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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
‘This is making the FBI into the East German Stasi’
BLAZETV STAFFOctober 07, 2021Image source: Video screenshot
Joining Fox News’ Sean Hannity, “LevinTV” host Mark Levin ripped into the Biden administration and Attorney General Merrick Garland for what he called the weaponization of the DOJ and FBI to target parents who challenge mask mandates and critical-race-theory-influenced curricula.
Is Merrick Garland creating an East German Stasi-like FBI? Why is the DOJ getting involved in school board meetings and going after moms as if they’re domestic terrorists? Levin questioned.
Levin addressed a recent memo in which the attorney general pledged to mobilize the Federal Bureau of Investigation against parents who “harass or intimidate” public school officials, citing unspecified “criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.”
“The federal government has absolutely no authority whatsoever to even go in a school board meeting, let alone a classroom. These are state and local matters. Fully,” Levin began. “And I would remind everybody that the FBI did damn little when our cities were burning, when Black Lives Matter and Antifa were brutalizing people, were committing acts of larceny, were attacking police.”
“This is a pretext about widespread violence to intimidate, threaten and suppress communities and neighborhoods all over the country to comply with the left-wing radical Marxist agenda,” he continued.
“This is making the FBI into the East German Stasi. And, you know what? Merrick Garland has a reason to do this, beyond his ideological extremism. His family makes money from pushing this crap in our school districts. … His son-in-law is a founding partner of Panorama [which has] multimillion dollar contracts with school districts. They’re pushing this agenda in 25% of schools so far, all around the country, while his family is making millions,” Levin added.
“Let me say it here tonight. A special council needs to me appointed to investigate this attorney general’s ties, and his family’s ties to Panorama, and his unleashing of the full force, unconstitutionally, of the federal government to attack the constitutional rights of citizens and parents throughout this country.”
Watch the video clip below to hear more from BlazeTV’s Mark Levin:
Dr. Anthony Fauci has been propped up by the left as a savior throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. If leftists wrote a Marvel superhero movie, former President Donald Trump would be like Thanos, and Fauci is supposed to be some sort of Avenger who saves that day. The problem with that picture is that as far as I’m aware, Avengers are not supposed to brutally murder puppies and mutilate their bodies.
According to a watchdog group called the White Coat Waste Project, that is exactly what the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases did under the leadership of Fauci.
“Documents obtained by WCW through the Freedom of Information Act show that Fauci’s division at the National Institutes of Health ordered cruel and unnecessary drug toxicity tests on dogs and other animals that cost taxpayers $1.68 million,” the group said in a Tuesday news release.
This follows an August report that NIAID sent $424,455 in taxpayer money to the University of Georgia in September 2020 for research that would infect beagles with parasites so that an experimental drug could be tested on them.
In that research, documents obtained by WCW show at least 28 beagles were set to be infected with the parasites for three months. Afterward, they would be euthanized and their blood would be collected. The research was supposed to be completed by January 2022, but it is unclear whether the beagles were euthanized, according to the Daily Caller.
According to the new report from the Daily Caller, additional animal research took place between October 2018 and February 2019. These experiments reportedly included 44 beagle puppies aged 6-8 months who were given experimental drugs through either injection or force-feeding.
Afterward, WCW said the dogs were killed and dissected, supposedly for “research.”
In addition, NIAID paid for the abused puppies to have cordectomies, meaning part or all of their vocal cords were removed. WCW said Fauci’s division paid for these procedures so the puppies “couldn’t bark in the lab while they were being abused.”
NIAID defended the horrific treatment in its documents by saying the experiments were conducted to “provide data of suitable quality and integrity, in order to support applications to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other regulatory agencies,” according to the Daily Caller.
In July, WCW told KABC-TV that human drugs were being tested on puppies because of a 1930s law requiring drugs to be tested on animals before humans.
However, when KABC reached out to the FDA for comment, the agency said it “requires that an FDA-approved medical product must be demonstrated to be safe and effective,” but “does not mandate that human drugs be studied in dogs.”
This implies that NIAID’s reckless animal testing was conducted by choice, not out of obligation.
The timing of this new information is particularly ironic for Fauci. On Monday’s episode of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Carlson revealed Fauci had candles in his own home depicting himself as a saint.
“Tony Fauci isn’t just the high priest of Fauci-ism. He’s also a true believer himself,” Carlson said.
The very next day, Fauci was revealed to have overseen experiments brutalizing innocent puppies. Somehow, that doesn’t seem to be very “saint-like” behavior.
“People are naming puppies after Anthony Fauci, but he’s actually dogs’ and taxpayers’ worst nightmare,” WCW vice president of advocacy and public policy Justin Goodman told the Daily Caller.
“From poisoning puppies here at home to funding gain-of-function experiments in China, the government’s highest-paid employee has proven he can’t be trusted to spend taxpayer dollars responsibly. With NIH director Francis Collins retiring, Fauci should be the next one to go.”
Grant is a graduate of Virginia Tech with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. He has five years of writing experience with various outlets and enjoys covering politics and sports.
FILE – In this Sept. 1, 2021, file photo, women protest against the six-week abortion ban at the Capitol in Austin, Texas. A federal judge on Wednesday, Oct. 6 ordered Texas to suspend the most restrictive abortion law in the U.S., which since September has banned most abortions in the nation’s second-most populous state. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP, File)
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday ordered Texas to suspend the most restrictive abortion law in the U.S., calling it an “offensive deprivation” of a constitutional right by banning most abortions in the nation’s second-most populous state since September. The order by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman is the first legal blow to the Texas law known as Senate Bill 8, which until now had withstood a wave of early challenges. In the weeks since the restrictions took effect, Texas abortion providers say the impact has been “exactly what we feared.”
In a 113-page opinion, Pitman took Texas to task over the law, saying Republican lawmakers had “contrived an unprecedented and transparent statutory scheme” by leaving enforcement solely in the hands of private citizens, who are entitled to collect $10,000 in damages if they bring successful lawsuits against abortion providers who violate the restrictions. The law, signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in May, prohibits abortions once cardiac activity is detected, which is usually around six weeks, before some women even know they are pregnant.
“From the moment S.B. 8 went into effect, women have been unlawfully prevented from exercising control over their lives in ways that are protected by the Constitution,” wrote Pitman, who was appointed to the bench by former President Barack Obama.
“That other courts may find a way to avoid this conclusion is theirs to decide; this Court will not sanction one more day of this offensive deprivation of such an important right.”
But even with the law on hold, abortion services in Texas may not instantly resume because doctors still fear that they could be sued without a more permanent legal decision. Planned Parenthood said it was hopeful the order would allow clinics to resume abortion services as soon as possible.
Texas officials swiftly told the court of their intention to seek a reversal from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which previously allowed the restrictions to take effect.
The lawsuit was brought by the Biden administration, which has said the restrictions were enacted in defiance of the U.S. Constitution. Attorney General Merrick Garland called the order “a victory for women in Texas and for the rule of law.”
The law had been in effect since Sept. 1.
“For more than a month now, Texans have been deprived of abortion access because of an unconstitutional law that never should have gone into effect. The relief granted by the court today is overdue, and we are grateful that the Department of Justice moved quickly to seek it,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Texas Right to Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion group, said the order was not unexpected.
“This is ultimately the legacy of Roe v. Wade, that you have activist judges bending over backwards, bending precedent, bending the law, in order to cater to the abortion industry,” said Kimberlyn Schwartz, a spokeswoman for the group. “These activist judges will create their conclusion first: that abortion is a so-called constitutional right and then work backwards from there.”
