Perspectives; Thoughts; Comments; Opinions; Discussions

Archive for September, 2022

Chinese Christians hunted internationally by communist regime


By JOSEPH MACKINNON | September 07, 2022

Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/chinese-christians-internationally-stalked-by-communist-regime/

Throughout its history, but with renewed vigor in recent years, the atheistic communist Chinese regime has sought to crush or at the very least control Christianity within Chinese borders. Christianity is regarded by the communist leadership as a foreign threat to its control and well-being — one that Mao Zedong endeavored to eliminate altogether. Although Chinese Christians of all denominations have routinely been subject to harassment, torture, detentions, and executions inside China’s borders, the CCP has recently taken more brazenly to hounding those who have fled abroad.

Exodus

Pastor Pan Yongguang and 61 congregants belonging to the Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church fled China to the South Korean island of Jeju in 2019, seeking asylum. The CCP required that the SHRC and its members should join a registered church, one strictly regulated by the regime, or otherwise be disbanded and barred from assembling.

Registered churches are required to display images of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and communist propaganda alongside or in lieu of religious images. Homilies are censored. Surveillance cameras installed on altars record all church happenings. Additionally, to ensure state atheism takes, people under the age of 18 are barred from participating in religious ceremonies.

Pastor Pan had no intention of registering.

Pressure mounted when the regime, responding to the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, sought to everywhere re-exert its dominance. Pastor Pan said that “quasi-martial law” was consequently imposed on Shenzhen and upon his parish. The SHRC mulled over what to do. The church put the matter to a vote, and the majority elected to leave.

Though they successfully made it to South Korea, it was made abundantly clear both by local authorities and U.S. officials that Pastor Pan’s congregation would be unable to stay. Less than 1% of asylum seekers were permitted to stay in 2019.

Bob Fu of the non-governmental Christian nonprofit China Aid warned, “If they get deported back to China by Korean officials, every member of this church will face extreme punishment.” Fu was not speaking hyperbolically.

Within months of the SHRC’s exodus, Pastor Wang Yi, the founder of one of China’s largest unregistered churches, was sentenced to nine years in prison, denied all political rights, and fined. Yi’s fate is commonplace for Christians in the region.

Spanish journalist Pablo M. Diez has elsewhere noted how Catholic Bishop James Su Zhimin, like others who refused to subordinate themselves to CCP religious regulators, was “disappeared” after “having spent most of his life deprived of his freedom.”

Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong was similarly arrested May 11, 2022, for his religiosity, support of freedom, and criticism of the CCP.

For fear of being returned by South Korea to China to suffer the kind of fate met by Zhimin, Yi, and Zen, the SHRC congregants migrated instead to Thailand, where they believe CCP agents are still stalking them.

Repercussions

Despite escaping China, Pastor Pan and his parish have nevertheless been subject to continued harassments, threats, and surveillance by the CCP. Those they left behind in China have also paid the price for their families’ Christianity, in the way of intimidation, interrogation, and other statist abuses, including the prohibition of a newborn child’s legal status.

The pastor, whom CCP agents have accused of “treason,” “collusion with foreign forces,” and “subversion of state power,” learned that his siblings and mother have been penalized as a result of his actions.

Another congregant’s relative in the mainland was told by communist officers, “Your descendants may suffer.”

The presumed objective of the CCP’s mistreatment of the expat Christians’ relatives is to coerce Pastor Pan and his parish back to China, where if not executed, they may be placed in reeducation camps and forced to renounce their faith.

China is home to tens of millions of Christians. Although the communist Chinese regime stated in 2018 that there were only 44 million Christians within its borders, this is regarded by many to be a gross undercount, as official figures only factor in members of registered Christian groups (in which the SHRC, house Christians, and the underground Catholic Church are not numbered).

A 2011 Pew Forum report indicated the number of Christians, including Protestants and Catholics, exceeded 67 million. The Economist similarly indicated in 2020 that official numbers aren’t reflective of the reality; that Chinese Christians and Muslims together outnumber the membership of the communist party (92 million).

A broader problem

The CCP does not only send its agents abroad to stalk Christians who have fled. Freedom House issued a report last year indicating that China “conducts the most sophisticated, global, and comprehensive campaign of transnational repression in the world.” It targets religious and ethnic minorities (e.g., Christians, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners), political dissidents, human rights activists, and others.

For instance, over 1,500 ethnic Muslim Uyghurs have been detained in the Middle East and North Africa, many of whom have been extradited back to China. Thousands more have been targeted, hit with cyber attacks, or have had their families back in China threatened.

The CCP has also activated agents in the United States. Earlier this year, five CCP spies were charged with stalking, harassing, and spying on Chinese nationals in New York.

In October 2020, eight illegal agents of the CCP were charged for surveilling, locating, and intimidating targets of the communist regime. These agents intended to coerce their targets back to China, where “they would face certain imprisonment or worse following illegitimate trials.”

Category:

International Politics, Religion

Tagged with:

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


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Face Plant

A.F. BRANCO | on September 7, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-face-plant/

Loan forgiveness and other stupid Democrat ideas blowing up in their face.

Loan Forgiveness
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2022

DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – 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.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Special Counsel Must Choose: Risk A Russia Hoaxer’s Second Acquittal Or Expose More Deep-State Dirt


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | SEPTEMBER 06, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/09/06/special-counsel-must-choose-risk-a-russia-hoaxers-second-acquittal-or-expose-more-deep-state-dirt/

Special Counsel John Durham news on MSNBC

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND

MORE ARTICLES

Crossfire Hurricane agents never intended to drop their investigation of Donald Trump, and therefore any lies he told the FBI did not affect their decision-making, Igor Danchenko argued in a motion filed on Friday seeking dismissal of the criminal charges pending against him in a Virginia federal court. With the trial set to start next month, Special Counsel John Durham must now decide whether to acknowledge the deep state’s complicity or risk a second acquittal.

Durham charged Danchenko last year with five counts of making false statements to the FBI related to Danchenko’s role as Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source in the fake dossier the Hillary Clinton team peddled to the FBI and the media. According to the indictment, Danchenko lied extensively when he provided Steele with supposed intel, and then later made false representations to the FBI during a series of interviews. 

One count of the indictment concerned Danchenko’s denial during an FBI interview on June 15, 2017, of having spoken with “PR Executive-1” about any material contained in the Steele dossier. According to Durham’s team, “PR Executive-1,” who has since been identified as the Clinton and DNC-connected Charles Dolan, Jr., told Danchenko that a “GOP friend” had told him Paul Manafort had been forced to resign from the Trump campaign because of allegations connecting Manafort to Ukraine.

“While Dolan later admitted to the FBI that he had no such ‘GOP friend’ and that he had instead gleaned this information from press reports, Dolan’s fabrication appeared in the Steele dossier.” But according to the indictment, when the FBI asked Danchenko whether he had talked with Dolan about that and other details included in Steele’s reports, Danchenko lied and said he hadn’t. 

The four remaining counts of the indictment concerned Danchenko’s alleged lies during questioning by the FBI on March 16, May 18, October 24, and November 16, 2017, concerning conversations he supposedly had with Sergei Millian, who was the then-president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. According to the indictment, Danchenko told FBI agents during those interviews that he believed Millian had provided him information during an anonymous phone call, including “intel” later included in the Steele dossier that there was “a well-developed ‘conspiracy of cooperation’ between the Trump Campaign and Russian officials.” However, no such call ever occurred, Durham’s team charged. 

In seeking dismissal of these five counts, Danchenko’s attorneys argued in the motion to dismiss they filed on Friday that the government’s false statement charges failed as a matter of law because ambiguity in the FBI’s questions and in his own answers make it impossible to show he knowingly lied to the government. What proved more intriguing, however, was Danchenko’s second argument based on “materiality.” Here, in essence, Danchenko argued that his statements, even if knowingly false, could not create criminal liability because they were immaterial to the FBI’s investigation. 

To support this argument, Danchenko notes that the FBI was already investigating Millian’s “potential involvement with Russian interference efforts long before it had ever interviewed or even identified Mr. Danchenko,” apparently based on Steele’s claim that Millian served “as the source of relevant information.” Accordingly, Danchenko maintains his supposed lies were not the reason the FBI targeted Millian.

Danchenko further emphasizes in his brief that Steele had falsely told the FBI that “Danchenko had reported meeting with [Millian] in person on multiple occasions.” Danchenko exposed Steele’s own lies by telling the FBI he had never met with Millian “and could not be sure he ever spoke to him,” Danchenko’s attorneys stress in their motion to dismiss, thus calling Steele’s “statements, and portions of the Company Reports, into question.” Yet, even after learning of Steele’s apparent lies, the FBI did not alter the course of the investigation and, in fact, continued to rely on Steele’s reporting to seek renewals of the FISA surveillance orders, Danchenko’s brief underscores to argue that nothing Danchenko said during his interviews really mattered to the FBI.

Because Danchenko’s statements failed to change the trajectory of the government’s investigation into Millian and more broadly Trump and his associates, Danchenko posits that “it is difficult to fathom how the government would have made any decision other than to continue investigating [Millian] … regardless of what Mr. Danchenko told them.” In other words, Danchenko’s alleged lies were immaterial.

As a matter of law, Millian’s materiality argument is weak, but as a matter of defense-attorney rhetoric, it holds the potential to score Danchenko an acquittal. 

