s constitutional rights, nor his rights under Title VII,” wrote Smith.
“In sum, there is no doubt that an objective observer, familiar with the history of Kennedy’s practice, would view his demonstrations as BSD’s endorsement of a particular faith. For that reason, BSD had adequate justification for its treatment of Kennedy.”
Kennedy again appealed to the Supreme Court, which announced in January that it would hear arguments in the case.
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Cops converge upon mom at school board meeting after chairwoman kicks her out for ‘something horrible’ she was ‘about to say’ regarding board member
Reported by DAVE URBANSKI | April 25, 2022
Police officers were caught on video converging upon a mother who was speaking in front of the microphone at a Florida school board meeting last week after the chairwoman kicked her out for “something horrible” she was “about to say” concerning another school board member.
Melissa Bakondy, a mother of four, called out by name a Sarasota County School Board member at Tuesday’s meeting for comments the board member allegedly made during a previous meeting, Fox News reported.
“At the last meeting, Shirley Brown was caught on the microphone talking about –” Bakondy stated before board chairwoman Jane Goodwin cut her off: “Stop talking about school board members. You’re done. You’re done, Mrs. Bakondy, you’re done. Thank you, you’re done. You cannot go and expound on school board members. I’ve told you. I’ve warned you several times. Thank you very much, you’re done, move on. Goodbye.”
With that, a police officer walked to the podium and stood just a few feet in front of Bakondy.
Two other officers soon followed and stood on either side of the mother.
Bakondy asked Godwin what the problem was, and the chairwoman replied, “You were about to say something horrible about Shirley Brown, please leave … You’ve said things about me that were untrue. Leave, please!”
Goodwin then asked Bakondy, “Do you have children in our school district? Do you have children in our school district?”
Fox News said that question fired up conservative board member Bridget Ziegler: “Point of order! That is not appropriate! … You don’t get to ask people who come to a public meeting whether they have children or not. Period! You’re way out of line.”
Soon Goodwin ordered the officers to ask Bakondy to leave, and Fox News said she was ejected from the meeting.
The cable network said Ziegler’s husband — Florida GOP Vice Chairman Christian Ziegler — posted the exchange on Twitter, although it doesn’t show the ejection:
Bakondy told Fox News in an interview that Goodwin is “the queen of no public input,” and Bakondy and Bridget Ziegler said Goodwin and two other liberal board members want free speech shut down at meetings.
“Every citizen taxpayer and parent has a right to speak at public meetings and share their input,” Bakondy added to Fox News. “Ms. Goodwin doesn’t want to hear that … This is the ultimate form of censorship, and they are destroying our school district, targeting parents, and eliminating dissent.”
Bakondy also told the cable network, “I do have four children, and three of them will be going back to public school next year, and after this, I worry that they’re a target.”
Fox News said Goodwin did not respond to its request for comment.
Following the heated exchange, Sarasota County Sheriff Kurt A. Hoffman spoke on video Friday taking issue with the Bakondy getting kicked out of the meeting, the Herald-Tribune reported. Hoffman said officers from the Sarasota County Schools Police Department were at the meeting, not Sarasota County Sheriff’s deputies, the paper said.
“The Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office would never participate in preventing a citizen from expressing their First Amendment rights during public comment,” Hoffman said, according to the Herald-Tribune. “As your sheriff, I don’t condone tax-paying citizens being silenced.”
4-22-22: Statement from Sheriff Kurt A. Hoffmanyoutu.be
Virginia dad goes nuclear on teachers’ union boss: They require ‘permission slips’ for ‘snacks,’ ‘field trips’ but not to ‘talk about my son’s penis’
Reported by PHIL SHIVER | April 25, 2022
A father in Loudoun County, Virginia, tore into American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten this week after the union boss claimed that a growing parental rights movement in America could lead to civil war. Brandon Michon — an outspoken parent who is also running for Congress as a Republican in Virginia’s 10th district — told Fox News on Monday that union heads and school boards across the country are the ones who started the conflict by pushing progressive ideologies in schools.
“They’ve already invaded the classroom,” Michon charged.
“When you think about it, [the union] colluded with the CDC, colluded with the DOJ and this administration on calling parents domestic terrorists,” he said.
Michon, who has four children under the age of 10, accused Loudoun County Public Schools and other progressive school districts of pushing their radical views surrounding sexual orientation, gender identity, and critical race theory on children without consent from parents.
“They have to have signed permission slips for their snacks, they have to have signed permission slips to go on field trips, but no one is asking me for permission to talk about my son’s penis,” he exclaimed. “It is unacceptable. They are pushing indoctrination on the most innocent part of the population.”
Originally tweeted by Brandon Michon (@BrandonMichon) on April 25, 2022.
Weingarten made headlines last week after going off on proponents of the parental rights in education movement in America during an unhinged radio interview.
“We’ve been very lucky in America, and we in some ways live in a bubble for a long time. This is propaganda. This is misinformation. This is the way in which wars start. This is the way in which hatred starts,” the teachers union leader fumed to radio host Rick Smith.
Elsewhere in the discussion, she called backlash against progressive ideology being taught in public schools an “existential threat” to the country and complained that “right-wing extremists” are “exploiting” parents’ fears to accomplish political ends. Weingarten’s remarks served as a flash point in the heated battle between parents who want more control over their children’s education and the leaders of educational institutions who think they know better.
In recent months, parental outrage over transgender-affirming and critical race theory curricula in schools has culminated in legislation aiming to prevent such unwanted indoctrination. Perhaps the most popular piece of legislation is Florida’s House Bill 1557, which bars classroom discussion on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through the third grade and establishes scaleable guidelines for discussion on the subject matter in grades thereafter.
Outraged over what his children were being taught in school, Michon decided to speak up at school board meetings last year. Now he’s running for office with a campaign focused on parental empowerment and putting children’s interests first.
“The children just want to learn,” Michon told Fox News.
“If you want to talk about the biggest equalizer in all of education, literacy. Let’s get back to teaching more literacy. That [lifts] up all socio-economic classes,” he argued, adding, “Don’t talk about the vocal minority of parents when there is vocal minority on the other side. We need to renew the focus on our children. Math, science, history, the things that will make them good members of society.”
Breaking: Court temporarily blocks Biden admin from dropping Title 42 restrictions at the border
Reported by CARLOS GARCIA | April 25, 2022
Read more at https://www.conservativereview.com/breaking-court-temporarily-blocks-biden-admin-from-dropping-title-42-restrictions-at-the-border-2657212527.html/
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said Monday that a court had issued a temporary restraining order against the Biden administration plan to end Title 42 restrictions at the border. The policy had been previously scheduled to end on May 23.
“In a lawsuit originally filed by Missouri, Louisiana, and Arizona, our Office just obtained a temporary restraining order to keep Title 42 in place,” tweeted Schmitt.
“This is a huge victory for border security, but the fight continues on,” he added.
Title 42 prevents those seeking asylum at the border from entering the country to await their documents being processed. The policy was originally implemented under the Trump administration because of the threat posed by migrants carrying coronavirus into the country. Critics of the policy claim it was motived by racism and xenophobia against migrants seeking refugee status.
The Centers for Disease Control announced that the drop in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations no longer necessitated the restrictions. The Biden administration has used the assessment by the CDC to justify ending Title 42 despite criticism that it will almost certainly lead to a massive spike in illegal immigration. In Oct. 2021, Biden administration officials estimated that as many as 400,000 new migrants could attempt to cross the border in a month if Title 42 had been rescinded at that time.
The temporary restraining order prevents the Biden administration from acting before a May 13 hearing about the policy.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich also celebrated the order on Monday.“I am so proud of the lawyers from our office who just got a Temporary Restraining Order to keep Title 42 in place,” tweeted Brnovich. “We will continue to fight the Biden administration’s open border policies.”
Here’s more about the order against Biden:
Federal judge plans to block termination of Title 42www.youtube.com
Democrats Get some Brutal News from New York
Reported by will | April 25, 2022
Read more at https://patriotfetch.com/2022/04/democrats-get-some-brutal-news-from-new-york-wiley/
New York is a blue state, right? Yes, but Democrats attempted to go too far in using their redistricting powers to make it an even deeper blue. In going so far to try and block Republicans from being able to win seats, the Democrats broke the law, so their redistricting plan just got slapped down by the state appeals court. The Hill, reporting on that decision, notes that:
The ruling noted that under the 2022 congressional map, there are four Republican-majority districts and 22 Democratic-majority districts; in comparison, in the 2012 map there were eight elected Republicans and 19 elected Democrats, indicating that the latest map was skewed blue.
Further, the court itself, describing the horribly biased nature in which the New York Democrats went about designing the map and how elections analysis expert Sean Trende was able to show that the districts were so biased in favor of the Democrats as to be impermissible, said:
Trende concluded that the enacted congressional map pressed republican voters “into a few [r]epublican-leaning districts, while spreading [d]emocratic voters as efficiently as possible.” Trende analyzed the differences between his ensemble of simulated maps and the enacted map using various methods, including application of the “gerrymandering index,” which, he concluded, rendered it “implausible, if not impossible” that the enacted redistricting plan had been drawn without partisan intent. Trende also portrayed his results in scatterplots, which he explained showed how “[t]he only place where the [e]nacted [c]ongressional [m]ap falls within expectations is in safely [d]emocratic districts,” whereas the more competitive districts were made safer by packing republican voters into other republican leaning districts.
Continuing, and giving another example of the bias involved in the district-shifting, said:
Specifically, Trende’s simulation reflected that the four most republican-leaning districts in the enacted congressional map were more republican-leaning than any of his initial 5,000 simulated maps. Of the next nine most competitive districts, the enacted map was, in each, more democrat-leaning than any or nearly all of the initial 5,000 simulated maps.
The court then ordered the legislature to create a new map, one that would survive its scrutiny, by April 30th, though an appeal from New York’s far-left leadership is expected. If that appeal is unsuccessful and the current map, which would probably take four seats away from Republicans, doesn’t hold, that’s bad news for Democrats. 2022 is already predicted to be a red wave year with Democrats needing every tool available to keep the wave from turning into a tsunami. When that’s paired with how DeSantis has gone about redistricting Florida and the mixed results of redistricting elsewhere, the loss of the four seats Democrats could have been handed by New York’s efforts is substantial.
The GOP is predicted to retake the House regardless. But the magnitude of that victory depends on a number of factors, including redistricting. With this win for the GOP in even deep-blue New York, the likelihood of the red wave becoming a red tsunami looks higher than ever.