Abortion providers say their fears have become reality in the short time the law has been in effect. Planned Parenthood says the number of patients from Texas at its clinics in the state decreased by nearly 80% in the two weeks after the law took effect. Some providers have said that Texas clinics are now in danger of closing while neighboring states struggle to keep up with a surge of patients who must drive hundreds of miles. Other women, they say, are being forced to carry pregnancies to term. Other states, mostly in the South, have passed similar laws that ban abortion within the early weeks of pregnancy, all of which judges have blocked. A 1992 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court prevented states from banning abortion before viability, the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb, around 24 weeks of pregnancy.
But Texas’ version had so far outmaneuvered the courts because it leaves enforcement to private citizens to file suits, not prosecutors, which critics say amounts to a bounty.
“This is not some kind of vigilante scheme,” said Will Thompson, counsel for the Texas Attorney General’s Office, while defending the law to Pitman last week. “This is a scheme that uses the normal, lawful process of justice in Texas.”
The Texas law is just one that has set up the biggest test of abortion rights in the U.S. in decades, and it is part of a broader push by Republicans nationwide to impose new restrictions on abortion.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court began a new term, which in December will include arguments in Mississippi’s bid to overturn 1973’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing a woman’s right to an abortion. Last month, the court did not rule on the constitutionality of the Texas law in allowing it to remain in place. But abortion providers took that 5-4 vote as an ominous sign about where the court might be heading on abortion after its conservative majority was fortified with three appointees of former President Donald Trump.
Ahead of the new Supreme Court term, Planned Parenthood on Friday released a report saying that if Roe v. Wade were overturned, 26 states are primed to ban abortion. This year alone, nearly 600 abortion restrictions have been introduced in statehouses nationwide, with more than 90 becoming law, according to Planned Parenthood.
Texas officials argued in court filings that even if the law were put on hold temporarily, providers could still face the threat of litigation over violations that might occur in the time between a permanent ruling.
At least one Texas abortion provider has admitted to violating the law and been sued — but not by abortion opponents. Former attorneys in Illinois and Arkansas say they sued a San Antonio doctor in hopes of getting a judge who would invalidate the law.
___
Associated Press writer Jamie Stengle in Dallas contributed to this report
One of Colorado’s largest hospital systems has implemented a new policy that denies organ transplants to patients who have not taken the experimental Covid-19 vaccine under “almost all situations.” All organ donors will also have to be vaccinated under the new policy, and it has already stopped one woman from receiving the life-saving treatment she needs.
Last month, the University of Colorado Health sent a letter to Leilani Lutali informing her that her status on the waiting list for a kidney transplant was “inactivated” for “non-compliance” because she has chosen not to take the jab. She was given 30 days to take the shot, or else she would be removed from the transplant list completely.
Lutali, who has stage 5 renal failure, was told by the hospital in August that she wouldn’t need to be vaccinated to get her new kidney and was only made aware of the hospital’s new segregation policy when she received her letter in the mail – and only AFTER she was able to find a donor she knew who was willing to give her a kidney.
CBS4 Denver spoke with Lutali about the hospital’s policy and their reasoning behind foregoing the rushed vaccine, which she says has “too many unknowns.”
“I said I’ll sign a medical waiver. I have to sign a waiver anyway for the transplant itself, releasing them from anything that could possibly go wrong.
It’s surgery, it’s invasive. I sign a waiver for my life. I’m not sure why I can’t sign a waiver for the Covid shot.”
They also spoke with her donor – Jaimee Fougner – who was outraged that the hospital could decide not to operate when there is a kidney available that will save her friend’s life. Like Lutali, Fougner is also not vaccinated.
“It’s your choice on what treatment you have. In Leilani’s case, the choice has been taken from her.Her life has now been held hostage because of this mandate.
Here I am, willing to be a direct donor to her. It does not affect any other patient on the transplant list. How can I sit here and allow them to murder my friend when I’ve got a perfectly good kidney and can save her life?”
The University of Colorado Health (UCHealth), which operates dozens of medical facilities and hospitals throughout the state, confirmed the segregation policy to the New York Post on Wednesday and claimed they were making the change because transplant patients are 20% more likely to die if they catch Covid-19. But, how much more likely are they to die if they catch Covid before getting a life-saving transplant? Or even without catching covid?
Higher than 20%, that’s for sure. Many of the people on the waiting list are also most likely medically exempt from taking the vaccine.
Not to mention the vaccine is so bad at preventing breakthrough infections that the tyrannical US health order is about to force a third booster dose, which will be most likely followed by perpetual doses every six months – Being vaccinated doesn’t even provide immunity (just check the CDC’s updated definition). Vaccinated patients waiting for an organ are about just as likely to contract a breakthrough case after a transplant as the non vaccinated.
UCHealth doubled down on their refusal to operate on the unvaccinated, saying that several other surgery centers have covid vaccine mandates for their patients in place already, and many more are following suit.
“In almost all situations, transplant patients and living donors are now required to be vaccinated against Covid-19 in addition to meeting other health requirements and receiving additional vaccinations.
Physicians must consider the short and long-term health risks for patients as they consider whether to recommend an organ transplant.”
The hospital’s policy has forced Lutali to search elsewhere for her operation. Unfortunately, she has checked with every surgery center in Colorado who would be able to perform a kidney transplant and none of them will provide care to her because she is unvaccinated. She is now looking outside the state for a hospital that will be willing to take her.
Like Lutali’s donor said, her life is being held hostage over this vaccine mandate. How many others will be denied care and left to perish because of these policies? So much for that “if we save just one life” nonsense. That was never the case.
Yes, we’ve heard all about Joe Biden’s alleged vaccine mandate for private companies employing 100 or more people. It was all over the news even before he announced it on September 9. His announcement has jeopardized the employment of millions of Americans and increased worker shortages in critical domains such as health care.
There’s only one problem. It’s all a mirage. Biden’s so-called vaccine mandate doesn’t exist — at least, not yet. So far, all we have is his press conference and other such made-for-media huff-puffing. No such rule even claiming to be legally binding has been issued yet.
That’s why nearly two dozen Republican attorneys general who have publicly voiced their opposition to the clearly unconstitutional and illegal mandate haven’t yet filed suit against it, the Office of the Indiana Attorney General confirmed for me. There is no mandate to haul into court. And that may be part of the plan.
According to several sources, so far it appears no such mandate has been sent to the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs yet for approval. The White House, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the Department of Labor haven’t released any official guidance for the alleged mandate. There is no executive order. There’s nothing but press statements.
Despite what you may have been falsely led to believe by the media fantasy projection machine, press statements have exactly zero legal authority.
“There is nothing there yet that gives employers any mandate,” Stephanie McFarland, spokeswoman for the Indiana Occupational Safety and Health Administration, told me Oct. 6. “The president made an announcement on this asking OSHA to do it, but we’ve not yet seen anything come from it yet,” she also said. When the state agency gets any further information, she said, they’ll review it.
To impose the public perception of a mandate, the Biden administration is following an unusual rule-making process it also employed earlier this year, called an emergency temporary standard (ETS). The spring ETS rule took nearly six months to issue. Meanwhile, companies are telling reporters their vaccine mandates will have at the latest December deadlines. (For those who can’t calendar, that’s four months after Biden’s non-existent mandate was proclaimed. According to OSHA, an ETS takes up to six months to go into effect after the initial mandate is issued in the Federal Register — which, again, for the proclaimed 100-employee mandate hasn’t happened yet.)