Potential for Acquittal

The legal standard for materiality requires a false statement to have “a natural tendency to influence, or [be] capable of influencing, either a discrete decision or any other function of the agency to which it is addressed.” Further, “the falsehood need not actually influence the agency’s decision-making process, but merely needs to be ‘capable’ of doing so.” Thus, legally speaking, that the Crossfire Hurricane team, and later Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office, seemed unconcerned with what Danchenko said, as shown by their continued reliance on Steele and his dossier, is irrelevant. The question is whether the lie was capable of influencing how a hypothetically “objective” government official would have acted had they known the truth.

While Durham’s team will argue to the jury — assuming the district court denies Danchenko’s motion to dismiss the indictment — that the alleged lies were capable of influencing several decisions of the FBI agents, the reality is that the jurors will have a hard time buying that proposition unless Durham exposes the malfeasance of the Crossfire Hurricane agents and the members of Mueller’s team. In short, Durham needs to tell the jury that Danchenko’s alleged lies did not actually influence the government’s investigation because the agents were out to get Trump.

If the Special Counsel’s office does not take this tack, what the jury will hear is the story Danchenko previewed in his motion to dismiss: 

“During the course of its investigation into the [Steele dossier], the FBI determined that the defendant, Igor Danchenko, was a potential source of information contained in the [dossier]. In order to assist the FBI in its investigation of the accuracy and sources of the information in the [dossier], Mr. Danchenko agreed to numerous voluntary interviews with the FBI from in or about January 2017 through November 2017. He answered every question he was asked to the best of his ability and recollection. As part of the 2017 interviews, FBI agents asked Mr. Danchenko to review portions of the [dossier] and describe where he believed the relevant information had derived from and to explain how any information he had provided to [Steele] may have been overstated or misrepresented in the [dossier].”

Danchenko did as the FBI asked, his defense will argue to the jury, before stressing that even after Danchenko highlighted Steele’s lies to the bureau, agents continued to investigate Millian. This fact will serve as a lynchpin for Danchenko to argue that his statements, even if false, were immaterial.

A Likely Argument

In his motion to dismiss, Danchenko previewed another argument likely to be repeated at trial, namely that no one thought Danchenko lied until the appointment of a second special counsel. “The Special Counsel’s office closed its entire investigation into possible Trump/Russia collusion in March 2019,” Danchenko noted in his motion, stressing that while “approximately thirty-four individuals were charged by Mueller’s office, including several for providing false statements to investigators. Mr. Danchenko was not among them. To the contrary, not only did investigators and government officials repeatedly represent that Mr. Danchenko had been honest and forthcoming in his interviews, but also resolved discrepancies between his recollection of events and that of others in Mr. Danchenko’s favor.”

While these arguments are currently aimed at the court, a repeat will surely follow during next month’s trial, and unless Durham provides the jury with an explanation for the FBI and Mueller’s lack of concern over Danchenko’s statements to investigators, an acquittal seems likely.

Durham’s Strategy

We won’t have to wait until the start of the trial to learn Durham’s likely strategy, however, as the government’s response to Danchenko’s motion to dismiss will likely provide some strong hints, especially given some of the assertions included in Danchenko’s brief. For instance, in his summary of the facts, Danchenko claimed, based on the DOJ’s inspector general report, that there was an “articulable factual basis” to launch Crossfire Hurricane based on “information received from a Friendly Foreign Government.” The “information received from a Friendly Foreign Government” refers to then-Australian diplomat Alexander Downer’s claim that Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos made suggestions that the Russians could assist the Trump campaign with the release of damaging information about Clinton. 

Those well-versed in the Russia-collusion hoax will remember that Durham has already publicly pushed back against the Inspector General’s claim that Downer’s tip prompted the launching of Crossfire Hurricane. Durham released a statement following the publication of the IG report contradicting the IG’s assertion and revealing that “based on the evidence collected to date,” his team had “advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”

Another passage in Danchenko’s brief could similarly prompt pushback by Durham. Relying again on the inspector general’s report on FISA abuse, Danchenko asserts that there is “no evidence the [Steele] election reporting was known to or used by FBI officials involved in the decision to open the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.” 

Two years have passed since the IG issued its report, however, and during that time Durham has been continuing to investigate the claimed predication of Crossfire Hurricane. If his team found evidence that Steele’s reporting prompted the launch of Crossfire Hurricane, Danchenko’s motion provides a perfect opportunity for Durham to publicly reveal that evidence.

Whether Durham will reveal these details and others remains to be seen. And while the special counsel’s office used pretrial court filings in the criminal case against former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann to pepper the public with new revelations about the Russia-collusion hoax, the lead prosecutor in that case, Andrew DeFilippis, is no longer prosecuting the case against Danchenko. We should know soon whether Durham, who is now personally involved in the Danchenko prosecution, will use the case to expose more details about SpyGate. 

Durham has already filed his first motion in limine, or a pretrial request for the court to rule on the admissibility of evidence, in the Danchenko case. That motion, however, concerns classified information and was thus sealed. The special counsel will likely be filing several more motions in limine in the weeks to come, with the court last week entering an order encouraging the parties to file those motions “as early as possible,” but no later than October 3, 2022, absent good cause. 

Those motions, as well as Durham’s response to Danchenko’s motion to dismiss, will provide some insight into the special counsel’s planned strategy in the Danchenko case and specifically whether the special counsel will highlight the complicity of the deep state in the Russia-collusion hoax. If Durham doesn’t, it might cost his team a second loss.

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.

    Category:

    Political

    Tagged with:

    Dirtbag Andrew Weissmann SUFFERS MELTDOWN After Florida Judge Respects Rule of Law and Blocks Lawless DOJ in Their Assault on Trump


    By Jim Hoft | Published September 5, 2022

    Read more at https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/09/dirtbag-andrew-weissmann-suffers-meltdown-florida-judge-respects-rule-law-blocks-lawless-doj-assault-trump/

    Earlier today, Judge Aileen Cannon granted President Trump’s request for a Special Master review of the material confiscated by the Biden DOJ during their raid on his home at Mar-a-Lago.

    Judge Cannon also ‘temporarily enjoins’ or forbids the Biden regime from ‘reviewing and using the seized materials’ pending the completion of the review.

    This decision by the Florida judge enraged the lawless left who is accustomed to running roughshod over the US Constitution in their ongoing attempts to destroy President Donald Trump. Andrew Weissman, the former Justice official who ran the Mueller special counsel and is now a contributor on the fake news channels, suffered a meltdown following the decision. Sal Greco, a politically persecuted and fired NYPD officer, responded to Weissman’s temper tantrum.

    Via Sal Greco.

    After violating the civil rights of mob victims, the Enron defendants ( who’s convictions were overturned because of his misconduct ) and Paul Manafort; Andrew Weissmann ranting about “the rule of law “is a joke.

    Andrew Weismann is in a lavender rage because an honest and courageous judge has delayed the politicized DOJ effort to destroy @realDonaldTrump while holding him to a different standard then Barrack Obama.

    For the second time in his legal career, Andrew Weismann comes across a judge that actually respects the rule of law. The last time was the when his Enron convictions were overturned for his prosecutorial misconduct.

    Here are a few of the twitter rants by Andrew Weissmann.

    Jim Hoft

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

    Category:

    Political

    Tagged with:

    Peter Doocy Reads Karine’s Old Tweets Claiming Trump Stole 2016 Election To Her Face


    By NICOLE SILVERIO, MEDIA REPORTER | September 06, 2022

    Read more at https://dailycaller.com/2022/09/06/peter-doocy-karine-jean-pierre-tweets-trump-stole-2016-election/

    Peter Doocy and Karine Jean-Pierre
    [Screenshot/YouTube/White House press briefing]

      Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy read White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s old tweets claiming former President Donald Trump stole the 2016 election to her face Tuesday. Doocy asked the press secretary about false claims that the 2016 election was “stolen” as the White House repeatedly argues that “MAGA [Make America Great Again] Republicans” pose a threat to democracy over their claims about the 2020 election was fraudulent. The press secretary said the White House will focus on the present rather than 2016.

      Doocy then read 2016 tweets where Jean-Pierre said Trump and Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp “stole an election.”

      “If denying an election is extreme now, why wasn’t it then?” he asked.

      “So let’s be very clear that that comparison that you made is just ridiculous,” she said.

      “How is that ridiculous?” Doocy interjected.

      “You’re asking me a question, let me answer it,” she pushed back. “I was talking specifically at that time of what was happening with voting rights and what was in danger of voting rights. That’s what I was speaking to at the time and here’s the thing, I have said, Governor Kemp won the election in Georgia. I’ve been clear about that. I have said President Trump won the election in 2016 and I’ve been clear about that.” (RELATED: Jean-Pierre Says Biden’s Attacks On ‘MAGA Republicans’ Are ‘Not Political’)

      The press secretary said the claims of a stolen election in 2020 led to the violence that took place on January 6, 2021. She claimed the riot led to the death of Capitol police officers, even though all of the officers died either from suicide or natural causes after the riot.

      “What we are talking about right now is let’s not forget what happened on January 6, 2021, where we saw an insurrection, a mob that was incited by the person who occupied this campus, this facility at that time,” she said. “And it was an attack on our democracy. Let’s not forget people died that day. Law enforcement were attacked that day. That was the danger that we were seeing at the time. That’s what the president has called out and that’s what he’s going to do continue to call out.”

      “So yes, when you have MAGA Republicans, an extreme part of Republicans, who just deny or do not want to really say what exactly happened on that day or say it was a protest when it clearly was not a peaceful protest. That’s not what we saw on that day. Yes, the president’s going to call that out.”

      Ashli Babbitt a self-described Trump supporter who entered the building during the riot, was also killed at the riot. A Capitol police officer, Lt. Michael Byrd, fatally shot her in the left shoulder and neck.