By: Gen Z Conservative, editor of GenZConservative.com. Follow me on Parler and Gettr.
This story syndicated with permission from Will, Author at Trending Politics
Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Mostly Peaceful Takeover
A.F. BRANCO | on April 26, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-mostly-peaceful-takeover/
Elon Musk buying Twitter is a huge boost for free speech in America and has the censorship Tyrants on the left going berserk.
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into 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 President Donald Trump.
Democrats’ Culture War is Destroying Their Ability to Govern Competently Enough to Fool Voters
REPORTED BY: NATHANAEL BLAKE | APRIL 25, 2022
The ideology making Democrats unpopular is also preventing them from understanding why they are unpopular.
NATHANAEL BLAKE
New York Times columnist Charles Blow recently claimed to be “truly shocked” by a poll showing President Biden with a 33 percent approval rating. I was shocked, too — how could his approval rating be that high?
Blow, of course, is surprised at Biden’s unpopularity, and worried that the Democrats are stumbling into a bloodbath in the November midterms. Blow is paid to understand and explain politics and culture to his readers. That he is surprised reveals a lot about the bubble he is in. And his meandering analysis of Democrats’ problems illustrates how the ideology making Democrats unpopular is also preventing them from understanding why they are unpopular.
Blow initially blames Biden — for being too much of a “decent man … sober and straightforward” rather than a “showman.” This is a ludicrous assessment of a politician, who, until age caught up with his tongue, was one of D.C.’s preeminent bloviators. Nonetheless, Blow’s ordinary partisan delusion is less interesting than the ideological blind spots revealed when he turns to genuine sources of Biden’s unpopularity, such as “the fear of crime and the pinch of inflation” and that “Republicans are playing heavily into culture war issues.”
Class and Culture Wars Merge
Although Blow does not seem to realize it, these issues combine to reinforce voters’ disapproval of Biden. Democratic failures on bread and butter issues such as crime and inflation are related to the culture-war radicalism that has captured their party. Twitter, not the blue-collar union hall, is now the heart of the Democratic Party, which is controlled by the educated, urban professional-managerial class, epitomized by woke, union-busting CEOs. This faction has merged the class and culture wars — championing cultural radicalism, entrenching its own economic interests, and neglecting the common good.
The Democrats are the party of wealthy diversity consultants lecturing hourly workers about white privilege and cis-heteropatriarchy while inflation eats away at wages and investment firms buy up homes in the hope of making America a nation of permanent renters. The governing priorities of those running the Democratic Party are sending government money to their clients (from teachers unions to Planned Parenthood) and waging culture war.
Dems Are Fanatical Culture Warriors
And they are fanatical culture warriors. Consider Blow’s complaint that the GOP is “challenging the teaching of Black history and the history of white supremacy in schools, as well as restricting discussions of L.G.B.T. issues and campaigning against trans women and girls competing in sports with other women and girls.” He adds that “Republicans are using white parental fear, particularly the fears of white moms.”
This litany of whines highlights the bubble Blow and his audience at The New York Times are in. Ordinary Americans know the difference between teaching history and teaching poisonous ideology derived from critical race theory. Americans understand that it is unjust for males to compete in women’s sports, and that it is perverse to teach young children about sex and gender ideology. They are angry when educators encourage children to transition, and outraged when they hide it from parents.
Voters have also noticed that the cultural left never stops where it says it will. We were assured that the LGBT movement was about tolerance for consenting adult relationships; now it is about transgender toddlers, child drag queens, and men in girls’ locker rooms. We are also now told that being anti-racist somehow means judging people based on the color of their skin. Blow and other bubbled liberals may be okay with mastectomies for confused teenage girls, but most Americans are not.
This cultural radicalism erodes Democrats’ ability to govern competently. Sometimes this is the result of neglecting the basic tasks of government in order to prioritize boutique cultural issues, other times it is a direct consequence of ideology, as exemplified in the crime wave resulting from woke prosecutors and defunding the police.
Cushioned from Consequences
In either case, wokeness is an ideology for those who are cushioned from its consequences. Indeed, wokeness is primarily a phenomenon of the college-educated, and especially the well-off; it is a niche, luxury political philosophy that thrives among the privileged and in the shelter of academia.
But though it is often a political liability, there are ways it serves the interests of its adherents. In particular, woke ideology legitimates the rule of the woke over the non-woke, and justifies economic exploitation and socio-political repression. Wokeness claims to reveal the systems of unjust oppression that permeate society; it focuses on race, sex, and gender, and relegates economic class to a second-tier concern. This allows many of the privileged and powerful to claim to be righteous allies of the oppressed without having to sacrifice economic or social power or position. Indeed, many can claim to be oppressed themselves. This is why wokeness tends to focus on BIPoC and LGBT representation in boardrooms and Ivy League campuses, rather than helping the working class.
The Wicked Working Class
Thus, it is to be expected that woke discourse often suggests that the working class (especially working-class whites) have it coming for their sins of racism, sexism, transphobia, and so on — the wicked deserve punishment, not sympathy. This is why pundits such as Blow are so quick to accuse dissenters of racism and bigotry. And it is why the woke left supports oligarchic power in pursuit of its aims, and eagerly uses economic, technological, and cultural power to suppress dissent.
This is why professors are having to submit woke loyalty oaths in the form of diversity statements, and why mandatory diversity, equity, and inclusion training has become the norm in the corporate world. This is why the left is eager to use social media censorship to suppress “misinformation” — which in many cases is truth that is inconvenient to the regime (e.g., the Hunter Biden laptop story).
It is also why the left cannot understand its own failures. They have isolated themselves in a bubble that has drifted so far from reality and the concerns of normal voters that even electoral disaster may not bring them back to Earth. Cocooned in privilege and ideology, they think Biden is doing just fine. But most Americans have had enough of a government that is more committed to transitioning children than to controlling crime and inflation.
Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Letter: No, Hillary Clinton Can’t Try To Hide 2016 Oppo Research From The Special Counsel
REPORTED BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | APRIL 25, 2022
‘The Government should not permit HFA and the DNC to adopt conflicting positions in different proceedings, depending on the federal agency against which they are litigating.’
MARGOT CLEVELAND
VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND
The Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee’s claims of attorney-client privilege in the Michael Sussmann criminal case may constitute a breach of the settlement agreements they entered with the Federal Election Commission, according to a letter sent to Special Counsel John Durham’s office on Friday. That letter, obtained first by The Federalist, followed the flurry of motions to intervene filed in the special counsel’s pending false statement case against Sussmann. Hillary for America, the DNC, tech executive Rodney Joffe, Sussmann’s former law firm of Perkins and Coie, and the investigative firm Fusion GPS all filed motions last week asking the court for permission to argue against disclosing documents to the special counsel based on their claims of attorney-client privilege.
The special counsel’s office had previously filed a motion arguing that the court should review 38 documents withheld in response to grand jury subpoenas to assess whether the secreted material truly qualified as protected by attorney-client privilege. The day after Sussmann responded to that motion, opposing any such in camera review by the judge, his fellow Spygate hoaxers sought to join in Sussmann’s efforts to keep the documents concealed.
After the Hillary for America and the DNC’s motions to intervene hit the Sussmann docket, The Coolidge Reagan Foundation penned a three-page letter to Durham and Assistant Special Counsel Jonathan Algor. That letter alerted the special counsel’s office to key facts about the FEC’s recent decision to fine the political groups in relation to a complaint the foundation had filed with the FEC. That complaint charged Hillary for America and the DNC with using the “law firm, Perkins Coie, to hire and funnel over $1 million to ‘outside research firms’ such as Fusion GPS ‘to perform potentially sensitive, controversial, or politically embarrassing’ opposition research into Donald Trump.”
The FEC complaint, filed in 2018, alleged that “the research was not ‘for the purpose of assisting Perkins Coie in providing legal advice,’” but to further the “political and campaign-related goals” of the organizations. The foundation also claimed in its FEC complaint that because the work was not “for the purpose of providing legal advice or assisting with impending or potential litigation, it was not covered by attorney-client, work-product, or other privileges.”
Significantly, as the foundation noted in its April 22, 2022 letter to the special counsel’s office, the FEC had “found probable cause to believe” the political organizations had misreported the purpose of certain disbursements. The FEC reached that conclusion based on a memorandum prepared by the FEC’s Office of General Counsel, but under controlling regulations that memorandum “will not be made public for another week,” the letter explained.
Foundation counsel Dan Backer added that while the memorandum is not yet public, the special counsel’s office would likely be able to obtain it directly from the FEC. That memorandum also will provide Durham’s team further details on the FEC’s investigation and fact-finding that may be useful to the special counsel in the Sussmann litigation, noted the letter.
In Friday’s letter, Backer also highlighted Hillary for America and the DNC’s commitment in their settlement agreement with the FEC to “not further contest the Commission’s finding of probable cause to believe” that the political organizations had “falsely reported their payments through Perkins Coie to Fusion GPS as being for legal services.” In contrast, in the Sussmann case, Hillary for America and the DNC “are nevertheless asserting materials generated by Fusion GPS and provided to Perkins Coie are protected by attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine,” the letter stressed.
“The Government should not permit HFA and the DNC to adopt conflicting positions in different proceedings, depending on the federal agency against which they are litigating,” the foundation’s letter concluded, suggesting the trial court may find those breaches of the settlement agreement “material in ruling on any privilege claims.”
Whether the special counsel will follow the foundation’s suggestion and obtain the memorandum prepared by the FEC’s Office of General Counsel before the judge in the Sussmann case rules on the Clinton campaign and the DNC’s assertions of attorney-client privilege is yet to be seen. But what is clear is that the special counsel’s office intends to ensure the jury knows that both the Clinton campaign and the DNC believe communications relevant to Sussmann’s efforts to peddle the Alfa Bank hoax are protected by attorney-client privilege.
On Friday we also learned just how the special counsel hopes to do that—by having representatives of both the Clinton campaign and DNC testify at trial. That revelation appeared in a response brief Sussmann’s attorneys filed last week, wherein the defense team noted that they had just learned that the special counsel had issued trial subpoenas to both the Clinton campaign and the DNC. According to Sussmann’s legal team, the special counsel requested “the testimony of witnesses” from those political organizations “regarding the assertion of attorney-client privilege in front of the jury.” Sussmann is now also seeking to exclude that testimony and claims that both the Clinton campaign and the DNC will likewise seek to quash the subpoenas.