Lawyers for big business were blunt about their love for this mandate mirage: “Everybody loves this cover,” Minneapolis employment lawyer Kate Bischoff told Bloomberg Law in September. “Many were already looking down the road at doing this, but the fact that they get to blame Biden is like manna from heaven.”
Using the ETS procedure instead of normal federal rule-making processes both allows the Biden administration to push its demands faster and without any public input or requirement of responding to public input, which is normally required of even legally laughable federal rule-making like this one would be. That is part of why ETS rules have been overwhelmingly overturned in courts.
“OSHA has used that legal authority only 10 times in 50 years,” David Rivkin Jr. and Robert Alt wrote in the Wall Street Journal in September. “Courts have decided challenges to six of those standards, nixing five and upholding only one.”
There are many other reasons any federal vaccine mandate would be obviously illegal and unconstitutional, Rivkin and Alt write, including that “The states have plenary police power to regulate health and safety. Congress has only those limited powers enumerated in the Constitution. That wouldn’t include the authority to impose a $155 fine (today’s equivalent of the $5 at stake in Jacobson) on an individual who declines to be vaccinated, much less to prevent him from earning a livelihood.”
But who needs the Constitution when you have an American people conditioned for compliance with even wildly outlandish things the screen people insist they must think and do?
Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal published a letter from Bruce Atkinson making several excellent observations about the nonexistent mandate, including the following:
The mandate’s nonexistence shields the Biden administration from legal challenges that may ultimately restrict the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s authority. Yet the mandate is still effective at compelling industries and companies into compliance, as it leaves room for any eventual issuance to target noncompliant entities. This implied cudgel is particularly effective on industries and companies that are dependent on federal spending or the goodwill of federal regulators. The nonexistent mandate also allows so-inclined state and local governments and companies to issue their own mandates, seemingly in lockstep with Washington.
The Biden White House has been well-served by presenting a nonexistent mandate as a done deal.
Now, let me see, what presidential administration does all this remind you of? Why, that of Mr. “Pen and Phone” himself, Barack Obama.
His also wildly unconstitutional Deferred Action for Child Arrivals was simply a two-page memo, for example, but it is still allowing some 616,000 people to simply ignore major U.S. laws, and could easily be reinstated by courts as litigation continues nearly a decade later. It seems that, given such unchecked gains from openly lawless actions Democrats have turned into standard operating procedure over the years, Joe Biden feels free to reduce that constitutional contempt to simply a phone now.
What this “government by press release” also allows is for Republicans like Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb to complain about Biden’s tyranny while using zip, nada, zilch of their elected authority to stop it. Holcomb has used the same executive rule-by-decree throughout the lockdown era without effective restraint by a supermajority-Republican state legislature, even telling the press churches were required to deliver Christ’s Body and Blood his way while quietly keeping that part out of his executive orders, surely because government dictating religious exercise is obviously unconstitutional and would quickly have generated lawsuits.
All this allows weak Republicans and evil Democrats to shadowbox each other for the cameras while ordinary Americans suffer under their abdicated leadership. By the time Republican attorneys general get around to filing lawsuits over any eventually issued legal documents that fulfill Biden’s promises, the vast majority of people not wanting government to force them into medical procedures will likely be unemployed, forcibly injected with treatments that have almost no track record, forced from their education paths, provided with fake documents like these citizens are beneath COVID-rule-exempt illegal aliens, and all the rest.
This is how weak Republicans keep letting Democrats go right on gleefully disemboweling our rights just like they have nearly 50 million of the American unborn. Gee, thanks, “public servants.” Tell me another one about how you love American liberties and the Bill of Rights. I’ll believe that when I see you sacrificing anything substantial to fight for them.
What Democrats are doing as Republicans stand down yet again is a moral and constitutional abomination. Not even the fig-leaf pose of a pen signing balderdash-filled documents is needed for today’s Democrats. Whatever they say, you do. You have no rights or say in the matter, no possibility for objecting to even them forcibly injecting things into your own body and the bodies of your children.
These people believe they are royalty, and too many Americans are acting like they’re these losers’ serfs instead of citizens endowed by God with inalienable rights, including the right to consent — through elected representatives, not never-elected dictatorial bureaucrats — to rules that restrict our rights, everyday lives, and human dignity.
The family of a young mother who died from COVID-19 vaccine complications says that their loved one is gone all because she was coerced into receiving a shot by government mandate.
Washington state health officials acknowledged on Tuesday that the otherwise healthy woman died due to blood clotting complications following a COVID-19 vaccine.
In a news release, health officials said, “Sadly, this is the first such death in Washington State. We send our deepest condolences to her family and loved ones. Losing a loved one at any time is a tragic and difficult and pain that’s become all too familiar in the last year and a half of this pandemic.”
A Wednesday report from the Western Journal said that the family of 37-year-old Jessica Berg Wilson said Wilson was reluctant to get the jab, but relented due to a mandate.
A portion of the obituary read, “Jessica Berg Wilson, 37, of Seattle, Wash., passed away unexpectedly Sept. 7, 2021 from COVID-19 Vaccine-Induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia (VITT) surrounded by her loving family. Jessica was an exceptionally healthy and vibrant 37-year-old young mother with no underlying health conditions.”
According to the obituary, Wilson left behind a husband and two daughters ages 3 and 5 years.
“During the last weeks of her life … the world turned dark with heavy-handed vaccine mandates,” the obituary continued. “Local and state governments were determined to strip away her right to consult her wisdom and enjoy her freedom. … She had been vehemently opposed to taking the vaccine, knowing she was in good health and of a young age and thus not at risk for serious illness. In her mind, the known and unknown risks of the unproven vaccine were more of a threat.”
The obituary added, “But, slowly, day by day, her freedom to choose was stripped away. Her passion to be actively involved in her children’s education — which included being a Room Mom — was, once again, blocked by government mandate. Ultimately, those who closed doors and separated mothers from their children prevailed. It cost Jessica her life. It cost her children the loving embrace of their caring mother. And it cost her husband the sacred love of his devoted wife. It cost God’s Kingdom on earth a very special soul who was just making her love felt in the hearts of so many.”
King County health officials on Tuesday also confirmed that Wilson died as a result of the vaccine.
“The individual, a woman in her late 30s, is the first confirmed death in King County from this very rare vaccine complication,” the officials said. “The resident received her vaccination on August 26, 2021 and died on September 7, 2021. Her cause of death was determined to be thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), a condition that has been identified as a rare but potentially serious adverse event in people who received the J&J vaccine.”
King County said the TTS diagnosis was confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, and WhatDidYouSay.org.
Source: AP Photo/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades
Last Friday, two elected congressional Democrats, Reps. Cori Bush and Emanuel Cleaver II, wrote to Gov. Mike Parson of Missouri demanding that he pardon a triple-murderer on death row because, I quote:
“Like slavery and lynching did before it, the death penalty perpetuates cycles of trauma, violence and state-sanctioned murder in Black and brown communities.”
Two sitting members of Congress say the reason a heinous murderer was on death row is because of white supremacy — and they are not denounced by their party. They ought to be censured. Why aren’t they getting the Steve King treatment? This deranged letter didn’t even make the news.
Could the Democratic Party tell us: Under what circumstances may a convicted murderer who is black be put to death?