      Jean-Pierre told Doocy that the majority of Americans agree that democracy and the people’s rights must be protected.

      Category:

      Political

      Tagged with:


      Democrat claims election-denying is ‘hallmark’ of fascism. But his election-denying past quickly tells on him.

      CHRIS ENLOE | September 06, 2022

      Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/raskin-hallmark-fascist-party-election-denying/

      Rep. Jaime Raskin (D-Md.) praised President Joe Biden on Sunday for attacking Trump supporters because they exhibit the “hallmarks” of being members of a fascist party. But it turns out Raskin has seemingly committed the same sin he alleged is critical to fascism.

      Speaking on CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” Raskin suggested the Republican Party, especially the faction that supports Donald Trump, has evolved into a “fascist political party.”

      “Two of the hallmarks of a fascist political party are: One, they don’t accept the results of elections that don’t go their way; and, two, they embrace political violence,” Raskin said.

      “I think that’s why President Biden was right to sound the alarm this week about these continuing attacks on our constitutional order from the outside by Donald Trump and his movement,” he added.

      Raskin wants Gingrich, Ginni Thomas and Pence to testify to Jan. 6 committee www.youtube.com

      Raskin was responding to Trump’s controversial demand that the 2020 presidential election be held again “immediately” or that he be declared the “rightful winner” of the election. The demand came after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan the FBI warned the social media giant about Russian “misinformation” just before the Hunter Biden laptop story broke in October 2020. Social media companies quickly suppressed or outright censored that story, which has since been vindicated as neither misinformation nor false.

      The charges of fascism are self-incriminating, because Raskin has openly questioned the outcome of presidential elections in the past. For example, Raskin has described George W. Bush as a “court-appointed president” who was not rightfully elected.

      “The court has been thwarting formation of the popular will, the most spectacular example being Bush v. Gore, where the majority by a 5-4 vote enjoined the counting of more than 100,000 ballots in Florida and essentially gave America its first court-appointed president,” Raskin said on April 21, 2003.

      \u201cIncredible work by the RNC to find a 2003 (!) clip of Jamie Raskin saying that the 2000 presidential election was stolen.\u201d

      — max (@max) 1662384189

      Meanwhile, Raskin was one of several House Democratic lawmakers who objected to the certification of Trump’s Electoral College victory in January 2017. Their effort ultimately failed because not one Democratic senator supported them. Democrats, in fact, have a long history of questioning the legitimacy of elections they lose.

      Over the weekend, the Republican National Committee published a long video showing numerous Democrats questioning the outcome of the 2000 presidential election, the 2004 presidential election, the 2016 presidential election, and the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election.

      12 Minutes of Democrats Denying Election Results www.youtube.com

      Category:

      Political

      Tagged with:

      This California Bill Would Outlaw Fast Food And Intensify Inflation


      BY: CHRISTOPHER JACOBS | SEPTEMBER 06, 2022

      Read more at https://www.conservativereview.com/this-california-bill-would-outlaw-fast-food-and-intensify-inflation-2658150322.html/

      fast food pizza

      Author Christopher Jacobs profile

      CHRISTOPHER JACOBS

      VISIT ON TWITTER@CHRISJACOBSHC

      MORE ARTICLES

      Talk about irony: A governor who violated his own Covid lockdown rules by attending a party at a chichi restaurant could sign legislation that puts many fast-food establishments out of business.

      Late in August, the California legislature passed a bill that would impose new mandates on certain dining establishments. Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-French Laundry, has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto the bill. If it becomes law, the measure would set an example that unions hope to export elsewhere, while raising inflation in the nation’s most populous state. Here’s how.

      Separate Minimum Wage

      The bill would create a council to mandate a separate minimum wage applying only to certain fast-food establishments. According to the bill, the council could impose a minimum wage for these establishments next year of as high as $22 per hour—an amount nearly 42 percent higher than the statewide minimum wage of $15.50 that takes effect on Jan. 1, and an amount subject to additional annual increases. Creating a higher minimum wage would raise business costs, and help push prices ever higher. As it is, families have struggled to keep up with the current high rate of inflation, with real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) average hourly earnings falling in most months over the past year. Hitting these families with even higher costs for a meal at a fast-food establishment—sometimes the only “luxury” working-class households can afford—would provide ordinary California residents another proverbial kick in the teeth.

      The new council of 10 appointed individuals will “establish sector-wide minimum standards on wages, working hours, and other working conditions adequate to ensure and maintain the health, safety, and welfare of, and to supply the necessary cost of proper living to, fast food restaurant workers.” (The bill doesn’t specify whether the “cost of proper living” includes dinners at restaurants like the one Newsom decided to frequent in the fall of 2020.)

      To put it more bluntly: A group of unelected bureaucrats will decide how to micro-manage hundreds of businesses across the Golden State. These mandates will of course raise costs for the restaurants, and the restaurants will have no choice but to raise prices in response.

      Inefficient, Absurd Loopholes

      The requirements in the bill only apply to chain restaurants with at least 100 establishments nationwide, and which serve food in the following manner:

      (1) For immediate consumption either on or off the premises.

      (2) To customers who order or select items and pay before eating.

      (3) With items prepared in advance, including items that may be prepared in bulk and kept hot, or with items prepared or heated quickly.

      (4) With limited or no table service. Table service does not include orders placed by a customer on an electronic device.

      One could easily envision businesses changing their model to avoid becoming ensnared by the bill’s mandates. For instance, a restaurant could operate like Katz’s Delicatessen in New York City, where customers receive tickets upon entering and pay after eating, on their way out the door. Such a system would mean that restaurants would not meet the “pay before eating” definition contained within the statute, but it also could raise the risk of “dine-and-dash” incidents, which would raise a restaurant’s costs.

      Similarly, establishments could try to exempt themselves from the reach of the new council by providing full table service. Of course, providing full table service would raise businesses’ costs (although perhaps not as much as complying with the mandates created by the new regulatory regime), exhaust employees by forcing them to wait on customer tables in addition to their existing duties, or both.

      The idea that California could potentially do for fast-food restaurants what a full-service-only requirement has done to New Jersey’s gas stations—whereby McDonald’s and Burger King employees in California could only ask “Would you like fries with that?” while customers are reclined at table—illustrates the absurdity of this bill. Newsom should do his state a favor and veto the measure, sending this ill-tasting legislative creation back to the cooks in the legislature who created this mess.

      Chris Jacobs is founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group, and author of the book, “The Case Against Single Payer.” He is on Twitter: @chrisjacobsHC. Previously he was a senior health policy analyst for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a senior policy analyst in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Health Policy Studies, and a senior policy analyst with the Joint Economic Committee’s Senate Republican staff. During the debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, Jacobs was a policy adviser for the House Republican Conference under then-Chairman Mike Pence. In the first two years of the law’s implementation, he was a health policy analyst for the Senate Republican Policy Committee. Jacobs got his start on Capitol Hill as an intern for then-Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and history from American University, where he is a part-time teacher of health policy. He currently resides in Washington, D.C.

        Category:

        Political

        Tagged with:

        Daniel Horowitz Op-ed: What is the conservative plan to deal with Biden’s Fourth Reich?


        Daniel Horowitz | September 06, 2022

        Read more at https://www.conservativereview.com/horowitz-conservative-plan-biden-fourth-reich-2658150640.html/

        The time has come for a coalition of governors, attorneys general, and state legislators to demonstrate the power of broad-based federalism to interpose against extreme federal tyranny.

        Many conservative commentators have finally woken up to smell the stench of the Fourth Reich following Biden’s speech targeting political opposition, reminiscent of the authoritarian language of past dictators. However, they should have been awake since March 2020, when our government declared de facto martial law on our lives, liberty, and property and used our bodies as lab rats with an ever-growing list of experimental therapies. They should have awoken from their slumber after Americans were targeted with solitary confinement and disproportionate punishment for zero or nebulous crimes at the Capitol on January 6, after months of killing, rioting, and looting by BLM with impunity.

        If Biden’s speech is really to be a turning point in this one-sided cold war that is heating up, conservatives should resolve to use the power they already wield over Republican governors and demand united action for states to protect constitutional rights from this thuggish Biden administration and national security deep state apparatus that threatens our liberties more than any foreign enemy in our history. Rather than making idle promises of winning back the House with RINOs or winning back the presidency years from now when it’s too late, we should be demanding action now from 20 or so GOP trifecta-controlled state governments. If they fail to take action now, then the entire point of federal elections with divided government is moot.

        What would a coalition of federalism look like? A group of prominent governors, attorneys general, and state legislative speakers and majority leaders would initiate a declaration in one state – let’s call it the “Miami Declaration,” for example. The declaration would lay out a list of grievances and examples of the federal government violating the rights of the individual: from medical freedom and bodily autonomy to privacy infringement, collusion with big tech against First Amendment rights, and using federal agencies to persecute political opponents. The declaration would pronounce these states to be constitutional sanctuaries that protect all constitutional rights, including against the federal government. Here are just a few ideas that should be contained in the declaration:

        • Criminalize the enforcement of any federal COVID mandate – whether by a federal, state, or private actor – within the boundaries of the states. This would include so-called federal lands within the state.
        • Block federal agents from entering the states to target political opposition.
        • Order all education and health care institutions within the state to stop complying with recent edicts on transgenderism or COVID with the threat of severe fines.
        • Block the distribution of any new vaccines that have not been properly studied.
        • Create a commission to study who is responsible for the COVID response and the botched therapeutics, along with an audit of what other therapeutics are in the pipeline that violate bioethical norms.
        • Nullify onerous federal regulations on energy and mineral exploration and production within the coalition of states so that states can begin protecting their residents from the coming nuclear winter on energy use.
        • Impose severe penalties on tech companies that censor political opponents of the regime until they come clean on the scope of collaboration with the federal government against these individuals.
        • Provide legal and financial backing to those political dissidents being targeted by the federal government primarily for their political views.
        • Suspend all training and cooperation between state and local law enforcement and the federal alphabet soup agencies.