The irony in all of this, of course, is that the more Sussmann, the Clinton campaign, and the DNC hide behind the claims of attorney-client privilege, the more it appears that, yes, Sussmann pushed the Alfa Bank hoax, including during his meeting with FBI General Counsel James Baker, on behalf of the Clinton campaign. The FEC’s conclusion that probable cause existed to support the finding that the Clinton campaign and DNC had falsely reported fees paid to Fusion GPS as legal fees only further supports that conclusion.
The question Friday’s letter to the special counsel’s office raises, however, is whether the Clinton campaign and the DNC’s settlement agreement with the FEC, in fact, forecloses their claims of privilege in the Sussmann case. Backer believes it does, telling The Federalist, “The Clinton Campaign and the DNC want to have their cake and eat it too, but they cannot simultaneously say they won’t contest the reasoning behind the FEC fine and settlement agreement and also run to federal court and say, ‘No, no, no, everything we do is privileged.’”
That, however, is precisely what Hillary for America and DNC are doing, leading one to wonder if the real issue in play is not attorney-client privilege, but the privilege of being a Democrat.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. 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.
15-year-old boy in DC arrested for allegedly committing 3 armed robberies in 8 minutes
Reported by PHIL SHIVER | April 25, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/15-year-old-3-robberies-8-minutes/
Police in Washington, D.C., have arrested a 15-year-old boy who they say is responsible for going on a violent and extremely rapid crime spree in the nation’s capital earlier this year. The juvenile male, who has not been identified by law enforcement on account of his age, is suspected of committing three armed robberies — including a carjacking — in roughly eight minutes in January. In a news release, the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department claimed the boy didn’t act alone and that detectives are still searching for additional suspects in the crime spree.
In each of the three incidents, the gang of suspected offenders approached victims brandishing handguns and threatening injury before making off with several personal items, which included four iPhones and a Hyundai Sonata sedan. After committing the first two robberies, the suspects fled the scene and quickly moved on to commit another armed robbery.
According to police, the crimes took place on Jan. 23. The first occurred at approximately 1:20 p.m. near 14th and T Street, Northwest; the second at 1:24 p.m. on the 1800 block of 10th Street, Northwest; and the third at 1:28 p.m. on the 1500 block of 8th Street, Northwest.
The juvenile male from southeast D.C. was reportedly arrested and taken into custody on Thursday, April 21. It was not immediately clear what charges he would face. The news comes as juvenile crimes continue to plague Washington, D.C., and many other communities around the country. In the nation’s capital, youth carjackings in particular have been on the rise over the last year.
Last March, a botched carjacking that resulted in the gruesome death of an elderly Uber Eats driver drew national headlines after it was discovered that the culprits were a 13-year-old girl and 15-year-old girl. The girls reportedly used at least one stun gun in attempt to seize the car. They struggled with the victim, 66-year-old Mohammad Anwar, swerving through the streets, but eventually struck a curb, sending Anwar flying from the vehicle. The man’s death was caught on video.
At least on this case, it appears that law enforcement is hoping to clamp down on juvenile perpetrators of violent crimes.
Police have requested the public’s help in identifying additional suspects in the January armed robbery incidents and are offering a reward of up to $10,000 to anyone who provides information that leads to the arrest and conviction of those responsible.
Top Hunter Biden business partner made numerous trips to Obama’s White House, met with then-Vice President Joe Biden, Barack later appointed him to America’s Heritage Abroad Commission: Report
Reported by PAUL SACCA | April 23, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/hunter-biden-business-partner-vice-president/
A longtime and close business partner of Hunter Biden made numerous trips to the White House while Joe Biden served as vice president, according to a new report. Eric Schwerin – president of the Rosemont Seneca investment fund firm – met with then-Vice President Joe Biden in 2010, according to visitor logs from the White House of former President Barack Obama.
Rosemont Seneca was founded in 2009 by Hunter Biden, Christopher Heinz – stepson of former Secretary of State John Kerry, and Devon Archer – an American businessman who was classmates with Heinz at Yale University. Rosemont Seneca has conducted extensive business in China.
The New York Post reported, “Eric Schwerin met with Vice President Biden on November 17, 2010, in the West Wing, when he was the president of the since-dissolved investment fund Rosemont Seneca Partners.”
The report added, “The logs also reveal that Schwerin met with various close aides of both Joe and Jill Biden at key moments in Hunter’s life when he was striking multi-million dollar deals in foreign countries, including China.”
“Emails from Hunter Biden’s discarded laptop show a series of exchanges between Hunter and his associates in Rosemont Seneca’s joint venture with Chinese investment firms Bohai Capital and BHR,” Fox News reported. “In February 2017, Schwerin emailed the CEO of BHR, Jonathan Li. Previously, Li sent Hunter his son’s resume with a list of colleges he planned to apply to,” adding, “It is unclear if Li’s son was admitted to Brown University or, if so, whether he attended.”
The New York Post report claim that Schwerin “made at least 19 visits to the White House and other official locations between 2009 and 2015.”
According to Obama White House archives, a press release from March 10, 2015, stated that Obama appointed Eric D. Schwerin as a member of the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. The U.S. Commission for the Preservation of American Heritage names Schwerin as a past member, who was sworn in on Feb. 1, 2017. The Obama administration noted that Eric D. Schwerin is “Founding Partner and Managing Director at Rosemont Seneca Partners, LLC, positions he has held since 2008.” Records also show that Rosemont Seneca founders Archer and Heinz visited the White House in 2009 and 2011 for a “holiday reception” and “group tour” respectively.
Of the situation involving a top Hunter Biden business partner, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said, “Not everyone gets to meet the vice president of the United States in the White House. The press should be asking why Hunter Biden’s business associates — like Eric Schwerin — had that privilege and were given access to the Obama White House. This is additional evidence that Joe Biden lied when he said he never discussed Hunter’s foreign business dealings. It’s well past time for the corporate media to demand the truth from Joe Biden. The corruption of Biden Inc. must be exposed.”
Today’s FOUR Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Sex, Lies, and Censorship
A.F. BRANCO | on April 22, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-sex-lies-and-censorship/
The Mainstream media continue trying to ignore the Hunter Biden laptop Joe Biden Corruption connection.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Common Sense Not Included
A.F. BRANCO | on April 23, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-common-sense-not-included/
Democrats are talking about ankle bracelets and phones for illegal immigrants as opposed to turning them away at the border.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Critical Race Tyranny
A.F. BRANCO | on April 24, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-critical-race-tyranny/
Gov. Walz, Democrats, and the teacher’s union are pushing Critical Race Theory against the will of parents.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – The Tragic Kingdom
A.F. BRANCO | on April 25, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-the-tragic-kingdom/
Disney Corp is against the Desantis bill that protects parents’ rights from radical leftist teachers.
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into 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 President Donald Trump.
Mandatory Face Coverings’ Only Purpose Was Promoting Fear
REPORTED BY: HRAND TOOKMAN | APRIL 21, 2022
Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/04/21/mandatory-face-coverings-only-purpose-was-promoting-fear/
A lot of people will claim the masks were about establishing and maintaining control. That’s fair, but it wasn’t their primary purpose.
HRAND TOOKMAN
Now that a judge has stayed the federal mask mandate on public transportation, it’s important to have an honest accounting of what this entire mask situation was truly all about. A lot of people will make a lot of claims. A tiny sliver will continue to claim mask mandates actually helped mitigate the spread of Covid-19. They will be the outliers because, in terms of stopping the spread of Covid or any other virus, wearing a mask is the equivalent of doing a rain dance: it might make you feel better, and some quacks will tell you it works, but ultimately it does nothing except make you look foolish and give you a false sense of security. (Vaccine mandates were the modern equivalent of burning witches at the stake.)
It was all so stupid and foisted on us by people we’re supposed to trust, which is why we need this honest accounting of what it was really all about. A lot of people will claim the masks were about establishing and maintaining control. That’s fair, but it wasn’t their primary purpose. The primary purpose of the mask mandates was to make every person who wore one a walking advertisement for fear. If you were wearing a mask, then you were doing your job, because you had given up your right to free expression and replaced it with one, constant sentiment: “I’m afraid, and you should be too.”
That was the main purpose of the masks. That’s why they wanted everyone to keep wearing them. It was about control, yes, but far more than that, it was about promoting fear. That’s why they lied about the threat Covid poses. That’s why they inflated the number of deaths, counting so often all who died with as having died from. That’s why they convinced so many Americans that the threat of hospitalization or death is exponentially higher than it actually is. (For the record, the survival rate for Covid is 99.7 percent for unvaccinated adults, 99.9 percent for vaccinated adults, and 100 percent for unvaccinated children.)
All they did the entire time was work as hard as they could to promote as much fear as possible, and masks were an excellent weapon they could force on you to help spread their message of constant fear, division, and dehumanization. The mask stripped you of your right to free expression and replaced whatever you wanted to communicate with one single piece of speech: “Be afraid.”
That was the primary purpose. That’s why they were all so fired up about it. That’s why they were all so desperate for you and everybody else to wear them.
It’s important we have our heads around that because it will help us avoid letting them do it again in the future. It wasn’t just about control. It wasn’t just about dividing and dehumanizing us. It wasn’t just about turning us against each other and forcing us to deny science so we could devastate each other’s social, psychological, and emotional health.
All of those were welcome byproducts to the “public health experts” and other elites who to this day claim masking provides value. But the primary purpose was to promote fear, and to stifle your speech and expression so you perpetually signaled that fear to everyone else.
You were obedient, yes. But more than that, you were afraid. That was the message, whether you wanted to send it or not. It was the primary reason they made everyone wear them, and it’s important we never let them do that to us again.
Hrand Tookman is a Cleveland, Ohio native with a background in interpersonal communications. He writes with an objective of exposing media bias, and inspiring unity in defiance of so many forces today that thrive off of division.
Gov. DeSantis Is Right To Attack Disney. Republicans Everywhere Should Follow His Lead
WRITTEN BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | APRIL 21, 2022
Woke corporations that wage war on families and target children should expect to be targeted in turn by GOP lawmakers.
JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON
VISIT ON TWITTER@JOHNDDAVIDSON
News broke Wednesday the Florida Senate had passed a bill to dismantle Walt Disney World’s half-century-old “independent special district” status, an arrangement whereby Disney has been allowed, since 1968, essentially to govern itself. Gov. Ron DeSantis says Disney’s self-governing status should be subject to review, to ensure that it is still “appropriately serving the public interest.”