The murderer in this case — or victim of slavery, as per the Democrats — Ernest Lee Johnson, savagely killed three employees of a local convenience store in 1994. Mary Bratcher, 46, had been stabbed in the hand 10 times with a screwdriver, eight of the wounds going clear through her hand, and smashed on the head with a hammer a dozen times. Fred Jones, 58, had been shot in the face, nonfatally, then hit on the head with a claw hammer nearly a dozen times, including the claw-side, collapsing his eyeball into his skull. Mabel Scruggs, 57, had been bashed on the head 10 times with the claw hammer.
Johnson was a regular customer at Casey’s General Store. He had to have known his victims — seen them, talked to them. But instead of just taking the money and running, he butchered them.
I’m guessing that when two separate juries sentenced Johnson to death, they were thinking more about Jones’ collapsed eye socket than affirming white supremacy.
The convenience store bloodbath occurred 27 long years ago. All that time, Johnson has been on death row, not being executed. Luckily for the law-abiding citizens of Missouri, their governor is a Republican, so the Democrats’ insane request was denied and Johnson was executed on Tuesday this week. We would not be so fortunate if the governor were a Democrat.
Even barely Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, as governor of California, ignored the pleas of celebrities like Snoop Dogg and Jamie Foxx and denied clemency to Stanley “Tookie” Williams, the founder of the Crips gang, who’d been given a death sentence for four murders.
The Democratic Party believes there should be no death penalty for criminals, however depraved their crimes, if they happen to be black. Or, as the letter adorably put it, those in the “black and brown communities.” That was a nice touch. But it’s a lie. Whatever problems Mexican immigrants have, one thing they do not do is make heroes of their criminals.
No, there’s only one ethnic group that sacralizes its criminals. See if you can guess which one:
O.J. Simpson (The Congressional Black Caucus gave O.J.’s lawyer, Johnnie Cochran, a standing ovation the weekend before his closing argument in a double murder case, in which Nicole Brown Simpson was nearly decapitated.)
George Floyd (Eight convictions, including a prison sentence for an armed home invasion. He has more statues and murals than Thurgood Marshall, Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan combined.)
Breonna Taylor (Full partner for a major crack cocaine and fentanyl ring in Louisville, Kentucky.)
The main problem facing the black community isn’t that a sizable number celebrate its criminals, though that’s bad. It’s that there’s such a sizable number of criminals to celebrate. Why won’t the party that gets 90% of the black vote mention that?
Au contraire! White journalists and academics, the black leadership and people like George Soros have taken up the cause of the black criminal underclass. Liberals have so elevated black people as our moral betters that they have fully adopted the values of disaffected urban youth.
The left firmly believes that African Americans should never suffer the consequences of their actions — even when the act is murder. Whatever America owes black people for slavery and Jim Crow, it doesn’t owe them a Get-Out-of-Jail Free card.
Thank God there are still plenty of African Americans who hate criminals and respect the police — who are the police — and who thank the police, like the lovely Coretta James of Queens, who is writing handwritten thank-you notes to all 4,000 New York City police officers.
Too bad the same can’t be said about the Democratic Party.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Never mind BLM and Antifa rioting causing million in destruction and death across America, let’s focus on parents concerned about their kids’ education.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Progressive activists rally outside the United States Supreme Court to celebrate the launch of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, Oct. 1, 2021. | Patrick Marsh
WASHINGTON — A pro-life activist has launched a new organization seeking to “reclaim progressivism for life” as the abortion movement continues to hold immense power and influence in the Democratic Party and the progressive movement.
Terrisa Bukovinac, the former president of Democrats for Life of America who also serves as founder and president of Pro-Life San Francisco, launched the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, also known by its acronym PAAU, on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court Friday night. The event took place the evening before pro-abortion protesters descended on the District of Columbia and cities across the country for the far-Left Women’s March.
Bukovinac addressed a crowd of dozens of pro-life activists, most of whom identified as Democrats and progressives, though conservative pro-lifers were also at the event. She made the case that contrary to what abortion activists claim, the pro-life position aligns with other priorities that progressives hold near and dear to their hearts.
“To be progressive, you must stand with the oppressed, never the oppressor. To be progressive, you must be in solidarity with low-income people and trust that they know their own needs. And to be progressive, you must stick up for the marginalized. But the abortion industrial complex twists all of that on its head,” she said.
“They’ll tell you that to be progressive, you must advocate for mass acts of violence against children in the womb who are utterly incapable of defending themselves,” Bukovinac added. “They’ll tell you that to be progressive, you must ignore the voices of low-income people who are more anti-abortion than the wealthy by huge margins. If it were up to those who make less than $40,000 a year, Roe v. Wade would be in the ash heap of history.’
“In this twisted version of progressivism, it’s the rich who know best,” she continued. “And they’ll tell you that to be progressive, you cannot, under any circumstances, advocate for the most … marginalized among us.”
Bukovinac also accused corporate America of engaging in pro-abortion activism in an effort to advance their economic self-interests.
“When I see giant corporations signing onto pro-choice letters, I have to wonder, what are their parental leave policies really like? How much are they counting on abortion to save them a buck and pad their bottom line?” she asked.
“Abortion is not progress,” she asserted. “Abortion is a regress to the pseudo-morality of might makes right and as progressives, we will not stand for it.”
“We are reclaiming progressivism for life,” Bukovinac declared.
Terrisa Bukovinac, the founder of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, speaks outside the United States Supreme Court to announce the launch of her new organization, Oct. 1, 2021. | Patrick Marsh
The launch of PAAU followed by the Women’s March on Saturday come as the implementation of a pro-life law in Texas that bans abortions after a baby’s heartbeat can be detected is spurring outrage in progressive circles. The Supreme Court declined the request of abortion providers to block the law, which has now been in effect for over a month. The justices are scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on Dec. 1. In this case, the court will rule on the constitutionality of Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban. A ruling in favor of the state of Mississippi, which is seeking to uphold the ban, would significantly weaken the precedent set by the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade and affirmed by the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. A decision is expected sometime next year, most likely by the end of June 2022. In the aforementioned cases, the court determined that states cannot prohibit abortions before the point of viability, where the unborn baby can survive outside the womb. Courts at all levels have frequently used those Supreme Court decisions when justifying the invalidation of states’ pro-life laws regulating abortions or implementing health and safety standards at abortion clinics.
CP interviewed some of the PAAU launch attendees to ask why they felt called to attend the rally and to share their views on the pro-life movement in the U.S. Michael New, a research associate at the Catholic University of America and a scholar at the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, spoke at a Democrats for Life of America rally earlier this year that Bukovinac also attended. He went to the launch of PAAU to show solidarity with Bukovinac’s efforts.
Pro-life activists on both sides of the aisle gather in front of the United States Supreme Court to celebrate the launch of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, Oct. 1, 2021. | Patrick Marsh
“I think what she’s doing is very important. I think the pro-life movement needs to leave no stone unturned. I think that there are a lot of people out there who are politically liberal, who are pro-life, and I think her efforts to amplify and highlight … those voices is a great project and I’m happy to support her.”
Caroline Smith of Grand Rapids, Michigan, a pro-life Democrat who works with the group Protect Life Michigan, told CP that “it’s important to show the world that being pro-life is not equal to and always just being conservative. I think it’s important to show that there’s a lot of diversity in the pro-life movement and we need to acknowledge that and be able to accept everybody who believes abortion is wrong.”
Characterizing abortion as “the most important issue of our day,” Smith reflected on the “crucial moment” the pro-life movement finds itself in: “I’m feeling excited but also … nervous because I know that there’s going to be a lot of work to be done. Whatever happens next, we’ve got to keep pushing and fighting for the unborn.”
Smith briefly spoke at the event, detailing how she “drove over 11 hours” to take advantage of the “opportunity to expand the pro-life movement” and “make some noise for the unborn.”