        Even if Republicans refuse to block funding for the vaccines, Paxlovid, and Ukraine – most likely because they agree with Democrats on those issues – they should at least withhold support until the extra funding for the IRS is kept out of the bill. Fighting overzealous taxation, especially when it is politically targeted, was always a universal value of the Republican Party. The IRS waited until Friday afternoon before the holiday weekend to admit that information from 120,000 form 990-T filers was inadvertently posted online due to “a human coding error.” These means the names, contact information, and financial information of about 120,000 people who have IRAs in non-security assets were breached. Does anyone really trust that the IRS is telling us the whole truth?

        From now until the election, Republicans will seek to distract us with flaccid promises of deliverance in the future. The best way to verify their sincerity is by demanding that they actually use the power they currently hold to counter deeply destructive and unpopular policies from this regime.

        Category:

        Opinion, Political

        Tagged with:

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


        A.F. Branco Cartoon – Red, White and Angry

        A.F. BRANCO | on September 3, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-red-white-and-angry/

        Biden with all the trappings of an authoritarian dictator tries to demoralize and dehumanize half the country.

        Biden’s Hate Speach
        Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2022.

        A.F. Branco Cartoon – The Flame Thrower

        A.F. BRANCO | on September 6, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-the-flame-thrower/

        Democracy vs the Constitutional-Representative Republic is the difference between Mob-Rule and Rule-of-Law.

        Democracy vs Constitutional Republic
        Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2022

        DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – 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.

        Category:

        Political

        Tagged with:

        SUMMING UP THE WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 2, 2022


        Category:

        Political

        Tagged with:

        5 Times The Anti-Trump FBI’s ‘Trust Us’ Promise Fell Apart


        BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | SEPTEMBER 02, 2022

        Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/09/02/5-times-the-anti-trump-fbis-trust-us-promise-fell-apart/

        former FBI Director James Comey

        Author Margot Cleveland profile

        MARGOT CLEVELAND

        VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND

        MORE ARTICLES

        The Biden administration and the corporate media continue to assure Americans that the FBI’s raid on former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was both legally justified and of the utmost necessity. But the deep-state cabal and the leftist media cartel provided similar assurances about Crossfire Hurricane and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s targeting of Trump, with the assurances later proving worthless. 

        Here are five times SpyGate taught Americans to distrust and disprove accusations leveled at Donald Trump.

        1. Devin Nunes’ Memo Exposing FISA Abuse

        On February 2, 2018, the House Intelligence Committee, then-chaired by Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, released a four-page memo detailing abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by the FBI. 

        Before the memo’s release, the FBI publicly opposed the move, claiming in a public statement that the bureau had “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.” Justice Department officials likewise opposed releasing the memo, warning that “doing so would be ‘extraordinarily reckless.’”

        The then-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, also sought to scuttle the release of the memo — or at least preempt the detailed revelations of FISA abuse — by calling the memo a “conspiracy theory” in an op-ed for The Washington Post. In it, Schiff condemned the release, saying the memo was “designed to suggest that ‘a cabal of senior officials within the FBI and the Justice Department were so tainted by bias against President Trump that they irredeemably poisoned the investigation.’”

        Nancy Pelosi, who is now speaker of the House, likewise attacked Nunes, demanding in a letter to then-House Speaker Paul Ryan that Nunes be removed as Intelligence Committee chairman. Nunes “disgraced” the committee with his “dishonest” handling of the committee’s review of the Russia collusion problem, Pelosi wrote. Nunes’ committee, Pelosi claimed, had become a “charade” and a “coverup campaign … to hide the truth about the Trump-Russia scandal.” 

        In response to the Nunes memo, former FBI Director James Comey told the country the memo was “dishonest and misleading.” Comey further claimed it “wrecked the House intel committee, destroyed trust with Intelligence Community, damaged relationship with FISA court, and inexcusably exposed classified investigation of an American citizen.”

        Former CIA Director John Brennan also attacked Nunes, calling his exposure of the FISA abuse “appalling” and an abuse of his chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee.

        Of course, years later, Nunes was proven correct, as the inspector general’s report confirmed, establishing that the Republican House Intelligence chair had, if anything, understated the FISA abuse. 

        For all the assurances the DOJ, FBI, their former leaders, and top politicians provided the American public, they were either lying or wrong — or both because there was “a cabal of senior officials within the FBI and the Justice Department … so tainted by bias against President Trump that they irredeemably poisoned the investigation.”

        2. Surveillance Warrants Are Hard to Get

        In addition to wrongly condemning Nunes’ memo, government officials attempted to calm concerns over the FISA surveillance by assuring the public that the process of obtaining a surveillance warrant was “rigorous” and that to obtain surveillance of American citizens, a court must find “probable cause” that warrants the wiretap.

        Adm. Michael Rogers, then a commander of United States Cyber Command, testified about the FISA process during a March 2017 congressional hearing. In response to a question posed to eliminate “confusion in the public” about the collection of personal data, Rogers confirmed that the National Security Agency “would need a court order based on probable cause to conduct electronic surveillance on a U.S. person inside the United States.” 

        During the same hearing, the then-recently fired former FBI Director Comey expanded on the surveillance process. “There is a statutory framework in the United States under which courts grant permission for electronic surveillance either in a criminal case or the national security case based on the showing of probable cause,” Comey testified before Congress. “It is a rigorous, rigorous process, involving all three branches of government,” the former FBI director stressed, noting it must go through an application process and then to a judge who must approve the order.

        The IG report on FISA abuse proved the promised rigor didn’t exist. And the later conviction of Kevin Clinesmith for “falsifying a document that was the basis for a surveillance warrant against former Trump campaign official Carter Page,” punctuated that reality. The facts revealed in the IG report further established that Americans’ faith in the FISA Court to serve as a check on the government was misplaced, with the judges serving as but a rubberstamp of the DOJ’s surveillance applications. So much for those assurances.

        3. Don’t Worry, ’Merica, No Spying on Trump Took Place

        A third assurance Americans received from the powers-that-be was that no spying on the Trump campaign occurred. The inspector general’s report on FISA abuse disproved those reassurances as well, revealing that the “Obama Administration Spied on the Trump Campaign Big Time.”

        This reality pushed Russia-collusion hoaxers into esoteric discussions on the true meaning of “spying.” Even the United States Senate played the “it depends what the meaning of spying is” game, with New Hampshire Democrat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen quizzing FBI Director Christopher Wray on whether he would agree with then-Attorney General William Barr’s use of the word “spying.”

        “I was very concerned by his use of the word spying, which I think is a loaded word,” Shaheen bemoaned. “When FBI agents conduct investigations against alleged mobsters, suspected terrorists, other criminals, do you believe they’re engaging in spying when they’re following FBI investigative policies and procedures?” the senator asked Wray.

        “That’s not the term I would use,” Wray replied, before noting that different people use different colloquialisms. 

        The discussion did not end there, however, with Shaheen pushing Wray on whether he had seen “any evidence that any illegal surveillance into the campaigns or the individuals associated with the campaigns by the FBI occurred.”

        “I don’t think I personally have any evidence of that sort,” Wray replied.

        But even sidestepping the silly debate over what “spying” means, the guarantee Shaheen provided the American public — that no illegal surveillance into the Trump campaign or individuals associated with the Trump campaign had occurred — proved worthless. 

        The Department of Justice has since admitted that it illegally surveilled former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and that such surveillance reached Trump campaign documents. So, yes, our federal government illegally surveilled the campaign of a presidential candidate.

        4. Redactions Are Necessary to Protect Sources and Methods

        A fourth key commitment conveyed to Americans throughout the multi-year unraveling of the Russia collusion hoax concerned the need to redact details in the publicly released documents. Such redactions were necessary to protect sources and methods, our overlords assured us.

        For instance, in a December 9, 2019 press release Wray issued in conjunction with the DOJ’s inspector general’s report on FISA abuse, Wray “emphasized that the FBI’s participation in this process was undertaken with my express direction to be as transparent as possible, while honoring our duty to protect sources and methods that, if disclosed, might make Americans less safe.” Wray further promised that the FISA abuse report presented all material facts, “with redactions carefully limited and narrowly tailored to specific national security and operational concerns.” 

        Republican Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley challenged that portrayal of the redactions, suggesting in a letter to then-Attorney General William Barr that several footnotes “were classified in the IG report only because they contradict certain claims made in the public version of the inspector general’s report on FISA warrants documenting misconduct in the FBI’s spying operation of the Trump campaign.”

        “We are concerned that certain sections of the public version of the report are misleading because they are contradicted by relevant and probative classified information redacted in four footnotes,” Grassley and Johnson wrote. “This classified information is significant not only because it contradicts key statements in a section of the report, but also because it provides insight essential for an accurate evaluation of the entire investigation.”

        The Republican senators then asked for the four footnotes to be declassified, stressing that “the American people have a right to know what is contained within these four footnotes and, without that knowledge, they will not have a full picture as to what happened during the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”

        In April of 2020, Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell declassified the footnotes. And, as Grassley and Johnson had represented, the redactions weren’t necessary to protect “sources and methods.” Rather, the blacked-out lines were essential to distorting portions of the FISA report and to keeping the public in the dark about the full scope of the Spygate scandal.