Good. Disney is reaping its just reward for inserting itself into the political debate about Florida’s parental rights bill, which Disney lost in spectacular fashion. Republican governors and lawmakers across the country should be taking notes. This is how you deal with big corporations that try to throw around their weight and force woke policies on voters and families. You punish them, not just because they deserve it, but also, as Voltaire famously put it, pour encourager les autres.
Disney was no doubt betting that DeSantis and Florida Republicans would do what Republicans have almost always done in the face of woke corporate pressure: simply back down. That’s what South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem did last year when at the behest of the NCAA she vetoed a bill that would have protected girls’ sports from trans ideologues.
Same with Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who vetoed a measure banning genital mutilation and hormone treatments for minors (he was subsequently overridden by the state legislature). Same goes for then-Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who in 2015 infamously caved to corporate pressure and gutted his state’s religious freedom law.
Indeed, at any other time and place, with almost any other Republican governor and legislature, Disney would almost certainly not have faced any consequences for wading into the debate over the parental rights bill. After all, since when do Republicans actually wield power against the enemies of their voters and defend ordinary families from powerful woke corporations? Almost never.
By breaking that mold, DeSantis has set a clear example that other GOP governors and state lawmakers should follow. If a corporation like Disney wants to insert itself in a political battle that has nothing to do with its business — in this case, a fight over whether to prohibit classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity to children in kindergarten through the third grade — then it should be prepared to pay a heavy cost. Simply put, corporations that do what Disney did, publicly lobbying against the rights of parents to have a say in whether their young children are exposed to sexually explicit subject matter, have marked themselves out as enemies of a free people and should be treated as such. If Disney wants to make war on families in Florida, then the proper role of a democratically elected government is to go after Disney with every power at its disposal. Maybe that means they lose tax breaks that were once justified for purely economic reasons. Same for the special status Walt Disney World has enjoyed all these years, governing a 40-square-mile area in central Florida as it sees fit.
This isn’t about the economic arguments, not anymore. Whatever merit there was to the notion that Disney “serves the public interest” before the fight over parental rights has completely vanished. Now that Disney has taken a stand against families and parents, there can be no doubt: Disney does not serve the public interest in Florida, and Floridians owe it nothing.
Conservatives should understand this, but not all of them do. Over at National Review, Charles Cooke has decided to stand athwart history, as it were, and yell: “Independent special district status is complicated!” His complaint with DeSantis is that there was no need to punish Disney over its opposition to the parental rights bill because the bill passed. Disney lost, DeSantis and Republicans won. Moreover, he adds, until a month ago, “Walt Disney World’s legal status was not even a blip on the GOP’s radar. No Republicans were calling for it to be revisited, nor did they have any reason to.”
Did they not? What changed in the last month that might have prompted them to revisit the issue? Could it be that Disney came out publicly as a very real threat to Florida parents who don’t want their second-graders instructed about sexual orientation and gender identity? Could it be that the fight over the parental rights bill revealed Disney as something other than an entertainment brand and Walt Disney World as something other than a beloved family theme park? Could it be, in fact, that this entire affair has exposed Disney as a malign force in Florida’s civic life?
That Cooke can’t grasp this, and instead attacks DeSantis by tediously explicating the particulars of Florida’s independent special districts, shows the naiveté of conservatives in general and Republican politicians in particular on woke corporations pushing extremist agendas. Cooke argues there are lots of independent special districts in Florida, and that Walt Disney World “is unique not in its type but only in its particulars.” Orlando International Airport and the Daytona International Speedway, he notes, have a similar independent status. Why single out Disney?
To ask is to answer. Did the Orlando International Airport or the Daytona International Speedway wage a public campaign against the parental rights bill, and while doing so commit to pushing a “queer” agenda on children? No, they didn’t. Disney did. That makes all the difference.
If the airport and the speedway had behaved the way Disney did then yes, Florida lawmakers should have absolutely punished them. (Thanks to the impending revocation of Walt Disney World’s special status, it’s unlikely the airport or speedway or any other entity in Florida with a similar status will decide to follow in Disney’s footsteps, which is part of the point.)
Cooke further laments that singling out Disney is a mistake because, “Walt Disney World is deeply rooted in Florida’s soil, as a result of agreements the Florida legislature made with it in good faith. To poison that soil over a temporary spat would be absurd.”
But here again Cooke — and really, it’s not about Cooke, it’s about the accommodationist strain on the right that he and NR represent — misunderstands the nature of the fight. This is not a “temporary spat,” as Disney itself has made clear. It’s an ideological and cultural war that corporations like Disney will never stop waging.
For many years now, only one side in this war has been crying “no quarter” before every battle. The other side has pretended not to believe it and surrendered time and again, with predictable results. Finally, DeSantis and Florida Republicans have taken the enemy at their word and responded in kind. Republicans everywhere should go and do likewise.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
Pennsylvania school board votes down parent’s request to launch After School Satan Club
Reported By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter | Thursday, April 21, 2022
Read more at https://www.christianpost.com/news/pennsylvania-school-board-votes-down-launch-of-after-school-satan-club.html/
A Pennsylvania school district has voted against a parent’s request to launch a satanic group’s After School Satan Club at an elementary school for students who want to participate in an extracurricular program that is non-religious. In an 8-1 vote Tuesday, the Northern York County School Board based in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania, rejected the request to establish an “After School Satan Club” at the district’s Northern Elementary School.
The agenda for Tuesday’s meeting indicates that Samantha Groome sought to establish the club on a “probationary basis.” A video clip of the school board meeting, obtained by the York Daily Record, shows parents and others gathered in the crowd standing up and erupting into applause after the effort to create the satanic club was defeated.
Groome said she wanted her children to be able to participate in extracurricular activities, but sought a secular alternative to the Joy El Christian club, which operates at nine of the 16 school districts in the county and offers off-campus activities.
While an After School Satan Club will not come to fruition in Northern York County, Pennsylvania, other school districts in the country have embraced the extracurricular programs sponsored by the Satanic Temple. Earlier this year, Jane Addams Elementary School in Moline, Illinois, received criticism for handing out flyers promoting the After School Satan Club.
The Moline-Coal Valley School District defended its decision to allow the club to operate at one of its elementary schools. Noting that it “does not discriminate against any groups who wish to rent our facilities, including religious-affiliated groups,” the district explained that “religiously affiliated groups are among those allowed to rent our facilities for a fee.”
The district pointed to the Good News Club, which it described as “an after-school child evangelism fellowship group,” as an example of a religious organization that it allows to use its facilities even though it doesn’t endorse its message.
According to the Satanic Temple’s website, “the After School Satan Clubs meet at select public schools where Good News Clubs also operate.” Other school districts that host After School Satan Clubs include Lebanon City School District in Lebanon, Ohio, which also faced intense pushback for allowing the Satanic Temple to host an after-school activity for elementary school children.
June Everett, who serves as a minister of Satan at the Satanic Temple and is the campaign director of the After School Satan Club, announced that the club would begin meeting at William Bruce Elementary School in Eaton, Ohio, in February. Everett stressed that “ASSC is ONLY in schools that have a Good News Club or other religious club operating after hours.”
Everett listed the presence of the extracurricular program LifeWise Academy, a “released time religious instruction program focused on Bible-based character education,” at the school as justification for seeking to launch an After School Satan Club there. She also posted a flyer advertising the After School Satan Club at William Bruce Elementary School.
The flyer touted some of the activities participants would engage in, including “science projects,” “puzzles games,” and “arts and crafts projects,” and listed “benevolence and empathy,” “critical thinking,” “problem solving,” “creative expression” and “personal sovereignty” as concepts children will learn there. It also asserted that the United States Constitution protects the After School Satan Club’s right to distribute flyers on public school grounds.
“The United States Constitution requires schools to respect the right of all external organizations to distribute flyers to students at school if the school permits any such organization to distribute flyers. Accordingly, the school cannot discriminate among groups wishing to distribute flyers at school and does not endorse the content of any flyer distributed at school.”
The After School Satan Club contends that the U.S. Supreme Court precedent gives it the right to hold meetings on public school grounds after hours: “The Supreme Court ruled in 2001 in the case of Good News Club v. Milford Central School that schools operate a ‘limited public forum’ and that, as such, they may not discriminate against religious speech should a religious organization choose to operate an After School Club on their premises.”
The After School Satan Club Handbook insists that the group is “not offering any materials or lectures to your child about satanism.” The handbook cites “free inquiry and rationalism” as the focus of the club, adding: “While the classes are designed to promote intellectual and emotional development in accordance with TST’s tenets, no proselytization or religious instruction takes place.”
A video on the After School Satan Club’s website features a song titled “My Pal Satan,” which includes lyrics declaring, “Satan’s not an evil guy, he wants you to learn and question why, he wants you to have fun and be yourself and by the way, there is no Hell.” Additionally, the song maintains that “Satan’s not a scary guy, he wants you to share and to be kind.”
“When all is said and done, Satan doesn’t actually exist,” the song continues. “He’s an imaginary friend who can teach us how to live.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
Texas School Defends Pressuring 6th-Graders To ‘Protest’ As Part Of ‘Queer Week’
REPORTED BY: JORDAN BOYD | APRIL 20, 2022
Miller Middle School in San Marcos, Texas is hosting a “Queer Week” where students as young as sixth grade are urged to dress in “pride” colors, wear nametags with preferred names and pronouns, and “protest” LGBT discrimination.
“The goal of the week is to provide a school culture that values diversity, equity and inclusion,” MMS Principal Saumnya Hart told parents in an email forwarded to The Federalist by the school.
According to a “Miller Queer Week” schedule obtained by The Federalist, MMS set aside four school days in April “to provide support for students in the LGTBQIA+ community, their allies, and the greater student and staff body.”
Beginning on Tuesday, April 19, students were encouraged to “share their stories on the wall in the hallway in order to stand against mistreatment.” On Wednesday, students were told to “dress in colors of the rainbow to support the LGTBQ+ community.”
Nametags designated for “pronouns and preferred names” will be supplied for all students on Thursday, according to the “Queer Week” calendar. On Friday, the week is scheduled to close out with a “National Day of Silence” where “LGTBQ+ students and their allies protest the harmful effects of harassment and discrimination of LGTBQ people in schools.”
Hart told parents that she approved the event after approximately 15 students “who identify in the LGTBQIA+ community” asked the administration for “protection and a safe place to learn without being belittled.” She justified the school-sanctioned event by claiming that the activities “are completely voluntary and will not be included as part of any lesson or instruction being provided.”
San Marcos Consolidated Independent School District Chief of Communications Andrew Fernandez told The Federalist that the school has received complaints from concerned parents but believes the activities are appropriate because they are “not part of the instructional day.”