Fr. Frank Pavone, director of Priests for Life, added: “I have, for a long time, stood side-by-side with people who are of different political persuasions, religious persuasions … and all kinds of philosophical persuasions to stand against the killing of babies because I’m convinced … one criterion alone is needed to be pro-life and that is to be alive.”
Pavone, who traveled to the nation’s capital from Florida, shared his desire to “support any of the efforts in the pro-life movement to show … how diverse it is.” During his speech, Pavone slammed President Joe Biden as “the most pro-abortion president ever” and “a sign of the problem that PAAU is proudly standing against.” He also accused Democratic leaders of having “abandoned the people that they claim to represent on this issue.”
Braedon Eckert from Indiana, one of many young activists who spoke before the crowd, told CP it was important for him to attend the event as a self-described pro-life feminist and someone who believes in “the right to life from conception until natural death.” Speaking about the state of the pro-life movement, Eckert contended that “the pro-life movement is … almost like a cup of tea. It’s like brewing right now and we’re ready. … We’re just waiting for that moment when we just know it’s time to take action. We are taking action.” Eckert characterized the national Democratic Party’s overwhelming pro-abortion bent as an example of how members of the party “don’t even stand for their own Democratic views.” Maintaining that “every party does something to violate the right to life,” he contended that “both the Republican and the Democratic Party violate human beings in some way.”
“[For] the Republican Party, it’s the dehumanization of immigrants in … some cases. [For] the Democratic Party, it’s abortion.”
Bukovinac also spoke with CP, elaborating on what motivated her to start the new organization and shared her thoughts about the state of the pro-life movement: “Pro-abortion Democrats control the presidency, the Senate and the House, and I felt like it’s the right time that we … have lost every Democratic pro-life member of Congress and that we need real direct action in this movement on the Left to address this extremism.”
“We’re in a position of strength,” she added, expressing optimism about the pro-life movement. “We’ve known all along that the abortion industry was going to come after us once they felt truly threatened. I think that we’re seeing that happen. But what we’re seeing in the stats is that people are just as anti-abortion now as they were before the Texas law and that they will continue to be anti-abortion.”
“PAAU is coming for the Biden-Harris administration and those that enable that kind of discrimination,” she warned. “This discrimination is lethal for a million human children every year and we recognize that the issue is between the Democratic establishment and the abortion industry, and our intention is to break that relationship.”
The relationship between the Democratic establishment and the abortion industry, specifically abortion provider Planned Parenthood, was a major focus of Bukovinac’s remarks. She vowed that “Wherever you find fake progressivism bought with blood money, we will be there and we will be loud. It is time for a progressive anti-abortion uprising!”
“People matter more than profit!” Bukovinac exclaimed. “Human lives matter more than money. That is the heart of progressivism.”
Against the backdrop of the sun disappearing below the horizon, Bukovinac remarked that “the sun is setting on the American abortion industrial complex and the world is watching.” She assured the crowd that “PAAU is taking our message to every blue city in America, every Democratic leader in Congress and to the Biden-Harris administration and ultimately, to the Democratic National Convention.”
Randall Terry, founder of the pro-life group Operation Rescue, who also spoke at the event, had a few choice words for Planned Parenthood. After telling the crowd to “have a reaction that is equal to the crime,” he insisted that “you must set out to create social tension.”
Pointing to Martin Luther King’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” as a source of inspiration, Terry recalled that he, himself, spent time in jail because he “created the social tension that helped give birth to a revitalized pro-life movement that helped bring about political change that helped give birth to crisis pregnancy centers.”
Lamenting that “we still have not prevailed,” he declared: “I do not want a place at the table with Planned Parenthood. I want to take their table and turn it into firewood.”
The firewood reference caused the crowd to erupt into applause. Terry doubled down on his remarks, restating his desire for “total, unequivocal victory.” He stressed that “if abortion really is murder, if it really is the destruction of an innocent human life, if someone was going to be killed standing right next to you, you wouldn’t say ‘Oh wow, can we dialogue about this?’” Terry suggested that rather than engage in dialogue in such a scenario, it would make more sense to “scream bloody murder.”
Another speaker, Catherine Glenn Foster, the president and CEO of Americans United for Life, cited the formation of PAAU as evidence that “we are coming together in solidarity to end legalized abortion.”
“We are coming together to make the Congress and the court stand for life,” she continued. “We are coming together to end a discriminatory, ageist, ableist, racist, sexist regime that tells us that for us to be equal in society, that we have to resort to legalized abortion, to killing our own children.”
Echoing Foster’s rhetoric about the pro-abortion narrative, Bukovinac emphasized that her organization was “about speaking truth to power, not destroying the powerless” and “about investing in families and children and not telling women and people who can become pregnant that they have to kill their babies to succeed in a cis-man’s world.”
LGBT activists and their supporters rally in support of transgender people on the steps of New York City Hall, October 24, 2018 in New York City. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Two trans-identified healthcare professionals are raising concerns about the rush to affirm children suffering from gender dysphoria and the longterm consequences of puberty blockers. In an exclusive interview with Wall Street Journal contributor Abigail Shrier published on Substack, Dr. Marci Bowers and clinical psychologist Erica Anderson cast doubt on the effectiveness of puberty blockers and lamented the demands for conformity within the medical community regarding the transgender debate. Both Bowers and Anderson are trans-identified men who go by female names and belong to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which “sets the standards worldwide for transgender medical care.”
Bowers, a surgeon who performs gender reassignment surgeries and has been tapped to lead WPATH beginning next year, told Shrier that “We zig and then we zag, and I think maybe we zigged a little too far to the left in some cases.”
The doctor alleged that within WPATH, “there are definitely people who are trying to keep out anyone who doesn’t absolutely buy the party line that everything should be affirming, and that there’s no room for dissent.”
Shrier noted that a similar mentality exists within corporate media: “Anderson told me [he] submitted a co-authored op-ed to The New York Times warning that many healthcare providers were treating kids recklessly. The Times passed, explaining it was ‘outside our coverage priorities right now.’”
While Bowers is the doctor who performed trans-affirming surgery on famous trans-identified reality star Jazz Jennings, the surgeon is speaking out about some of the consequences of the puberty blockers. Specifically, Bowers warned that “if you’ve never had an orgasm pre-surgery, and then you’re puberty’s blocked, it’s very difficult to achieve that afterwards.”
Bowers has come to believe that the risks of puberty blockers outweigh the benefits: “Believe me, we’re doing some magnificent surgeries on these kids, and they’re so determined, and I’m so proud of many of them and their parents. They’ve been great. But honestly, I can’t sit here and tell you that they have better — or even as good — results.”
“They’re not as functional,” Bowers added. “I worry about their reproductive rights later. I worry about their sexual health later and ability to find intimacy.”
Shrier reported that the U.S. began to adopt affirmation of trans-identified children with puberty blockers as the standard operating procedure by embracing the Dutch Protocol. The Dutch Protocol is based on research conducted in the Netherlands portraying puberty blockers in a favorable light. According to Shrier, “the thinking behind the protocol was: Why make a child who has suffered with gender dysphoria since preschool endure puberty, with all its discomforts and embarrassments, if that child were likely to transition as a young adult?”
Shrier wrote that when a U.S. hospital first began relying on the Dutch Protocol in 2007, “researchers believed blockers’ effects were reversible.” When asked if puberty blockers were reversible, Bowers responded by saying, “I’m not sure,” adding, “I’m not a fan.”