        Another document declassified by Grenell exposed that Mueller’s team falsely represented to a federal judge (and the American public) the substance of Michael Flynn’s December 2016 telephone conversation with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. 

        As I reported following Grenell’s declassification of the transcript of the call between Flynn, Trump’s then-incoming national security adviser, and Kislyak, Mueller’s office deceived the country and a federal court when prosecutors claimed Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions with his Russian counterpart. The transcripts established that, contrary to court filings, Flynn never raised the issue of sanctions with the Russian ambassador.

        The release of the Flynn transcript did reveal, however, the FBI’s secret “sources and methods” — but the sources and methods were those of deep-state actors seeking to rid themselves of the president’s chosen national security adviser by launching a perjury trap and then lying about what Flynn said.

        5. Crossfire Hurricane Was Properly Predicated 

        To this day, both DOJ’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz and Wray maintain that the FBI’s launch of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was properly predicated. Publicly released FBI documents say otherwise. 

        Former FBI agent Peter Strzok explained the supposed predicate for launching Crossfire Hurricane on July 31, 2016, in the opening “Electronic Communication” that he both prepared and approved. According to Strzok, the FBI opened the umbrella investigation into the Trump campaign after the government had “received information” “related to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s website/server.” 

        But Strzok’s summary of the information received made no mention of any intel obtained by the FBI related to the DNC hacking. Rather, the supposed intel “consisted of information received from an unnamed representative, now publicly known to be Alexander Downer, a then-Australian diplomat” stationed in London. The opening memorandum explained that Downer had relayed “statements Mr. [George] Papadopoulos made about suggestions from the Russians that they (the Russians) could assist the Trump campaign with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton.”

        The opening document then asserted that Papadopoulos “also suggested the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist this process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Mrs. Clinton (and President Obama.).” The electronic communication added a caveat, though, noting that it was unclear whether Papadopoulos “or the Russians were referring to material acquired publicly of [sic] through other means. It was also unclear how Mr. Trump’s team reacted to the offer.”

        Thus, while Strzok framed the information received by the FBI as evidence “related to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s website/server,” the remainder of the Electronic Communication contradicted that claim and in fact acknowledged that the material might refer to “publicly acquired” information.

        What the FBI did — or rather didn’t do — after the launch of Crossfire Hurricane further confirms the sham predicate set forth by Strzok in the Electronic Communication. 

        While Papadopoulos’s statements to Downer supposedly prompted the FBI to open the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, agents failed to question Papadopoulos for six months. The FBI also put little (or no) effort into determining who purportedly told Papadopoulos that the Russians had dirt on Hillary. The supposed source of that statement, Joseph Mifsud, could have been easily located soon after the launch of Crossfire Hurricane if the FBI genuinely believed Russia had conspired with the Trump campaign to hack and release the DNC emails.

        Agents pursuing a legitimate investigation “would have immediately scoured Papadopoulos’s London-based connections and discovered he was associated with the London Centre of International Law Practice around the time he met with Downer. From there, the FBI could have easily fingered Mifsud as a possible source for the information, since he was listed as a board advisor and public source searches would show Mifsud had connections to Russia. (The intelligence community would have also hit on Mifsud’s many connections to Western intelligence agencies.)”

        But the FBI did none of this, waiting instead until late January 2017 to quiz Papadopoulos on the source of the supposed inside information coming from Russia. Yet, Wray and the DOJ’s inspector general want Americans to trust them when they say that agents launched Crossfire Hurricane based on Papadopoulos’s London chat with Downer over drinks. 

        Special Counsel John Durham, however, says otherwise, having released a statement following the DOJ’s report on FISA abuse that informed the public that, “based on the evidence collected to date,” his team had “advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”

        The special counsel’s public statements prove significant for two reasons. First, Durham’s comments refute the inspector general’s conclusions regarding the predication of Crossfire Hurricane. But beyond that, the fact that Durham needed to correct the record shows the lack of trust due the DOJ and even the inspector general’s office — something further confirmed during the special counsel’s prosecution of former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann. 

        Each of these five falsehoods peddled by the government to the public during the Russia collusion hoax has a clear corollary in the current scandal involving the FBI’s raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. And after the lies, pretext, and political warfare exposed during the unraveling of SpyGate, the DOJ and FBI’s current entreat to an angry public to “trust them” will be ignored — as it should.

        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.

          Category:

          Political

          Tagged with:

          As America Self-Destructs With Green Energy, China Preps For War With Coal


          BY: CHUCK DEVORE | SEPTEMBER 02, 2022

          Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/09/02/as-america-self-destructs-with-green-energy-china-preps-for-war-with-coal/

          Chinese workers installing solar panels

          Author Chuck DeVore profile

          CHUCK DEVORE

          VISIT ON TWITTER@CHUCKDEVORE

          MORE ARTICLES

          On Aug. 25, the California Air Resources Board, the state’s air quality regulator, announced a ban on the sales of new gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles by 2035. Less than a week later, a heat wave threatened California with seven days of power shortages. So, the state’s grid operator asked electric vehicle owners not to recharge when they come home from work. This is all a painful part of the energy transition, we are told — needed to save the planet. 

          In its effort to wean itself off fossil fuels, California has found a willing and enthusiastic partner in the People’s Republic of China. Most batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines that make California’s green dreams possible are made in China. California leaders — from former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to former Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, and current Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom — have traveled to China to tout their green cooperation with Red China. 

          The push for electric vehicles (EVs) by California and China raises an intriguing question: Are both sides really weaning themselves off fossil fuels to save the planet and reduce pollution, or might there be an entirely different intention — at least for China?

          U.S. climate czar John Kerry, a former senator, former secretary of state, and the Democratic nominee for president in 2004, epitomized American elite opinion when he said on Aug. 30 that China has “generally speaking, outperformed its (climate) commitments” and that the U.S. and China can make a difference for the world by “working together.”

          When policymakers and strategists erroneously ascribe to others the same motives that they have themselves, it is called the Mirror-Image Fallacy. Opponents in warfare seek to deceive — the best deception plans are those that show the enemy what the enemy wants to believe. Mirror-Image Fallacy and deception plans can work hand-in-glove. 

          If China was truly going all-in on EVs to reduce pollution and curb its greenhouse gas emissions, one would expect to see that in its energy consumption profile. Instead, we see something different. Yes, China has been adding wind, solar, and nuclear power, but coal use is also increasing. 

          From 2010 to 2020, the amount of electricity produced by coal in China rose by 57 percent to 4,775 terawatt hours. From 2010 to 2021 — the latest year available and 2020 having been depressed by the response to Covid-19 — American coal use to generate electricity declined by 52 percent to 899 terawatt hours. U.S. coal power peaked in 2007. China surpassed U.S. coal use in 2006 and never looked back. Today, China generates more than five times the electricity from coal than the U.S., with construction underway or planned in China to build the equivalent of more than the entire operating U.S. coal fleet. By this one action alone, China will wipe out all projected U.S. reductions in greenhouse gas emissions — and then some. 

          Last year, China consumed 54 percent of the world’s coal. This is the main reason that China emits more greenhouse gasses than all the world’s developed nations combined — which shouldn’t be a shock given that America, Western Europe, and Japan outsourced much of their manufacturing to China over the past 20 years. 

          Apologists for China’s one-party communist government often cite the fact that China is still a developing nation, with about 200 million Chinese living on $5.50 a day as recently as 2018. It takes energy to be prosperous and prosperous people use energy — lots of it — for cars, air conditioning, heat, air travel, and the internet. Prosperous people, and those who expect to be, don’t typically try to overthrow their governments, either. For the Chinese Communist Party, this is key. 

          While the Western elite vanguard of the war against climate change sees greenhouse gas emissions as the singular existential threat, the Chinese Communist Party sees greenhouse gas emissions as the necessary byproduct of wealth, power, military might — and compliant subjects. 

          Were China’s leaders interested in growing their economy while improving air quality and holding the line on carbon dioxide emissions, they’d turn from coal to natural gas. If China expected to be an honest participant in the post-World War II liberal order, then it would have no qualms about increasing its dependence on natural gas. 

          But China has scant natural gas reserves, and the nearest large exporter, Russia, has built most of its pipeline capacity to serve Europe — which it is now cutting off, showing the danger of relying on foreign suppliers. Other major exporters in the Pacific include the U.S., Australia, and Indonesia, but China’s aggressive foreign policies have alienated these nations. Qatar has significantly increased its liquified natural gas exports to China, but these shipments are vulnerable to interdiction in the event of a conflict — it’s doubtful that much in the way of Chinese imports would make it past the Straits of Malacca.

          This last point leads to a final, stunning, and very troubling conclusion. For years, strategists have assumed that China would never start a conflict that would deliberately involve America as an enemy because China imports some 72 percent of its oil, with about 85 percent of that imported oil transiting the Straits of Malacca.

          But what if our policy experts have gotten China’s energy strategy all wrong? What if their efforts to reduce their reliance on oil had nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with energy security — with being able to fight a war indefinitely while being blockaded?

          In 2019, 45 percent of the oil used in the U.S. was refined into gasoline for cars. Another 29 percent was made into diesel and jet fuel — applications less immediately replaceable by batteries since hydrocarbon fuels have about 100 times the energy density of lithium-ion batteries — one of the reasons why long-haul trucking and commercial jets aren’t likely to be electric anytime soon. 

          China is well into a program to go electric with respect to passenger vehicles. In China, this practically means that EVs are mostly coal-powered. That still leaves more oil demand than China’s modest domestic oil production can handle, risking the depletion of China’s reputed billion-barrel strategic petroleum reserve in 200 days or so. 