“We have calls every day about questions or concerns that families may have and we’re handling the situation as we do any other situation,” Fernandez said. “We speak with the parent. Hear their thoughts and concerns and then share the reasoning behind the activities taking place this week.”
Texas officials have made it very clear that school-sanctioned activities dealing with sexuality violate the state’s sex education opt-out requirements for parents.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton recently scolded Austin Independent School District for hosting its annual Pride Week which featured activities such as “watching Queer Eye” and “nail painting.”
“The Texas Legislature has made it clear that when it comes to sex education, parents — not school districts — are in charge,” Paxton wrote. “By hosting ‘Pride Week,’ your district has, at best, undertaken a week-long instructional effort in human sexuality without parental consent. Or, worse, your district is cynically pushing a week-long indoctrination of your students that not only fails to obtain parental consent, but subtly cuts parents out of the loop. Either way, you are breaking state law.”
It appears based on the email and the substance of the activities at Miller Middle School that this school is likewise in violation of Texas state law.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
JORDAN BOYD
VISIT ON TWITTER@JORDANGDAVIDSON
Ann Coulter Op-ed: The Pandemic Made Me Do It!
Commentary by Ann Coulter | Posted: Apr 20, 2022
Read more at https://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2022/04/20/the-pandemic-made-me-do-it—p–n2606140/
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, and WhatDidYouSay.org.
Source: AP Photo/Noah Berger
With the mind-boggling rise in violent crime since the Democrats turned all policing policies over to BLM, the media have become obsessed with convincing us that it’s all the fault of the pandemic. (At least they’re not blaming it on Putin this time.)
In its coverage of the subway shooting by a rage-filled black nationalist last week, The New York Times inserted its pandemic theory of crime into nearly every update (emphasis added):
— “Shootings in New York City rose during 2022’s first quarter compared with the same period last year … the continuation of a drumbeat of violence that emerged early in the PANDEMIC, and has not ebbed with the virus.”
— “This year’s first three months have also seen rises in crimes like burglaries, robberies and grand larcenies compared to the same periods in 2020 and 2021, though experts warn against short-term comparisons, particularly during the statistic-skewing PANDEMIC.”
— “Mr. Lee said reports of attacks across the city, along with the violence that other Asian Americans in the city have experienced throughout the coronavirus PANDEMIC, have left him fearful.”
(I’d like to know if Mr. Lee cited the pandemic or — my guess — the Times helpfully threw that in.)
— “The city’s police commissioner announced new figures last week that showed a 36% increase in major crimes and a 16% rise in shootings over the past year — part of a rise in violence during the PANDEMIC.”
No evidence is ever cited. The Times made no attempt to tie Frank James’ personal pandemic experience to his outburst of homicidal racism. “The pandemic caused the crime wave” is just repeated in article after article, like the sleep conditioning of infants in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.”
Except even in Huxley’s dystopian world, the bureaucrats only needed to repeat an idea three times a week. The media authoritatively announce that the pandemic caused the crime wave about a thousand times a week.
A spate of shootings over the weekend led to another gusher of “The pandemic causes crime” sightings in the Times. Now it’s not just crime generally, but specifically mass shootings: “Experts are pointing to multiple possible factors that could explain the upswing [in mass shootings], including the pandemic …”
I wonder if that includes any of the experts who spent the first 2.5 months of the pandemic telling us that the lockdowns had had the wonderful effect of virtually ending violent crime! That is, right up until the day George Floyd was killed, whereupon white people became guilty for everything, and black people responsible for nothing, including their own criminal behavior.
Thus, on April 14, 2020, a month into “15 days to slow the spread,” the Times stated matter-of-factly: “Violent crime has dropped precipitously.” Two weeks later, on May 4, 2020, Politico reported: “Major crime has plunged during New York City’s coronavirus lockdown, down 28.5% in the month of April.”
Similarly, on April 23, 2020, The Denver Post reported that during the first four weeks of the pandemic, crime reports were down by a third, adding that “other large cities have seen significant drops in crime during the coronavirus.”
The very day that Floyd died, Voice of America announced that major U.S. cities had “reported dips in burglary, assault, murder, robbery and grand larceny — all due to stay-at-home orders and fewer opportunities for crime.”
How about a bigger comparison? Are there any studies of crime during the pandemic from around the globe? Why yes, there are! A study by Cambridge University of crime rates in 27 cities across 23 countries in Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East found that stay-at-home orders during the pandemic “were associated with a considerable drop in urban crime.”
Then, in a crazy coincidence invisible to every member of our media, on May 25, 2020, an innocent black man, just minding his own business, bothering no one, was killed by a cop in Minneapolis, and …
BAM! As you may have seen in Twitter and YouTube videos (at least the ones that were not immediately removed by “moderators”), violent crime promptly exploded in cities across the nation.
Both the FBI and CDC report that murders were up 30% in 2020 — the largest year-to-year increase in more than a century. The next biggest increase was back in 1968, when it went up by 12.7%. In 2021, murders were up again, 44% compared to 2019.
And it all started on the mystery date of May 25, 2020. From Jan. 1, 2020, to May 25, 2020, gun homicides increased by 14%, compared to 2019. (Democrats do control the cities.) But from George Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020, through the end of the year, gun homicides shot up an astronomical 41%.
Obviously, therefore, one problem with the theory that the bacchanal of violence of the last two years is the pandemic’s fault is that there is absolutely no evidence to support it.
As we’ve seen, right up until the hysteria over Floyd’s death, the media were fairly bristling with stories about the salubrious effect the pandemic was having on crime. In addition, as a factual matter, gun homicides nearly tripled from the period before Floyd’s death (B.F.) compared to the period after his death (A.D.)
A second major problem with the pandemic theory of crime is that it requires a complete mind-wipe of everything that happened in the months after Floyd’s death: BLM. All Cops Are Bastards. Defund the Police.
Media in unison: We have no idea what you’re talking about.
Here’s a reminder:
— Associated Press, May 29, 2020: “Minneapolis police station torched amid George Floyd protest“
— New York Times, June 12, 2020: “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police.“
— 770 KTTH, Aug. 25, 2020: “Rioters tried to burn Seattle police alive, sealed door during fire at East Precinct“
— In These Times, Dec. 15, 2020: “The Best Moment of 2020: The Burning of the Third Precinct“
Throughout all this, Democrats and the media celebrated as police budgets were slashed, officers’ hands were tied, and crime after crime was decriminalized.
No wonder they want to blame the pandemic.
Still, there are less obviously false excuses for the current crime wave than the pandemic. (I’m assuming the truth is a non-starter for our media.)
You know what else happened in 2020? The Pentagon released photos of UFOs! How about replacing “the pandemic” with that? The media should start including clauses like this in their crime stories: “… a drumbeat of violence that emerged after the Pentagon released UFO videos” and “… part of a rise in violence the year UFO videos were released.”
Seriously — that’s less unhinged than blaming the current, epic crime wave on “the pandemic.”
Warner Bros Shutting Down CNN+
By Newsmax Wires | Thursday, 21 April 2022 01:04 PM
Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/us/cnn-shutting-down/2022/04/21/id/1066663/
CNN’s brand-new streaming service, CNN+, is shutting down only a month after launch. In a Thursday memo, incoming CNN chief executive Chris Licht confirmed a Variety report on the shutdown. Licht said the service would shut down at the end of April.
In his memo, Licht said consumers wanted “simplicity and an all-in service” rather than “stand-alone offerings.” Discovery had previously suggested that it wanted to merge the new company’s separate streaming services, which include Discovery+ and HBO Max, into a single app. Licht said some CNN+ content will wind up on other company networks, and the streaming service’s employees will get opportunities to apply for jobs elsewhere inside Warner Bros. Discovery. The head of CNN+, Andrew Morse, is leaving the company.
“While today’s decision is incredibly difficult, it is the right one for the long-term success of CNN. It allows us to refocus resources on the core products that drive our singular focus: further enhancing CNN’s journalism and its reputation as a global news leader,” Licht wrote.
CNN+ launched when its parent was still part of AT&T. It combined with Discovery earlier this month in a new company, Warner Bros. Discovery, under Discovery CEO David Zaslav, who had his own vision for CNN and its Warner siblings. Under AT&T, there were $100 million in development costs and some 500 employees assigned to building out CNN+. The service had attracted big names for its lineup, from former Fox anchor Chris Wallace to food-media star Alison Roman, as part of the company’s effort to appeal to younger people with a streaming news service as cable news audiences age. There had been skepticism that a paid news streaming service would attract interest from consumers, who already have available a slew of online TV. While Fox has a paid streaming service, Fox Nation, other major TV news organizations make their apps available free.
CNBC, citing an unnamed source, reported that the decision to shut the service was based on recommendations from Licht after he studied the service. Politico reports that CNN+ staffers will continue to get pay and benefits for the next 90 days. Any CNN+ employee who leaves the company after that will get a minimum six-month severance.
CNN launched CNN+ in a bid to capitalize on the rising popularity of streaming video and growth of digital subscriptions at major news organizations. The streaming service offers a combination of live, on-demand and interactive programming, with an emphasis on original content.
Material from The Associated Press and Reuters was used in this report.
© 2022 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Information Deficit Disorder
A.F. BRANCO | on April 21, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-information-deficit-disorder/
People who depend on Mainstream media for news may as well be living under a rock.
DONATE to Branco Toons – 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 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 President Donald Trump.
Is a global oligarchy shaping before our eyes?
REPORTED By Wallace B. Henley, Exclusive Columnist | Wednesday, April 20, 2022
Read more at https://www.christianpost.com/voices/is-a-global-oligarchy-shaping-before-our-eyes.html/
A mere half-century ago most of us might have smirked at the suggestion that the day really would come when the whole world would be ruled by a single human being or a small cluster of elites, a global oligarchy. People who took literal prophecies from the Bible about such things were regarded as fanatics easily led by sensationalist preachers of doom. In recent years, however, the possibility of global elites dominating throughout the world has become plausible. Perhaps now we even can know what such an oligarchy of the elite might look like.
“There is a power structure in this country,” wrote Sohrab Ahmari on April 5 in The American Conservative. This is “a tangle of private capital, managerial interests, and governmental authority…that has become adept at seeing off challengers.”[i]
In previous columns, I have described this as a “consensus establishment” comprised of entertainment, information, academic, political, and corporate elites. They converge into a general agreement about what the rest of us should believe and value and propagandize that worldview non-stop. They marginalize, or, worse, cancel us when we refuse to comply.