The doctor also explained that the common use of tissue from the stomach and bowel to construct “neovaginas” in trans-identified males can cause colon cancer in addition to other complications: “If it’s used sexually, you can get this chronic colitis that has to be treated over time. And it’s just in the discharge and the nasty appearance and it doesn’t smell like vagina.”
Both Bowers and Anderson weighed in on the phenomenon of “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” which refers to the rise in the number of biological females seeking to change their gender.
A survey of 70,000 American college students conducted by the American College Health Association revealed that the share of biological female college students who identify as transgender rose from 1 in 2,000 in 2008 to 1 in 20 in 2021. At the same time, the number of gender clinics in the U.S. has grown from one in 2007 to hundreds today.
Shrier, who wrote a book about the phenomenon, titled Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, and other researchers attribute the rise in “rapid onset gender dysphoria” to peer pressure stemming from the prevalence of trans influencers on social media.
Bowers agreed: “I think there probably are people who are influenced. There is a little bit of ‘Yeah, that’s so cool. Yeah, I kind of want to do that too.’”
Anderson predicted that “we’re going to have more young adults who will regret having gone through this process” as a result of medical professionals “rushing people through the medicalization” as well as failing to “evaluate the mental health of someone historically in current time, and to prepare them for making such a life-changing decision.”Bowers elaborated on some of the underlying mental health factors that may cause young girls to want to transition and urged parents to think twice about doctors rushing to confirm gender dysphoria.
“When you have a female-assigned person and she’s feeling dysphoric, or somebody decides that she’s dysphoric and says your eating disorders are not really eating disorders, this is actually gender dysphoria, and then they see you for one visit, and then they recommend testosterone — red flag!”
Was He Saying Biden Was Feeble-Minded? Forgot,? Or Just Kept Out Of The Loop?
U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry told a French news channel (BFM TV) that he had to personally explain to Biden that France was angry about the trilateral nuclear submarine agreement between the U.S., U.K, and Australia,
Kerry:President Biden asked me about it, and I told him, and expressed–
Interviewer, surprised: You told Joe Biden that it was not the right-
Kerry:He asked me. He said, ‘what’s the situation?’ and I explained exactly, uh… He was he had not been aware of that, he literally, literally had not been aware of what had transpired. And I don’t want to go into the details of it, but suffice it to say, that that the president… My president is very committed to, um, strengthening the relationship and making sure that this is a small event of the past and moving on to the much more important future.
John Kerry admits in interview with French TV that Joe Biden had no idea about the fallout with the French from the AUKUS sub deal.
Was Kerry saying that Dementia Joe was so clueless that he had no idea that America’s oldest ally, France, would get angry about a deal they weren’t asked to join?
Perhaps Kerry was saying the Biden foreign policy team forgot to tell him the submarine deal would anger the French because it would take business from their manufacturers? The submarine deal led to “the cancellation by Australia of a big contract to buy French conventional submarines in favor of nuclear-powered subs built with U.S. technology.” Or did they tell the feeble President that France would get angry, but he forgot?
Maybe Kerry was saying that once France got angry and recalled its ambassadors to the United States for the first time in history, Biden didn’t understand they were angry, or the snafu happened because Joe Biden is being kept “out of the loop.”
On the bright side, Kerry did say the two countries were moving on from the snub.
“I’m absolutely confident that the bigger issues we have to work on about nuclear weapons, about cyber warfare, about climate… We have a lot of work to do and we can’t get lost in a momentary event that I think we will get past very quickly.”
I suppose that it’s nice that the French are no longer pissed off at America. However, it’s frightening the President of the United States didn’t understand the implications of his actions, was told the impact but forgot, or was kept out of the loop totally.
Despite that he’s been in office for less than ten months, the President has found ways to screw up our foreign policy, screwed our allies, created a border crisis, and ignited an inflationary spiral. The fact that Biden is sitting in the oval office should strike fear in the hearts of all Americans.
Thomas Caldwell’s is just one of several stories of American patriots living the nightmare of being American political prisoners.
Thomas Caldwell’s wife awakened him in a panic at 5:30 a.m. on January 19.
“The FBI is at the door and I’m not kidding,” Sharon Caldwell told her husband.
Caldwell, 66, clad only in his underwear, went to see what was happening outside his Virginia farm. “There was a full SWAT team, armored vehicles with a battering ram, and people screaming at me,” Caldwell told me during a lengthy phone interview on September 21. “People who looked like stormtroopers were pointing M4 weapons at me, covering me with red [laser] dots.”
Agents demanded that Caldwell, a former lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy who suffers from debilitating service-related spinal injuries, come outside and lay down in the grass.
“Someone grabbed my legs and dragged me through the grass. They threw me face down on the hood of the car, kicked my legs apart, put a chain around my waist and put me in handcuffs.” Caldwell said he looked up to see Sharon, his wife of 22 years, dressed in her nightgown holding her hands up with a sock in either hand. She, too, was covered in red dots from the weapons aimed at her. Sharon, 61, begged to put on her socks before they forced her outside in the cold. “I said a prayer, ‘Father, please don’t let them kill my wife,’” Caldwell said through sobs.
Caldwell was forced into the back of a police car for nearly 40 minutes; he asked several times what he was being charged with but FBI agents refused to answer. Eventually, Caldwell was led back toward his house. “I have a [collector] ’63 Thunderbird in my garage as a reminder of my grandfather, a retired Army colonel. An agent kicked one of the doors open and was leaning with his battle gear up against the car, scratching it up.”
Once inside, Caldwell saw that his wife “was still alive.” He was interrogated for at least two hours and realized the raid was tied to his participation in the January 6 protest in Washington, D.C.
Agents read what he called a “version” of his Miranda rights; he consented to the interview without an attorney present. Caldwell told me something I’ve heard repeatedly from January 6 defendants as to why they easily cooperated with the FBI: “I didn’t have anything to hide.”
Roughly 20 agents raided the Caldwell home, taking every electronic device including old computers and hard drives. This included Caldwell’s downloaded copies of cherished pictures. “They took every family photo we have.” Agents then transported Caldwell to the Central Virginia Regional Jail in Orange, Virginia, two hours from their home. He thought he would be booked and released. Instead, it was just the start of what he called “an American horror story.”
The Nightmare Begins
During his bond hearing later that day, Caldwell finally learned he had been charged with six federal crimes related to January 6. “The affidavit alleges . . . you were a member of a paramilitary organization called the Oath Keepers and that there are several other people who are also charged,”Judge Joel Hoppe explained to Caldwell. The Justice Department accused Caldwell and two Oath Keepers—Donovan Crowl and Jessica Watkins—of plotting to attack the U.S. Capitol on January 6. “Records obtained from Facebook indicate that CALDWELL was involved in planning and coordinating the January 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol in which WATKINS, CROWL, and other Oath Keeper militia members participated,” the government’s criminal complaint read. Prosecutors claimed Caldwell had a “leadership role within the Oath Keepers.”
The lead prosecutor at Caldwell’s January 19 hearing argued he should remain behind bars. “The nature of the offense . . . is very much directed at the fabric of our democracy, the attempt of insurrection and to overthrow what was occurring on January 6,” assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Kavanaugh said. “These events threatened the safety of members, the staff, the police. Five people died including one Capitol police officer.”
Caldwell never entered the Capitol building, has no criminal record, and honorably served the country for 20 years in the military, but Judge Hoppe agreed with the government to keep him behind bars. “The conduct and the statements of Mr. Caldwell . . . it really just is pure lawlessness and contempt for laws of this country,” Hoppe said, referring to some of Caldwell’s Facebook posts and texts.