          Of course, with the onset of Covid-19, China perfected complete control of its population, shutting down travel at will and confining people to their homes. But a war can’t be won on lockdown, and people get restless. Here’s where China’s hidden ace in the hole comes in: coal gasification.

          With a technology that matured in the 1920s, Germany under Hitler invested heavily in coal gasification to make gasoline and other fuels — Germany has a lot of coal and very little oil. On the eve of war in 1938, Germany produced just under 10 percent of its oil needs from domestic crude while importing 60 percent from overseas and about 8 percent from overland routes within Europe. The remaining 20 percent of Germany’s need was answered by converting coal to liquid fuels. By 1943, German synthetic fuel production had more than tripled to 42 million barrels annually. 

          In the 1940s, German synthetic oil was up to 20 times more costly than abundant American crude oil. But wartime necessities required its production. Today, deriving synthetic fuel from coal is about half of the cost of oil at $90 a barrel — but the process to manufacture it produces about double the greenhouse gas emissions by simply refining crude oil into fuels. Simply put, it’s cost-effective but bad for the climate — and China is investing heavily in it to reduce its reliance on imported oil. 

          A holistic look at China’s energy sector indicates a nation concerned only with energy security and not at all concerned with climate change. That has grave consequences for America’s ability to deter China from an ambitious campaign of military aggression.

          Chuck DeVore is Chief National Initiatives Officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a former California legislator, special assistant for foreign affairs in the Reagan-era Pentagon, and a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army (retired) Reserve. He’s the author of two books, “The Texas Model: Prosperity in the Lone Star State and Lessons for America,” and “China Attacks,” a novel.

            Category:

            Political

            Tagged with:

            Biden says Trump, MAGA movement ‘threatens the very foundations of our republic’


            By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor | Friday, September 2, 2022

            Read more at https://www.christianpost.com/news/biden-says-trump-maga-movement-threatens-the-united-states.html/

            President Joe Biden speaks about the soul of the nation, outside of Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 1, 2022. | JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

            With two months to go until the midterm elections, President Joe Biden has declared that former President Donald Trump and many of his supporters are a threat to “the very foundations of our republic” in a speech that critics derided as an attack on American citizens.

            In a speech Thursday evening at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Biden noted that the venue served as the location where “the United States Constitution was written and debated.” He noted that “this is where we set in motion the most extraordinary experiment of self-government the world has ever known,” creating a society based on “equality and democracy.”

            Warning that “equality and democracy are under assault,” Biden declared that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” The term “MAGA” refers to Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

            “Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans,” he clarified.  “Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.”

            “I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans,” Biden continued. “But there’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country.”

            “MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law.  They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election.”

            Biden warned that “MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.” This portion of the speech indirectly refers to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 24 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ruled that the U.S. Constitution did not contain a right to abortion and thereby reversed the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide.

            While the Dobbs decision itself outraged Democrats and pro-abortion activists, critics of the ruling also expressed concern about Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion in Dobbs describing the doctrine of substantive due process that underpinned the Roe decision as “demonstrably erroneous” and suggesting that the court should “reconsider” all rulings based on that principle. He specifically mentioned the rulings declaring rights to same-sex marriage and contraception as constitutional rights.

            While Thomas expressed an openness to examine “whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated,” Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives passed measures to codify the rights to same-sex marriage and contraception into federal law. The bills still await action in the U.S. Senate.

            Biden continued his speech by contending that Trump and “MAGA Republicans” support “authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.” According to Biden, “They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on Jan. 6th — brutally attacking law enforcement — not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger to the throat of our democracy, but they look at them as patriots.”

            Biden argued that the “soul of America is defined by the sacred proposition that all are created equal in the image of God” and that “all are entitled to be treated with decency, dignity, and respect.” He also urged people to “vote, vote, vote” in the upcoming midterm elections, stressing that “we need everyone to do their part.”

            Additionally, the president suggested that “if we do our duty in 2022 and beyond, then ages still to come will say we — all of us here — we kept the faith” and “preserved democracy.” The implication was that voting for Democrats in the midterms was necessary to preserve democracy.

            “We just need to remember who we are.  We are the United States of America.  The United States of America,” he concluded. “May God protect our nation.  And may God protect all those who stand watch over our democracy.  God bless you all.”

            The speech received much criticism from conservative commentators and Republican politicians, among them Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.

            “Angry man smears half of the people of the country he is supposed to lead & promised to unite,” tweeted Rubio, getting nearly 13,000 likes by Friday morning.

            Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review objected to Biden’s inclusion of abortion opponents in his definition of MAGA Republicans, viewing it as pandering to pro-choice groups.

            “If the president actually wanted to unite, he wouldn’t have attacked Americans who believe abortion is the civil-rights issue of our lives. He wouldn’t have mentioned contraception (no one is taking it away — it’s a scare tactic, and it’s a cynical, underhanded attack on the likes of the Little Sisters of the Poor, on conscience rights),” wrote Lopez.’

            “I could have agreed with much that he said — about the election results, about division and anger and violence — if he hadn’t made sure to make Planned Parenthood happy during the speech. They are purveyors of violence and ought to be renamed UnParenthood.”

            Franklin Graham, the president of the Christian charity Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, also condemned Biden’s speech in a lengthy Facebook post: “Tonight President Biden said that MAGA threatens the very foundation of our republic. Really? I want to see America great again. I want to see America as a leader, as a place for people who desire liberty and justice for all. I don’t want to see this country turned into a socialist country.”

            “Does believing in freedom, justice, opportunity, less taxes, and smaller government make me an extremist? Absolutely not. The ones who are extremists are the ones who want to take that away from us!” he added. “President Biden is trying to vilify and demean conservative, freedom-loving Americans who do not support the failing and economically unsound policies of his administration. This is just further dividing our nation.”

            Graham insisted that “America can only have true greatness through God,” adding “The blessings of this nation have come from the hand of God.” He maintained that “We need to turn to Him” because “We need His help, His direction, and His healing.”

            Criticism of the speech extended beyond political opponents of the president. Brianna Keilar of CNN took issue with the optics of the Biden speech, specifically that he had U.S. Marines behind him as he spoke.

            “Whatever you think of this speech the military is supposed to be apolitical. Positioning Marines in uniform behind President Biden for a political speech flies in the face of that. It’s wrong when Democrats do it. It’s wrong when Republicans do it,” she tweeted.

            Biden’s speech in Philadelphia came 68 days before the 2022 midterm elections that will determine control of the U.S. Congress for the next two years. The president’s approval rating has been consistently underwater over the past year, although it has rose slightly in recent weeks. As of Friday morning, the RealClearPolitics average of polls measuring presidential approval showed that 42.0% of Americans approve of Bidens job performance compared to 54.8% who disapprove.

            Since presidential approval often plays an outsized role in determining the outcome of midterm elections, political observers have expected Republicans to do well in the upcoming midterms. The FiveThirtyEight Deluxe Model, which predicts the outcome of elections based on “polls, fundraising, past voting patterns” as well as experts political analysis gives Republicans a 75% chance of taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives while giving Democrats a 68% chance of keeping control of the U.S. Senate as of Friday morning.

            All 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are on the ballot this year along with 35 of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate. Democrats currently have a narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and a 50-50 majority in the U.S. Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote in favor of the Democrats. 

            Over the past several months, Republicans have consistently maintained a narrow lead on the generic ballot, which asks voters which party they would like to control Congress. However, the generic ballot has tightened over the summer and the RealClearPolitics average of polls asking voters for their preferences in the midterms shows Democrats with an extremely narrow 0.1% lead as of Friday morning. 

            Follow Michael Gryboski on Twitter or Facebook

            Category:

            Political

            Tagged with:

            “MAGA REPUBLICANS WANT TO DESTROY OUR DEMOCRACY”


            TERMINOLOGY

             noun

            ter·​mi·​nol·​o·​gy | \ ˌtər-mə-ˈnä-lə-jē  \

            plural terminologies

            Definition of terminology

            1: the technical or special terms used in a business, art, science, or special subject

            2: nomenclature as a field of study

            Synonyms for terminology

            Source: Merriam Webster Dictionary Web Site

            PROPAGANDA

             noun

            pro·​pa·​gan·​da | \ ˌprä-pə-ˈgan-də  , ˌprō- \

            Definition of propaganda

            1capitalized : a congregation of the Roman curia having jurisdiction over missionary territories and related institutions

            2: the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person

            3: ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing causealso : a public action having such an effect

            The History of Propaganda

            Propaganda is today most often used in reference to political statements, but the word comes to our language through its use in a religious context. The Congregatio de propaganda fide (“Congregation for propagating the faith”) was an organization established in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV as a means of furthering Catholic missionary activity. The word propaganda is from the ablative singular feminine of propogandus, which is the gerundive of the Latin propagare, meaning “to propagate.” The first use of the word propaganda (without the rest of the Latin title) in English was in reference to this Catholic organization. It was not until the beginning of the 19th century that it began to be used as a term denoting ideas or information that are of questionable accuracy as a means of advancing a cause.

            Source: Merriam Webster Dictionary Web Site

            In the hands of gifted people, terminology can be used for good purposes, as well as deceptive purposes. Of course, you already knew that. It’s part of the bases for propaganda.

            Public Office speech writers are expert in these areas. The command of the English Language seems to be found more with professional speech writers that America’s general population. Sad commentary.