Wars make many vulnerable and willing to receive leadership that is strong enough to stop killing and maiming. Desperation forces people to settle for even greater threats if the looming disasters burst upon the existential moment.
It was this intensifying angst that we are observing in our era that prompted me to author a book about artificial intelligence and the “looming spiritual crisis” rapidly developing technologies may present sooner rather than later.
The proliferation of the machines, their startling abilities, and entrancing presences make us all vulnerable to the belief systems wired into them. People who have no sense of Transcendence in their hearts and minds are the most susceptible.
“Babylon,” as presented in the Bible book of Revelation, is the world system organized without and even in defiance of God. It is the human attempt to recover through human means the lost Paradise that was Eden before the entry of evil.
“Babylon” is an apt symbol for that world system because human hands have tried to restore Eden on their own terms. The effort ranges from Nimrod to those who built Babel’s tower, to Nebuchadnezzar aiming to construct and then energize the human-built kingdom with his own glory. The struggle to recover paradise through human effort extends to modern social movements that try to build the perfect world in their image, from the 18th-century French revolution to Communism to movements of the Right, including Fascism and Naziism, and many many more. To pull off their schemes they must drug people. Thus, the Book of Revelation speaks of the “seductions” of Babylon, the world system. In fact, Revelation 18:23 describes this allurement as “sorcery” that deceives whole nations — whole people groups. The Greek word translated “sorcery” is pharmakeia from which we get “pharmaceuticals” and other terms. The appeal of the elitist-ruled world system is powerful because it makes addicts of people, causing us to crave the imagery and the spiritual, mental, and emotional stimulations of modern Babylon.
My concern in my book, Who Will Rule The Coming ‘gods’: The Looming Spiritual Crisis of Artificial Intelligence, was not so much the machines as the human beings who wire into the devices a set of values, boundaries, and worldview The survival of the human race might hinge on the kinds of worldviews that shape the logic.[ii]
One hopes the creators of all the alluring platforms of public interaction will awaken to their responsibility as arenas that facilitate widespread conversation rather than propaganda machines of the global elite. It’s not the devices that ought to be at the center of concern, but the mighty people who create them in their image and have no sense of accountability to any ‘God’ than themselves.
The problem we struggle with is the inconvenient truth that God has put “eternity” in our hearts. (Ecclesiastes 3:11) We immerse ourselves in the intoxicants of Babylon, but discover that we are still not satisfied, and seek more…and more.
This is what the elites vie with one another to meet. Franklin Graham is not talking mere religion but reality when he says that our only hope is in God. Otherwise, we succumb to the seductions of Babylon and become slaves to those who would the be lords of our lives, nations, and cultures.
[1] Can Elon Musk Save Free Speech Online? – The American Conservative
[2] See for example Reaching the Singularity May be Humanity’s Greatest and Last Accomplishment | Air & Space Magazine| Smithsonian Magazine
Wallace Henley is a former White House and Congressional aide. He is now a teaching pastor at Grace Church, The Woodlands, Texas. Wallace is author of more than 20 books, including God and Churchill, and his newest, Who Will Rule the Coming ‘gods: The Looming Spiritual Crisis of Artificial Intelligence.
Bill Maher, Piers Morgan blast ‘pathetic’ ‘victim culture’: ‘You f***ing babies!’
Reported by SARAH TAYLOR | April 20, 2022
Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/bill-maher-piers-morgan-blast-pathetic-victim-culture/
Broadcasters Bill Maher and Piers Morgan shredded what they described as “victim culture” and said that the necessity for trigger warnings ahead of films, videos, and more is nothing short of “pathetic.”
During Monday’s “Club Random with Bill Maher,” Maher spoke with Morgan and discussed what the two believe is the condition of today’s society. Approximately 30 minutes into the discussion, the legendary film “Gone with the Wind” came up during the conversation, prompting Maher to say, “By the way, that movie — entertaining as f***. And the people who need a disclaimer, this is the problem. You f***ing babies. It’s 1939. Can’t you just see by the film stock that things were very different?”
He continued, “Humans are like history in general, we evolve. Just celebrate we’re not racist any more and just be a grown-up.”
Morgan interjected, adding that constant disclaimers — including on comedy projects — are preposterous and noted that it’s apparent when jokes are clearly nothing more than jokes and “not intended to be remotely offensive to anybody.”
“And even that now needs a warning at the front in case anybody’s offended,” he continued. “What do they think is going to happen when you watch it? What happens to people? I mean do they sit there shaking?”
Maher added, “The fact this generation needs a trigger warning and a Klonopin to get through an episode of ‘Friends’ [is] pathetic.”
Morgan continued, noting that he believes the world places a “premium” on those who consider themselves victims.
“It is celebrated to be weak,” he reasoned.
Maher later added, “Well, it’s the end of the empire.”
Elsewhere during the discussion, Morgan said that gender identity is “all bulls**t.”
“I just find myself constantly feeling, what is going on with the world?” he said. “Like, I just saw in the U.K. today there was a thing about the fire service or something, they’re being ordered now to use him/her/them/their pronouns. Whatever. I said, ‘OK, well fine, let’s take this to the logical extension because pronouns are whatever you want to be, right? So, if I decide I want to identify myself as a d***head, which many people watching this might think is entirely —”
Maher interrupted, suggesting, “You know why they’re gonna think you’re a d***head? Because of the way you said those pronouns, you dismissed it. … It’s not my generation’s thing either, but I get it.”
Morgan then changed course and went on to recall a 2019 debate he had on “Good Morning Britain” in which he jokingly said he wanted to identify as a “two-spirit penguin” — a quip that prompted heavy criticism at the time.
“It’s all bulls**t,” he said.
Piers Morgan | Club Random w/ Bill Maherwww.youtube.com
Dartmouth College charges Republican club $3,600 security fee for canceled Andy Ngo event
Reported by CHRIS PANDOLFO | April 20, 2022
Three months ago, Dartmouth College in New Hampshire canceled a College Republicans event featuring journalist Andy Ngo in response to violent threats made by Antifa activists and “concerning information” the school claimed it received from Hanover police. Now, the school is insisting that Dartmouth College Republicans pay $3,600 in security fees for the canceled event and warning that failure to pay the fees will result in the club being unable to request further funds from the school.
On Tuesday, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education sent a letter to Dartmouth College demanding that the school “immediately rescind the security fee charge” and permit the College Republicans chapter to request funding to host future events.
“Forcing the group to shoulder these security costs — based on detractors’ disruption at no fault of the College Republicans — and refusing to fund future College Republicans events until these exorbitant fees are paid, infringes the expressive and associational rights Dartmouth promises to its students,” FIRE’s Sabrina Conza wrote to Dartmouth President Philip J. Hanlon.
The planned event with Ngo in January was moved online after his physical visit to campus was canceled. At the time, Dartmouth College claimed that it had received unspecified “concerning information” from Hanover police “regarding safety issues” for the event. In response to requests from FIRE for clarification about why the in-person event was canceled, the school said it was “deeply concerned about the credible threats to participant safety shared by local law enforcement” before the event with Ngo was scheduled to begin.
However, FIRE also requested clarification from the Hanover police, which shared public records and a letter from the police chief stating that law enforcement “did not make a recommendation to Dartmouth College regarding the January 20th event.”
The letter from Chief of Police Charles B. Dennis said that “the information and concerns we had received from student organizers, event organizers, the speaker, open-source information available online referencing the event, and information through law enforcement channels was credible and caused us concern for the safety of those attending the event, protesting the event, as well as our community members.”
“With the information we had, we were operationally prepared as best we could to handle the event and protest,” Dennis said.
In a statement to Inside Higher Ed, a spokesperson for Dartmouth College affirmed the school’s support for “freedom of expression and dissent.”
The school said that student organizations are responsible for event-related security costs and said that “leaders of the college Republican club were aware of their responsibility for security fees for the event and received an estimate in advance, with enough time to submit a funding request for these costs. They did not request this funding. The club was also aware of the possibility that the event might need to be adjusted to address safety concerns expressed by the organizers themselves.”
Elon Musk diagnoses Netflix’s big problem after platform sheds subscribers, stock tumbles: ‘Woke mind virus’
Reported by CHRIS ENLOE | April 20, 2022
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has diagnosed the disease that he believes is causing Netflix’s foreboding financial woes.
Netflix announced on Tuesday that it experienced its first net loss of subscribers in more than a decade during the first quarter of 2022. The streaming platform disclosed that 200,000 users dropped the service between January and March. The news caused shares of Netflix stock to tumble more than 25%, CNBC reported. Netflix previously told shareholders the company would experience a net gain of 2.5 million subscribers in the first quarter of 2022. To make matters worse, Netflix is now forecasting the loss of another 2 million subscribers in the second quarter of this year. Netflix’s stock further cratered more than 30% as of Wednesday afternoon.
Musk pointed to woke ideology as the source of Netflix’s subscriber and impending financial woes.
Responding to news of the significant stock tumble, Musk said, “The woke mind virus is making Netflix unwatchable.”
In response to another Twitter user who said the “woke mind virus is the biggest threat to the civilization,” Musk affirmed, “Yes.”
Indeed, Netflix has platformed provocatively progressive content. For example, Netflix hosts the show “Dear White People,” which is described as addressing the “complexities of prejudice that take different forms — whether it’s white or light-skinned privilege, sexism, or homophobia.”
Netflix is also scheduled to release a new show on Thursday called “He’s Expecting.” As the title suggests, the show is centered on a pregnant male character. Netflix describes the show: “When a successful ad executive who’s got it all figured out becomes pregnant, he’s forced to confront social inequities he’d never considered before.”
Netflix is also working with Ibram X. Kendi to adapt his anti-racist work into film projects, and the platform released a show about Colin Kaepernick last year. The platform attributed its subscriber decline and bleak forecast to market factors outside the company’s control, account sharing, competition (from Amazon, Disney, YouTube, Hulu, and others), and other “macro factors” including “sluggish economic growth, increasing inflation, geopolitical events such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and some continued disruption from COVID.”
Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Still Leading from Behind
A.F. BRANCO | on April 20, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-still-leading-from-behind-2/
The Easter Bunny may not be real but the man (Obama) behind the scenes is and still leading from behind.
DONATE to Branco Toons – 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 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 President Donald Trump.
Doctors: Biden Administration’s Dangerous Push for Trans Treatments for Kids Falsifies Science
REPORTED BY: JANE ROBBINS | APRIL 19, 2022
HHS isn’t run by honest medical professionals. It’s in the grip of ideologues determined to destroy troubled children.