Caldwell spent 53 days in jail, 49 of them in solitary confinement. He could not access his medication to relieve excruciating back pain caused by spinal injuries Caldwell suffered while serving in the Navy. When prison guards asked why he was incarcerated, he said, “I’m a political prisoner because of January 6.”
In prison, Caldwell said he suffered “sadistic brutality by some correctional officers and there was warmth and compassion, the latter by other employees and every single inmate.” His faith, he said, and the love of his wife sustained him. “I thought I would die in jail.”
Caldwell also found a new attorney, David W. Fischer, to take his case. Fischer immediately filed a motion to release his client, slamming the Justice Department for its initial allegations.
In less than a month, the Government’s theory as to Caldwell’s role in the claimed conspiracy has morphed from him being the Commander of Oath Keepers . . . who (presumably) led the attack on the east side of the Capitol, to a guy ‘associated’ with the Oath Keepers. Caldwell’s stellar background and military career was, unintentionally, slandered by the Government’s sloppy, rushed investigation. As the Court knows, the Government typically takes months and even years to build cases, painstakingly gathering and evaluating evidence and interviewing witnesses. By contrast, in this case the Government charged a 20-year decorated Navy veteran with no prior record based on a few hours of investigation and without giving him the courtesy of an interview. Authorities did virtually no investigation before branding Caldwell a felon, and have provided multiple inaccurate statements to the Court.
Caldwell finally went home in March; he remains on home detention with limited ability to leave his farm.
Even though he is a central figure in the Justice Department’s shaky “conspiracy” case against the Oath Keepers, Caldwell said he never joined the group. He was approached by Stewart Rhodes during a post-election rally in Virginia. Rhodes told Caldwell he did “security” for conservatives and asked Caldwell if he would ever volunteer to help. He gave Rhodes his contact information.
Caldwell communicated with some Oath Keepers prior to January 6, discussing travel plans and hotel arrangements. Twenty Oath Keepers have been charged with various crimes; none face an assault or weapons offense. Three have been in jail since last winter under pre-trial detention orders. (Judge Amit Mehta refuses to release the three detainees and just moved their trial date from January 2022 to April 2022.)
But Rhodes, curiously, has not been charged although he is Person One in the indictments. (Darren Beattie at Revolver News has a few investigative reports on Rhodes and the Oath Keepers case.) Even more curious is how the FBI quickly identified Caldwell, accessed his social media posts and other contacts, sought a warrant, and arrested him less than two weeks after the protest when he never even entered the building and committed no serious crime.
I asked Caldwell what he thought about the fact the founder of Oath Keepers and lead unindicted co-conspirator in the government’s biggest January 6 case hasn’t yet been charged. “I’m as curious as anyone on the outside looking in,” he said.
For now, the Caldwells are trying to resume a normal life as they await a trial that won’t begin until mid-2022 at the earliest. Unlike many January 6 defendants, the Caldwells have received an outpouring of support from their friends and community.
“We believe truth will prevail. I have great faith in the American people,” Caldwell told me.
Sharon Caldwell was more direct. “We won’t let the bad guys win.”
Let’s hope.
About Julie Kelly
Julie Kelly is a political commentator and senior contributor to American Greatness. She is the author of Disloyal Opposition: How the NeverTrump Right Tried―And Failed―To Take Down the President. Her past work can be found at The Federalist and National Review. She also has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, and Genetic Literacy Project. She is the co-host of ‘Happy Hour podcast with Julie and Liz.’ She is a graduate of Eastern Illinois University and lives in suburban Chicago with her husband and two daughters.
A Canadian human rights tribunal has ruled that a restaurant wrongfully fired an employee who demanded that the business use nonbinary pronouns, awarding the ex-employee $30,000. The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal released a ruling last week in favor of Jessie Nelson, a former employee of Buono Osteria who prefers the pronouns of they/them. At issue was the restaurant using female pronouns for Nelson, with the business firing her and claiming that she had become too “militant” in the demand to be identified as nonbinary.
Tribunal Member Devyn Cousineau authored the opinion, concluding that the refusal to use Nelson’s preferred pronouns “amounted to discrimination.”
“All employees have the right to a workplace free of discrimination. Trans employees are entitled to recognition of, and respect for, their gender identity and expression. This begins with using their names and pronouns correctly,” wrote Cousineau.
“Like a name, pronouns are a fundamental part of a person’s identity. They are a primary way that people identify each other. Using correct pronouns communicates that we see and respect a person for who they are.”
The decision contrasted the actions of someone who uses a correct pronoun at first before accommodating a person by using the individual’s preferred pronoun and someone who intentionally refuses to use the preferred pronouns of an individual who identifies as nonbinary.
“I order Buono Osteria to include a statement in its employee policies that affirms every employee’s right to be addressed with their correct pronouns,” continued the tribunal. “I also order Buono Osteria to implement mandatory training for all staff and managers about human rights in the workplace. This training should be no less than two hours. I understand that Jessie Nelson has recommended a well‐regarded training provider and I encourage the restaurant to avail itself of this option.”
Tanner Hnidey, a Christian writer from Alberta, penned a column on his website denouncing the ruling as a rejection of objective truth and a disturbing restriction on free speech.
“Now it’s one thing for a person to think they are a different gender than they actually are. It’s one thing for a man to believe he’s plural when he’s singular in reality,” wrote Hnidey.
“It’s quite another thing to force us to believe what another believes; coercing us to say what others want us to say. And that’s precisely what the BC Human Rights Tribunal ruled.”
“Basically, our organization is run on COVID money now.” ~ Chris Croce, senior associate scientist, Pfizer (Project Veritas undercover video)
We were lied to … big-time.
Back in December, the CDC stated clearly that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine “was 95.0% effective (95% confidence interval = 90.3%–97.6%) in preventing symptomatic laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 in persons without evidence of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection.” Indeed, in late March, Director Rochelle Walensky promised, “Our data from the CDC suggest that vaccinated people do not carry the virus.” Even those who had questions about transmission among the vaccinated were only concerned about asymptomatic transmission, whereas now we see that the vaccinated can contract the infection symptomatically.
Fast-forward three-quarters of a year through the era of mass vaccination, and a Harvard researcher could not find any correlation between vaccination rates and COVID case rates after examining 68 countries and 2,947 counties in the United States. “At the country-level, there appears to be no discernible relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days,” concluded the authors in the study published in the European Journal of Epidemiology. “In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people.”
The authors continue:
Notably, Israel with over 60% of their population fully vaccinated had the highest COVID-19 cases per 1 million people in the last 7 days. The lack of a meaningful association between percentage population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases is further exemplified, for instance, by comparison of Iceland and Portugal. Both countries have over 75% of their population fully vaccinated and have more COVID-19 cases per 1 million people than countries such as Vietnam and South Africa that have around 10% of their population fully vaccinated.
Of the top 5 counties that have the highest percentage of population fully vaccinated (99.9–84.3%), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identifies 4 of them as “High” Transmission counties. Chattahoochee (Georgia), McKinley (New Mexico), and Arecibo (Puerto Rico) counties have above 90% of their population fully vaccinated with all three being classified as “High” transmission. Conversely, of the 57 counties that have been classified as “low” transmission counties by the CDC, 26.3% (15) have percentage of population fully vaccinated below 20%.