            Left alone, the rhetoric produced by political parties begin to create a populace that believe more lies than truth. In political terms, we are called “low information voters.” More accurately, we have become deluded citizens. Deluded to what is truth. Left unchecked, tyrannical slavery is just around the corner.

            These facts make what prompted this article. The terminology in question is heard daily on any news program, especially cable news. That terminology is, “MAGA Republicans want to destroy (or tear down) our democracy.”

            It began around the 2016 general election, and has been amplified to overwhelming proportions. This terminology is as dangerous as it is deliberately deceiving.

            First of all, we are not now, nor have we ever been, a DEMOCRACY. The framers of our Constitution were deliberate in that decision. A democracy is mob rule. 51% of the population controlling/oppressing the 49%. That is why our Forefathers gave us a REPUBLIC, more accurately, a Representative Republic in order to ensure Americans are never oppressed by anyone, any political party or force. To further enhance, and guarantee the success of the REPUBLIC, they gave us the “Electoral College” in our national elections that ensures all states, regardless of size, has equal say, insuring every vote counts and matters.

            President Biden’s speech writers use the term a lot. You heard it multiple times last night in the speech. In fact, we who have a differing set of opinions, are a threat to the democracy President Biden and the Left want in America: Totalitarian rule by mob. (Reference summer of 2020 leading up to November 8th. Multiple mobs of violent people burning down portions of America and threatening every American who disagreed with them).

            I want to maintain our REPUBLIC. I want to do whatever I can, legally and morally correct, to stop all efforts to turn America into RULE BY MOB DEMOCRACY. How about you?

            Category:

            Opinion, Political

            Tagged with:

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


            A.F. Branco Cartoon – Where There’s Smoke

            A.F. BRANCO | on September 2, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-where-theres-smoke-2/

            FBI is looking for the trump scandal smoking gun and we found it, itis them the FBI.

            FBI Smoking Gun
            Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2022

            DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – 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.

            Category:

            Political

            Tagged with:

            California school district must recognize Christian club that opposes homosexuality: 9th Circuit


            By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter

            Read more at https://www.christianpost.com/news/california-school-must-recognize-christian-club-9th-circuit.html/

            Students sit in a high school classroom. | Reuters/Stephane Mahe

            A federal appellate court has ruled that a California high school must allow a club for Christian athletes requiring participants to sign a “sexual purity” statement opposing homosexuality to meet on campus as an official student group. On Monday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes over a dispute surrounding its efforts to regain official recognition at Pioneer High School in San Jose.

            A 2-1 opinion authored by Judge Kenneth Lee contends that the San Jose Unified School District violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by revoking FCA’s status as an official student club at its high schools in 2019. While the school district cited concerns that the club’s “sexual purity” statement and “statement of faith” constituted violations of the district’s non-discrimination policy, Lee wrote that the school district approved other student clubs whose constitutions limited membership based on gender identity and ethnicity. 

            The judge,  appointed to the bench by former President Donald Trump, identified the district’s approval of the Senior Women of Leland High School — open only to girls — as an example of this phenomenon. 

            “Under the First Amendment, our government must be scrupulously neutral when it comes to religion: It cannot treat religious groups worse than comparable secular ones,” Lee wrote in the majority opinion. “But the School District did just that.”

            The FCA’s “sexual purity” statement declares, “God desires His children to lead pure lives of holiness.” The statement also highlights the Bible’s teachings that “the appropriate place for sexual expression is in the context of the marriage relationship” and that “the biblical definition of marriage is one man and one woman in a lifelong commitment.”

            “While upholding God’s standard of holiness, FCA strongly affirms God’s love and redemptive power in the individual who chooses to follow Him. FCA’s desire is to encourage individuals to trust in Jesus and turn away from any impure lifestyle,” the statement concluded.

            In dissent, Obama-appointed Judge Morgan Christen contends that the FCA lacks standing to “seek prospective preliminary relief, and our court lacks jurisdiction over this preliminary injunction appeal.”

            “It is uncontested that student groups like FCA must reapply each fall for official ASB recognition. It is also uncontested that only student club leaders may apply,” Christen wrote. 

            “Because the District’s nondiscrimination policy cannot cause a real or immediately impending injury to FCA if no students apply for ASB recognition, FCA cannot establish standing without evidence that a Pioneer FCA student has applied, or intends to apply, for ASB recognition for the upcoming school year. FCA failed to make that showing.”

            FCA’s statement of faith contains similar language, asking members to affirm the beliefs that “God’s design for sexual intimacy is to be expressed only within the context of marriage,” that “God instituted marriage between one man and one woman as the foundation of the family and the basic structure of human society” and that “marriage is exclusively the union of one man and one woman.”

            FCA was an official student club at three San Jose Unified School District high schools for over a decade before Pioneer High School social studies teacher Peter Glasser became aware of the FCA’s statement of faith and sexual purity statement. Glasser took issue with the club’s proclamation that “[t]he Bible is clear in teaching on sexual sin including sex outside of marriage and homosexual acts.” Glasser also opposed the statements’ insistence that “neither heterosexual sex outside of marriage nor any homosexual act constitute an alternative lifestyle acceptable to God.”

            The FCA also required its officers to affirm that if they are “found being involved in a lifestyle that does not conform to FCA’s Sexual Purity Statement,” they will need to step down from their FCA leadership position. 

            Glasser posted the FCA statements on the whiteboard in his classroom, writing that he is “deeply saddened that a club on Pioneer’s campus asks its members to affirm these statements.”

            In an email to the school’s principal, Glasser shared additional concerns about FCA’s beliefs stating that “God approves only of relationships between one man and one woman” and that “God assigns our gender identities at birth based on the physical parts He gives us.”

            Glasser’s email led to a discussion among the school’s Climate Committee, a group of school leaders including principals and department heads, which culminated with the revocation of the FCA as an official school club. Glasser thought that the organization’s “views on LGBTQ+ identity infringe on the rights of others in my community to feel safe and enfranchised on their own campus, even infringing on their very rights to exist.”

            The Climate Committee determined that the FCA statements violated school district policy requiring that “[a]ll district programs and activities within a school under the jurisdiction of the superintendent of the school district shall be free from discrimination, including harassment, with respect to the actual or perceived ethnic group, religion, gender, gender identity, gender expression, color, race, ancestry, national origin, and physical or mental disability, age or sexual orientation.”

            While FCA continued to operate on campus despite lacking recognition as an official club, the organization experienced hostility from school officials, members of the school newspaper and the student community as a whole. Students from the school newspaper took “rapid-fire” photos of participants at FCA meetings and every meeting attracted protests from the student body. Teachers at the school, including Glasser, sought to “ban FCA completely from campus.” 

            This prompted a lawsuit seeking an injunction “requiring Defendants to restore recognition to student chapters affiliated with” the FCA and alleging violations of FCA students’ rights to free speech, expressive association and free exercise of religion under the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. After a lower court sided with the school district, the 9th Circuit granted the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction and directed the lower court to “enter an order reinstating FCA as an official student club.” 

            Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com

            Category:

            Education, Law, Political

            Tagged with:

            Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announces that in addition to Washington DC and NYC, migrants are also now being bused to Chicago


            By ALEX NITZBERG | August 31, 2022

            Read more at https://www.conservativereview.com/texas-gov-greg-abbott-announces-that-in-addition-to-washington-dc-and-nyc-migrants-are-also-now-being-bused-to-chicago-2657989668.html/

            Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has announced that a group of migrants was bused from the Lone Star State to Chicago, Illinois. The governor had already been busing migrants from Texas to Washington, D.C., and New York City, though the trips are undertaken voluntarily. Now, the Windy City will be another destination for migrants who opt for such a trip.

            “President Biden’s inaction at our southern border continues putting the lives of Texans—and Americans—at risk and is overwhelming our communities,” Abbott said, according to a press release. “To continue providing much-needed relief to our small, overrun border towns, Chicago will join fellow sanctuary cities Washington, D.C. and New York City as an additional drop-off location. Mayor [Lori] Lightfoot loves to tout the responsibility of her city to welcome all regardless of legal status, and I look forward to seeing this responsibility in action as these migrants receive resources from a sanctuary city with the capacity to serve them.”

            The first bus of migrants transported from Texas to the nation’s capital arrived in April, and earlier this month, the first bus arrived in the Big Apple. Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, has twice requested the deployment of the D.C. National Guard to assist amid the migrant influx, but both times the Pentagon has rebuffed the mayor’s requests.

            “As a city, we are doing everything we can to ensure these immigrants and their families can receive shelter, food, and most importantly protection. This is not new; Chicago welcomes hundreds of migrants every year to our city and provides much-needed assistance,” a spokesperson for Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office said in a statement. “Unfortunately, Texas Governor Greg Abbott is without any shame or humanity. But ever since he put these racist practices of expulsion in place, we have been working with our community partners to ready the city to receive these individuals.”

            Category:

            Political

            Tagged with:

            Biden Admin Regularly Coordinated With Facebook, Twitter To Censor Users, Records Show


            By JOHN HUGH DEMASTRI, CONTRIBUTOR | September 01, 2022

            Read more at https://dailycaller.com/2022/09/01/federal-govt-social-media-censor/

            Dozens of federal officials across multiple agencies within the Biden administration communicated extensively with social media companies to coordinate censorship of information, according to internal documents released by Republican Attorneys General Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Jeff Landry of Louisiana. Officials within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sent emails to employees at Facebook and Twitter to flag instances of alleged misinformation and provide talking points to counter allegedly false narratives spreading on the platforms. Government officials would occasionally initiate this activity, with one message from a CDC official requesting monthly meetings with Facebook to plan “debunking” strategies, and a White House official requesting the removal of a parody Anthony Fauci account.