JANE ROBBINS
The nation’s public-health establishment lost all credibility during the Covid era by either ignoring or politicizing scientific data. But health bureaucrats seem to have learned nothing. With respect to the highly charged issue of gender dysphoria, they continue to substitute politics for science when necessary to advance the leftist narrative.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently released an official document designed to enshrine experimental medical interventions as the standard treatment for transgender-identifying children. Prepared by HHS’s Office of Population Affairs (OPA), the document is a political statement unmoored from actual medical research.
According to “Gender-Affirming Care and Young People,” medical interventions such as puberty-blocking drugs, wrong-sex hormones, and surgical mutilation are “crucial to overall health” of young people confused about their sex. (For what it’s worth, OPA falls under the supervision of Dr. Rachel Levine, a man who identifies as a woman.) The document complements a proposed rule announced by HHS in March, mandating insurance coverage for such “gender-affirming care.”
But the claims made in HHS’s new release have been deftly dismantled by an organization of physicians and scientists who still care about reality, and about ethical medical practice. The Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) — which exists “to promote safe, compassionate, ethical and evidence-informed healthcare for children, adolescents, and young adults with gender dysphoria” — points out that HHS’s discussion is deeply misleading and indeed dangerous. SEGM identifies seven serious misrepresentations of fact crammed into the two-page HHS document. Most of these involve cherry-picking, distorting, or simply ignoring the results of studies on the many facets of so-called gender-affirming treatment.
HHS Mischaracterizes Studies
For example, HHS flatly mischaracterizes a study that failed to find any benefits of “social transition” (presenting oneself as the opposite sex, with a new name, hairstyle, dress, etc.). As SEGM notes, the HHS document cites that study for the opposite conclusion, “wrongly assert[ing] that social transition improves functioning.” HHS presumably assumes readers won’t read the actual study and thus will accept the agency’s false claims about its findings.
SEGM identifies other falsifications of the supposed mental-health benefits of wrong-sex hormones and surgeries. HHS’s “claims of benefits coming from cherry-picked studies do not hold up when the entire body of evidence is properly evaluated in a systematic and reproducible way,” according to SEGM.
The design of the studies cited by HHS made it impossible to link medical interventions and improved mental health, SEGM observes. By contrast, multiple European studies “concluded that there is a lack of convincing evidence for the mental health benefit for children and adolescents of either puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.”
SEGM notes, in fact, that the Swedish health authority warned that “the risks of puberty suppressing treatment . . . and gender-affirming hormonal treatment currently outweigh the possible benefits, and that the treatments should be offered only in exceptional cases.”
HHS ignored all this research, which would have led honest medical professionals to at least acknowledge the scholarly debate about the wisdom of these interventions. But HHS isn’t run by honest medical professionals. It’s in the grip of ideologues determined to drive troubled children and their families into the clutches of the trans industry.
Dishonest Use of Data on Suicide
SEGM also criticizes the HHS document for dishonesty about the related issue of suicide among trans-identifying youth. In claiming alarmingly high rates of suicidal ideation in this population — a claim routinely used to pressure desperate parents into consenting to dangerous medical interventions — HHS relies only on “a low quality, non-probability online survey.”
In fact, SEGM reports, “recent research from one of the world’s largest pediatric gender clinics estimated the rate of suicide in trans-identified youth as 0.03% over a 10-year period, which is comparable to youth presenting for care with mental health problems.”
Even more critically, despite HHS’s strong implication that drugs, hormones, and surgeries reduce suicide rates, SEGM clarifies that “no study to date has demonstrated that transition reduces the rate of serious suicide attempts.” Is HHS afraid that telling the truth about suicide will make parents less likely to place their troubled children on the trans-industry conveyor belt?
Puberty Blockers Are Not Fully Reversible
The mendacity of HHS extends beyond misrepresenting or ignoring studies. For example, the document states, without supporting citation, that puberty blockers are fully reversible (i.e., natural puberty will resume once the drugs are discontinued). But SEGM warns about the utter dearth of research supporting this claim. In fact,
concerns have been raised that puberty blockers are psychologically irreversible (since over 95% of all treated youth proceed to cross-sex hormones), that they may harm bone development, may permanently alter the brain, that it is not yet known how they affect other vital organs, all of which undergo significant structural changes during uninterrupted puberty.
Once again, public-health agencies in Europe are more honest. As SEGM reports, Britain’s National Health Service says that “[l]ittle is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria.”
But ignoring the risks of these interventions is HHS’s modus operandi. SEGM calls out the HHS ideologues for mentioning only the supposed (in some cases imaginary) benefits of interventions while failing to mention documented risks to bone development, cardiovascular health, and the mental health of patients who later regret their transition decisions.
Sterility Expected After Trans Treatments
SEGM particularly targets HHS’s failure to mention the effect on reproductive health, which is supposed to be the focus of Levine’s Office of Population Affairs. “When puberty blockers are administered in early puberty and followed by cross-sex hormones,” SEGM notes, “sterility is expected.”
HHS is silent about this potentially devastating consequence. Nor does it acknowledge the “serious ethical questions about whether adolescents can be considered competent to waive their future reproductive rights at an age when they are unlikely to be able to appreciate or predict the importance of fertility to their adult selves.”
Ethics, it appears, is not HHS’s strong suit.
HHS also misleads in stating that mutilating surgeries are “typically used in adulthood or case-by-case in adolescence.” In fact, as SEGM notes, draft recommendations from the influential (though highly politicized) World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) urge broad availability of mastectomies to patients at age 16.
Even worse, patients as young as 13 had their healthy breasts removed as part of a study funded by the National Institutes of Health – i.e., by you and me through our tax dollars. The HHS bureaucrats who prepared this report surely knew this, but distort the facts.
This HHS document, then, is a farce. As SEGM summarizes, HHS inadequately reviewed the scientific literature, issued “biased recommendations that do not acknowledge the low quality of evidence,” failed to solicit input from professionals and patients whose experiences contradict the government narrative, and utterly ignored possible alternatives to medical interventions, such as psychotherapy. The result:
This incomplete representation of the relevant issues is likely to mislead the public to believe that this is the best and only alternative, particularly when no other alternatives are mentioned. The public is also likely to erroneously assume that the risks of affirmative care are low. Patients and families are not capable of providing valid informed consent when the information they receive is inaccurate and incomplete
If the public-health establishment wants to rehabilitate its tattered reputation after the Covid debacle, this isn’t the way to do it. Health policy is too important to be entrusted to political hacks.
Jane Robbins is an attorney and a retired senior fellow with the American Principles Project in Washington DC. In that position she crafted federal and state legislation designed to restore the constitutional autonomy of states and parents in education policy, and to protect the rights of religious freedom and conscience. She is a graduate of Clemson University and the Harvard Law School.
Why Violence Is An Inevitable Outcome Of Critical Race Theory
BY: J. ALLEN CARTWRIGHT | APRIL 19, 2022
Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/04/19/why-violence-is-an-inevitable-outcome-of-critical-race-theory/
For true believers of critical race theory, America is too steeped in racial oppression to be changed from within. Destruction is the only alternative.
J. ALLEN CARTWRIGHT
Our nation has been rocked by at least two significant acts of domestic terrorism in a five-month span. Last week, Frank James opened fire in a New York City subway, injuring 23 people. In November, Darrell Brooks drove his SUV through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, killing 6 people and injuring 60 others.
Both perpetrators are black, which is a bit unusual given that mass shootings have historically been perpetrated by white men. More significantly, both Brooks and James had expressed radical views on social media advocating violence towards whites in the lead-up to their attacks, strongly suggesting race relations were a key motive for their acts of violence. (Naturally, the mainstream media has neglected to find out if it was indeed their motivation).
Ditto for Quintez Brown, a Black Lives Matter activist who was charged with the attempted assassination of Louisville mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg in February, and Micah Johnson, who killed five Dallas police officers in 2016. Meanwhile, public perceptions about the state of race relations in the country have plummeted.
These anecdotes, particularly during increasing dissemination of critical race theory (CRT), suggest CRT has been a detriment to racial progress rather than a force for good. The harmful impacts of CRT on race relations are unsurprising when considering several of its basic tenets.
CRT Teaches America Is Racist
The New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project,” the brainchild of Nikole Hannah-Jones, expresses a historical view in which America’s true founding was in 1619, the year African slaves were first brought to the United States. American history is thus viewed and analyzed through a lens of anti-black racism.
For example, Hannah-Jones controversially asserts that the Revolutionary War was primarily fought to preserve slavery, argues that the U.S. Constitution was meticulously crafted to establish a “slavocracy,” and criticizes Abraham Lincoln’s approach to the issue of slavery and race. Similarly, a report last June from our very own National Archives argued that America’s founding documents are steeped in “systemic racism.”
Philadelphia-based attorney and radio host Michael Coard perhaps best sums up the CRT view of American history, as he decried the Fourth of July as “a celebration of kidnapping, transporting/buying/selling human beings, separating families, torture, whippings, rapes, castrations, lynchings and enslavement.” The conclusion, then, is that the history of slavery persists, impacting all aspects of American life to this very day.
CRT Teaches American Government Is Racist
The Constitution remains the law of the land, and if you believe that the Constitution is racist, then it follows that the American system of government, which is based on the Constitution, is also racist. This is a core argument of CRT: American institutions, including the Electoral College, the Senate, and the Second Amendment have all recently been attacked as systemically racist to justify their abolition.
In the words of The Nation’s Elie Mystal,“[t]he Constitution is kind of trash… It was written by slavers and colonists, and white people who were willing to make deals with slavers and colonists. They didn’t ask anybody who looked like me what they thought about the Constitution.”
Allegations of widespread government-sanctioned suppression of minority voters also continue to persist. Therefore, according to CRT, minorities are forced to live in a system designed to oppress them, and the system is too flawed to allow for any reform internally.
CRT: Non-Whites Cannot Succeed Within the System
Perhaps most important to CRT and “wokeness” is the tenet that you cannot truly be successful as a minority in America. This was most clearly illustrated in a July 2020 display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which accredited several objective measures of successful behavior (e.g. hard work, planning for the future, delayed gratification, the scientific method) as part of “White Culture.”
Minorities who achieve wealth and/or educational success in the United States are openly attacked as exhibiting “white characteristics” or “acting white.” Successful African-Americans who don’t adhere to every woke political or social stereotype are quickly dismissed as “cornball brothers,” “oreos,” or “Uncle Toms.”
Thus, success for minorities in America is not taken as evidence of racial progress, but as a sign of conformity with “white” values and a betrayal of racial identity.