            One collection of emails shows Facebook staff collaborating closely with staff at the HHS to remove Facebook groups, with one message describing the collaboration as “critical.” Staff from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) discussed setting up “regular chats” with Twitter, and Twitter invited White House staff to be briefed on their efforts relating to vaccine misinformation. (RELATED: Court Orders Biden White House To Cough Up Top Officials’ Communications With Big Tech)

            “I know our teams met today to better understand the scope of what the White House expects from us on misinformation going forward,” one email from Facebook staff to HHS staff states. “In our previous conversations I’ve appreciated the way you and your team have approached our engagement, and we have worked hard to meet the moment — we’ve dedicated enormous time and resources to fighting this pandemic and consider ourselves partners in fighting the same battle.”

            Documents produced by the Department of Justice allegedly reveal a connection between 45 federal officials at the DHS and HHS and social media giants, with the social media companies disclosing connections to officials at the White House and U.S. Election Assistance Commision, among others, according to Schmitt’s press release. The administration has allegedly refused to disclose the connections of the highest-ranking members, citing executive privilege, according to the press release.

            “The limited discovery produced so far provides a tantalizing snapshot into a massive, sprawling federal “Censorship Enterprise,” which includes dozens of federal officials across at least eleven federal agencies and components identified so far,” Schmitt and Landry write in a Wednesday petition for additional documents. “[These officials] communicate with social-media platforms about misinformation, disinformation, and the suppression of private speech on social media—all with the intent and effect of pressuring social-media platforms to censor and suppress private speech that federal officials disfavor.”

            The DHS this spring launched a short-lived initiative known as the Government Disinformation Board, which was supposed to study misinformation online and provide the DHS with tools to combat propaganda that posed a national security threat, according to The Washington Post. The program disbanded after just three weeks due to significant backlash, according to The Washington Post.

            “We’re going to need another [Nina Jankowicz] down the road,” an anonymous DHS staffer to The Washington Post, referring to the board’s erstwhile executive director. “And anyone who takes that position is going to be vulnerable to a disinformation campaign or attack.”

            Facebook, Twitter, DHS, HHS and The White House did not immediately respond to a DCNF request for comment.

            Category:

            Political

            Tagged with:

            Mark Levin turns the tables on FBI over controversial photo included in DOJ court filing: ‘A grossly negligent use of classified documents’


            By CHRIS ENLOE | September 01, 2022

            Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/mark-levin-fbi-espionage-act-photo/

            Mark Levin suggested Wednesday that FBI agents who raided Mar-a-Lago may also have violated the Espionage Act, the same federal law that former President Donald Trump is accused of possibly violating.

            The search warrant used to raid Mar-a-Lago last month revealed that Trump is under investigation for possible violations of the Espionage Act. Most likely, investigators are probing potential violation of the controversial law over Trump allegedly retaining highly classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, documents that could imperil national security in the wrong hands. Government attorneys included in a Justice Department court filing this week a picture of classified documents strewn on the floor of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago office.

            Image source: The Department of Justice

            The problem is that it’s not exactly clear where the documents came from. Were they discovered strewn on the floor of Trump’s office, as the picture suggests? Or were they found in a part of the property not where they were photographed, then staged for an evidentiary photo?

            According to Levin, who is an attorney, staging the sensitive documents for a photo to be eventually released to the public via a court filing is a “grossly negligent use of classified documents” that should itself be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.

            “It seems to me an argument should be made that spreading highly classified documents on the floor, with the covers of the documents noting that the documents are indeed classified and taking a photograph even of the covers purely for gratuitous public use (i.e., for no reasonable or legal purpose), is a grossly negligent use of classified documents and the FBI should be held accountable under the Espionage Act,” Levin wrote on Twitter.

            Specifically, Levin quoted the original 1917 version of the law, which corresponds to Section F of 18 U.S. Code § 793. The law reads:

            Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

            So the argument goes, the documents were strategically photographed and the picture released to drive the public narrative in a certain direction. Indeed, constitutional lawyer Johnathan Turley outright said he believes the photo was “clearly intended for public consumption.”

            “It is curious that the DOJ would release this particular picture which suggests classified material laying around on the floor. The point is to state a fact that hardly needs an optical confirmation: the possession of documents with classified cover sheets,” Turley wrote. “The government could simply affirmatively state the fact of the covered pages and would not likely be challenged on that point without the inclusion of this one photo.

            “For critics, the photo may appear another effort (with prior leaks) to help frame the public optics and discussion. Clearly the court did not need the visual aid of a picture of documents with covers,” he added. “It seems clearly intended for public consumption.”

            Category:

            Political

            Tagged with:

            Ann Coulter Op-ed: Teen Girl Enthusiasms: Twitching, Cutting, and Trans


            Ann Coulter | Posted: Aug 31, 2022

            Read more at https://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2022/08/31/teen-girl-enthusiasms-twitching-cutting-and-trans—p–n2612508/

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

            Teen Girl Enthusiasms: Twitching, Cutting, and Trans

            Source: AP Photo/Robin Rayne

              Remember the twitching girls in upstate New York?

              About a decade ago, more than a dozen teen girls, crazed with puberty and hormones, developed a weird medical condition. Despite the utter scientific implausibility of their alleged illness, the mania soon spread to other girls at their school. And then it all just disappeared, giving us a road map for dealing with teenaged girls today, who demand the right to mutilate their sexual organs and inject themselves with infertility-inducing drugs.

              We’ll get back to the twitching girls. First a political point.

              At brunch this weekend, a couple remarked, with some irritation, that in any gathering of Republicans, everybody always starts talking about transgenders. Evidently, it’s not just Republicans. The same topic was vexing Democrats at brunch the next day. The couple’s point was: STOP TALKING ABOUT TEENAGE TRANSGENDERS!

              On the other hand, any politician with three functioning brain cells will hear the same story and think, The electorate is inflamed! I better start talking about transgenders! It’s nothing big, just the greatest medical malpractice in history currently being perpetrated on America’s youth.

              All I needed to know about the transgender craze was that, in a massive survey of parents of transitioning teens, 92% were women, 71% had a bachelor’s or graduate degree, 86% favored gay marriage and 91% were white.

              I’m dying to hear about the biological pathway of a medical condition that afflicts almost exclusively the offspring of liberal white women. (Silver lining: On breaks from talking about their transitioning daughters, the mothers can compare “long-haul COVID” symptoms.)

              The adolescent transgenders themselves were 83% girls (by which I mean “female,” that mysterious life-form unidentifiable by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson).

              These delicate creatures — hormones flooding their bodies, social acceptance more important than life itself — have launched any number of interesting societal phenomena through the years:

              — the Salem witch trials (look up Ann Putnam Jr.);

              — anorexia nervosa (females are three times more likely to have anorexia than males);

              — cutting (girls are three times more likely to engage in cutting than boys);

              — cavalcades of prescription drugs that shouldn’t be given to any human being, least of all a teenager (teen girls are about twice as likely to be on antidepressants as teen boys); and now …

              — transgenderism. (In the past decade, the number of girls seeking to transition has gone up by about 5,500%, compared to 1,500% for boys, according to the Tavistock Centre, the U.K.’s only gender identity clinic for teens.)

              A Nexis search reveals that the word “transgender” was practically nonexistent in The New York Times until fairly recently. In the past 18 months, the Times has mentioned transgenders 2,784 times. You have to wonder how the Salem witch trials got rolling without the Times’ active encouragement.

              But let’s get back to the twitching girls.

              In 2012, the Times published a long magazine article about a rash of teenage girls in Le Roy, New York, having nonepileptic seizures — twitching, arms flailing, head jerking, uncontrollable humming, guttural noises, fainting, tics and so on.

              The Tourette’s-like seizures first occurred in a cheerleader, spread to several members of the team, then leapt to a dozen other female classmates. But, oddly, this absolutely genuine medical condition barely affected the boys, staff or teachers at the school. (Only one boy and one teacher acquired the symptoms.)

              This raised no suspicions among the mothers, who carried on at town meetings, screaming at school officials, “I’m done listening to you. You need to do something!”

              Experts tested the water, the playing fields, the air, the abandoned manufacturing plants. The girls underwent extensive neurological testing. Erin Brockovich even sent a team to test the dirt at the school (despite the fact that she’d turned out to be completely wrong about the purported “cancer cluster” that made her famous).

              The girls and their mothers appeared on “The Today Show” and the “Dr. Phil” show. CNN sent a team of experts to investigate.

              In the end, there was nothing wrong with the girls. Everyone moved on. The tics went away.

              Which, it turns out, is the only way these estrogen-fueled panics ever end. The Times cited famed epidemiologists, local neurologists and feminist writers all making the exact same point: The worst thing to do when facing a psychogenic outbreak is give it attention and support. Feminist literary critic Elaine Showalter, for example, listed three prerequisites to a mass hysteria: “physician-enthusiasts and theorists; unhappy and vulnerable patients; and supportive cultural environments.”

              Luckily for the girls of Le Roy, they were ordinary kids in an ordinary town, not the new victim on the block, much less the little darlings of the upper crust. If they’d been students at The Brearley School in New York City, they’d be thrashing about in wheelchairs to this day.

              Category:

              Political

              Tagged with:

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


              A.F. Branco Cartoon – Gold Hard Reality

              A.F. BRANCO | on September 1, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-gold-hard-reality/

              The radical left-wing Greenies are determined to take Europe and the world back to the Stone Age.

              Europe in the Stone Ages
              Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2022

              DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – 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.

              Category:

              Political

              Tagged with:

              Tag Cloud