That Leaves Violence as the Only Option
If you wholeheartedly believe in those three statements, violence inevitably becomes your only option for progress. You live in an oppressive society, with built-in systems of oppression that prevent you from altering that society, and have no way to be successful within the system while staying true to yourself. Your only alternative is to destroy that system.
That is the thought process that Brooks and James expressed. “White people and Black people should not have any contact with each other,” James argued. A June 2020 tweet by Brooks was even more direct: “[W]hen we start bakk knokkin white people TF out ion wanna hear it…the old white ppl 2, KNOKK DEM TF OUT!! PERIOD.”
Of course, the leaders of the CRT movement who craft these beliefs and pass them on to others clearly don’t believe their own teachings. Prominent CRT figures such as Ibram Kendi, Patrisse Cullors, and Robin DiAngelo have achieved tremendous financial and professional success within the very systems they rail against. They are able to live in upscale neighborhoods and run in social circles that are far removed from the violence and poverty that plague many minority neighborhoods.
The corporate, educational, and entertainment institutions that score public relationship points by peddling CRT propaganda are similarly largely insulated from the harm that their teachings cause. Unfortunately for passengers on the New York subway and parade-goers in Waukesha, some people believe in CRT wholeheartedly, and thus embrace violence as the ultimate solution to systemic racism.
J. Allen Cartwright writes about the interplay of politics with cultural and scientific institutions. He can be followed on Parler at @jallencartwright.
Jen Psaki Breaks Down in Tears, Says Anti-Groomer Laws for Little Children “Make Me Crazy”
Reported By Jim Hoft | Published April 19, 2022
Read more at https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/jen-psaki-breaks-tears-says-anti-groomer-laws-little-children-make-crazy/
Florida recently passed an anti-groomer law for their schools. No longer will teachers be able to push overtly sexual material to kindergarteners up to third graders. This makes the Democrats crazy! They love their school grooming exercises. How sick.
Jen Psaki is a perfect example of this warped thinking. Psaki recently sat down for an interview with podcaster Jessica Yellin. Psaki told the leftist podcaster that anti-groomer laws bring her to tears.
Via Breitbart.com:
White House press secretary Jen Psaki broke down in tears over anti-grooming laws in an interview with podcaster Jessica Yellin on Tuesday.
“I’m going to get emotional about this issue because it’s horrible … This is an issue that makes me completely crazy,” Psaki said when she was asked about laws passing in Republican states restricting schools on transgender issues and sexual identity and giving parents more control of their child’s education.
The laws, like the one passed in Florida, prohibit discussions about sexual identity and gender in school classes with young children and prevent school officials from transitioning a child’s gender without the parent’s consent.
Psaki said the laws were “cruel” and did not represent the majority of Americans.
“It’s like kids who are bullied and all these leaders are taking steps to hurt them and hurt their lives and hurt their families,” she wept.
She scolded Republicans for using the laws as a “political wedge issue” in the ongoing culture war fights in the United States.
“The political games and harsh and cruel attempts at laws, or laws that we’re seeing in some states like Florida, … that is not a reflection of the country moving to oppose LGBTQ+ communities,” she said.
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.
With Around $20 Billion in Aid to Ukraine – How Much Was Provided to Ukraine and How Much Went to “The Big Guy”?
Reported By Joe Hoft | Published April 18, 2022
Read more at https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/around-20-billion-aid-ukraine-much-provided-much-went-big-guy/
This is what happens when corrupt politicians steal the White House. The American people have no idea who is running the show behind the scenes of the Biden regime. Americans know that the Bidens were involved in Ukraine in financial deals in the past so does this still continue?
We know that Hunter Biden was on the Board of a Ukrainian company along with his friend connected to John Kerry. They made millions being on the Burisma Board despite knowing nothing about oil and gas. They did not even speak the native Ukrainian language. When a local prosecutor began looking into Hunter’s arrangement, Joe Biden had the prosecutor removed and fired. Then he bragged about it later in front of an audience.
Well “son of a bitch”, now Biden is back in the business of sending billions to Ukraine. After his previous corruption in the country, how can any American trust that the dollars Biden is awarding to Ukraine will ever get there? This is a serious question.
In March, Biden and Congress arranged for nearly $16 billion for Ukraine. This was at first $10 billion along with an additional $6 billion. We have no idea if this ever made it over there or not.
Now there are reports that Biden has provided another $3 billion to Ukraine. This is reportedly in military aid.
Vowing to “stand with Ukraine,” President Joe Biden and his administration have committed nearly $2.6 billion in U.S. military aid to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion Feb. 24, supplying a range of weapons for Ukraine’s defense against Russian aggression.
The latest round, $800 million, was authorized Wednesday. Since August, nearly $2.8 billion has been specifically allocated for military assistance, but the White House said the total amount of aid is closer to $3.2 billion since Biden took office. That would include money from a $13.6 budget bill Biden signed in March that contained money to arm Ukrainians.
There’s also been indirect assistance to allies such as a Patriot missile system the United States repositioned to Slovakia after its government agreed to supply an S-300 air defense system to Ukraine.
“We won’t be able to advertise every piece of security we give because our allies and partners are supplying to Ukraine through us,” Biden said last week, “but advanced weapons and ammunition are flowing in every single day.”
Based on the numbers reported to date there is somewhere near $20 billion going to Ukraine from Joe Biden. But does anyone really trust the Bidens enough to believe this money will make its way to Ukraine? Or is there another 10% going to the big guy?
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. Joe’s weekday radio show at Realtalk933.com has received rave reviews. He has ten degrees or designations and is the author of four books. His new book: ‘The Steal – Volume One: Setting the Stage’ is out now. It addresses the stolen 2020 Election and those activities that led up to November 3, 2020 – please take a look and buy a copy.
It’s Not Just Elon: The Left Whines ‘Threat to Democracy’ Whenever There’s a Threat to Their Regime
REPORTED BY: ELLE REYNOLDS | APRIL 19, 2022
They’re so fragile that making any chink in their armor will get you labeled as America’s (next) ‘first 9/11.’
ELLE REYNOLDS
VISIT ON TWITTER@_ETREYNOLDS
The same people who relentlessly insisted that Big Tech’s censorship campaign was totally fine are now screaming that a potential buyout of Twitter by Elon Musk poses a certified Threat to Democracy. But we’ve heard this absurd routine before, and it’s not really democracy they’re worried about. The Big Tech, big media, and big government cabal just whine about democracy being under siege when their own power conglomerate is threatened.
“I am frightened by the impact on society and politics if Elon Musk acquires Twitter. He seems to believe that on social media anything goes,” fretted The Washington Post’s Max Boot last week, after the Tesla and SpaceX CEO offered to buy the entirety of Twitter stock. “For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.”
Former New York Magazine writer Jesse Singal had the very intelligent take that even the possibility of Musk buying out Twitter was “America’s very first 9/11,” while Salon’s Matthew Rozsa blared that “Elon Musk’s attempted takeover of Twitter is a threat to the free world.”
The idea of losing some power to silence opposing viewpoints on social media is terrifying to these people — so terrifying that in their panic they don’t even realize they’ve admitted their own gluttony for control.
But this isn’t the first time the group of people in media, tech platforms, and politics who want to control what you think have seen pushback on their vise grip and gone ballistic. And a “threat to democracy” is their favorite label with which to smear anything that challenges their power.
The most obvious example is the systematic campaign to convince the country that a five-hour riot at the U.S. Capitol — which, contrary to media lies, did not cause the deaths of five people — was as bad as or worse than the terror attacks of 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the Civil War. You don’t have to defend the Jan. 6, 2021 riot to recognize that America’s own justice system indicates it was neither an “insurrection” nor a “terrorist attack,” despite the hysteria of the corporate press.
But that’s not the only instance. Just think back to when The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin cried “Democracy is hanging by a thread” when an elected majority in the U.S. Senate, including West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, determined not to pass President Joe Biden’s Build Back Bankrupt plan. For Rubin and others, actual democracy at work was just too much of a threat to … democracy.
Meanwhile, The Atlantic has called the entire Republican Party “a grave threat to American democracy,” with similar smears from Business Insider and the Chicago Sun-Times.
When concerned parents showed up to school board meetings to protest racist and radical sex ideology in their kids’ classrooms, they were labeled not just a threat to democracy but domestic terrorists, in a smear campaign that was revealed to be orchestrated by President Joe Biden’s own Department of Education.
New York Magazine’s Eric Levitz worried that the U.S. Supreme Court was too conservative, threatening that “the consequences for … popular democracy could be dire.”
Vox, among others, has declared that the constitutionally prescribed Electoral College “poses a … long-term threat to American democracy.” It has also claimed the constitutionally prescribed half of our bicameral legislature known as the U.S. Senate poses an even greater one.
And of course, nearly everyone on the left whined that questions about the rigging of the 2020 election were existential threats to democracy, after they spent years deriding President Donald Trump’s 2016 win as “illegitimate.”
It’s more than obvious by now that these people don’t truly want democracy or freedom, but power. When their control — over what laws are passed, who wins elections, what’s taught to kids in schools, or what you’re allowed to say on social media — is challenged, including by actual democratic processes like fair elections, free speech, or the will of a congressional majority, they’ll rush to call the challenger an enemy of democracy itself.
Just like Dr. Anthony Fauci equating himself with Science, these members of the ruling class want you to believe that an attack on their power is an attack on our entire political order. If they succeed in that, they can insulate themselves from all critique and silence the opposition, either via the power of cancel culture and self-censorship, or by simply locking the accounts of their critics.
But their propensity to fall back on that sham defense every time their rule is threatened has revealed just how desperate they are for control, and just how ridiculous they are willing to sound to maintain it. If they felt confident they could maintain power without smearing every opponent as the next big threat to the free world, there would be no need for such distracting theatrics. Instead, they’re so fragile that making any chink in their armor will get you labeled as America’s (next) “first 9/11.”
Next time you hear cries that something is a “threat to our very democracy itself, even graver than all the other, formerly-gravest threats to democracy,” it should be your first clue that that thing, good or bad, is making the censorship class quake in their silk slippers. Your second thought should be to expect them to exploit the “democracy” fearmongering for even more control — and your third thought should be to keep that the heck from happening.
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.
Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco
A.F. Branco Cartoon – TDS, Truth Derangement Syndrome
A.F. BRANCO | on April 19, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-tds-truth-derangement-syndrome/
Democrats and the mainstream media are having a meltdown over the possibility of Elon Musk buying Twitter.
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