It’s also important to keep in mind that when calculating the data, the authors used a sensitivity analysis by applying a one-month lag on the percentage population fully vaccinated so that people wouldn’t be considered fully vaccinated until 14 days after the second dose. However, studies have shown that this is the most vulnerable time for getting the virus. Why should that be blamed on the lack of vaccination rather than on the vaccine? So if anything, the numbers are likely even more unfavorable to the vaccine than this analysis suggests.
“The sole reliance on vaccination as a primary strategy to mitigate COVID-19 and its adverse consequences needs to be re-examined, especially considering the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant and the likelihood of future variants,” conclude the authors, including the lead researcher from Harvard’s Center for Population and Development Studies and a student researcher from Canada. The study did not factor in which vaccine predominated in a given country, but rather looked at the top-line vaccination rates, which include several vaccines that likely vary in terms of effectiveness.
How can these mandates hold up in court given that they likely don’t even pass the rational basis test of fulfilling a state’s vital interest of stopping the spread of a virus?
A July study of Israel perfectly embodies the complete lack of efficacy from this vaccine, especially in recent months. In a study published in a European CDC journal, Israeli researchers in one hospital found studies a serious outbreak among a group of patients and staff of whom 96% were vaccinated. 42 patients and staff wound up getting COVID from a vaccinated dialysis patient who had an extremely high viral load. According to the authors, “Of the 42 cases diagnosed in this outbreak, 38 were fully vaccinated with two doses of the Comirnaty vaccine, one was recovered with one vaccination and three were unvaccinated.” All patients and family members wore surgical masks and all staff wore N-95s with face shields and gloves.
Overall, “Among the patients (median age: 77 years; range: 42–93; median time from second vaccine dose to infection: 176 days; range: 143-188), eight became severely ill, six critically ill and five of the critically ill died.” All of the unvaccinated cases were described as mild, even though one of them was in his 80s. The Israelis are using this to push for boosters, but what it really demonstrates is that the vaccine has been a dud, especially for those who needed it the most.
The reality is that the notion that protection against serious illness is holding up, even as the vaccinated spread the virus more than ever, is collapsing by the day. According to the Associated Press, hospitalizations are surging in New England. The five states with the highest percentage of a fully vaccinated population are all in New England. At some point, it becomes hard to blame a worse spread than pre-vaccination on the few remaining unvaccinated adults without first investigating whether the vaccine itself made the virus worse.
A CNBC host confronted Dr. Anthony Fauci recently about the frequency of so-called “breakthrough” COVID-19 cases in people who are fully vaccinated. Public health officials have been touting the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines for nearly a year now — and for good reason. The vaccines are more effective than first believed, especially considering scientists developed the vaccine less than one year after sequencing COVID-19’s genetic code. The exact number of breakthrough cases, in fact, is not even known. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped tracking that data in May. The agency has continued, however, to track hospitalizations and deaths among the fully vaccinated crowd. As of Sept. 27, the CDC reported “22,115 patients with COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infection who were hospitalized or died.”
During an interview on “Closing Bell” Friday, host Sara Eisen confronted Fauci about breakthrough cases, asking him if the government is being “too casual about the limitations of the vaccine.” Eisen was asking because she contracted COVID-19 despite being fully vaccinated. She said the virus had recently spread through her “entire family.”
In response, Fauci cited data that say unvaccinated people still remain most vulnerable to hospitalization or death from COVID, and the vaccination protects most people from a severe outcome if they contract COVID-19. Fauci told Eisen she should not “confuse” the “overwhelming benefits of the protection of vaccines” with occurrences of breakthrough cases.
But Eisen pushed back. Noting the CDC no longer tracks breakthrough cases, Eisen asked Fauci directly: “How do we know that [breakthrough cases are] happening to a small proportion and how do we know that they are tending to be mild?”
So, in answer to your very appropriate question about if you get vaccinated and you get infected, is there less of a chance that you will be transmitting it to someone who is unvaccinated or someone who is vulnerable? The chances of doing that are diminished by being vaccinated and even further diminished, according to preliminary data we’ll wait to see the real fundamental core of the data, but it looks like that extra added of protection from a boost will be very valuable.
"If you look at the people who have died from COVID-19, overwhelmingly 90% of them are unvaccinated," says Dr. Fauci. "If you get vaccinated and get a break through infection, you are much less likely of having a severe outcome and much more likely you would be without symptoms." pic.twitter.com/gEFsIjTNWj
Contrary to what Fauci said, the CDC has not said the chances of people transmitting COVID-19 have “diminished” if you are fully vaccinated. In fact, the CDC says that fully vaccinated people can transmit the virus as readily as unvaccinated people. Current CDC information states that viral load of the Delta variant is similar for vaccinated people and unvaccinated people — meaning both are similarly contagious. The agency, however, says vaccinated people are contagious for less time than unvaccinated people.
“For people infected with the Delta variant, similar amounts of viral genetic material have been found among both unvaccinated and fully vaccinated people. However, like prior variants, the amount of viral genetic material may go down faster in fully vaccinated people when compared to unvaccinated people,” the CDC explains. “This means fully vaccinated people will likely spread the virus for less time than unvaccinated people.”
The Biden Regime is targeting political opponents and using the might of the federal government to abolish the First Amendment by classifying dissent as “domestic terrorism.”
US Attorney General Merrick Garland has instructed the FBI to mobilize against parents who oppose Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Covid mandates, citing ‘threats.’
Merrick Garland’s letter to the FBI follows the National School Board Association’s request to classify protests as “domestic terrorism.” Curiously, Garland’s letter didn’t actually specify any credible threats.
“Citing an increase in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against school board members, teachers and workers in our nation’s public schools, today Attorney General Merrick B. Garland directed the FBI and U.S. Attorneys’ Offices to meet in the next 30 days with federal, state, Tribal, territorial and local law enforcement leaders to discuss strategies for addressing this disturbing trend. These sessions will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment and response by law enforcement.” the DOJ’s press release read.
The DOJ will be creating a task force “consisting of representatives from the department’s Criminal Division, National Security Division, Civil Rights Division, the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, the FBI, the Community Relations Service and the Office of Justice Programs, to determine how federal enforcement tools can be used to prosecute these crimes…”
Jessica Berg Wilson’s obituary described the Seattle woman as “an exceptionally healthy and vibrant 37-year-old young mother with no underlying health conditions” who “died unexpectedly on Sep. 7 from COVID-19 Vaccine-Induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia (VITT).”
The obituary on Legacy.com continued: “Jessica fully embraced motherhood, sharing her passion for life with her daughters. Jessica’s motherly commitment was intense, with unwavering determination to nurture her children to be confident, humble, responsible, and to have concern and compassion for others with high morals built on Faith.”
“Jessica’s greatest passion was to be the best mother possible for Bridget and Clara. Nothing would stand in her way to be present in their lives,” it said. “During the last weeks of her life, however, the world turned dark with heavy-handed vaccine mandates. Local and state governments were determined to strip away her right to consult her wisdom and enjoy her freedom.
“She had been vehemently opposed to taking the vaccine, knowing she was in good health and of a young age and thus not at risk for serious illness. In her mind, the known and unknown risks of the unproven vaccine were more of a threat.
“But, slowly, day by day, her freedom to choose was stripped away. Her passion to be actively involved in her children’s education—which included being a Room Mom—was, once again, blocked by government mandate. Ultimately, those who closed doors and separated mothers from their children prevailed.
“It cost Jessica her life. It cost her children the loving embrace of their caring mother. And it cost her husband the sacred love of his devoted wife. It cost God’s Kingdom on earth a very special soul who was just making her love felt in the hearts of so many.”
This very sad story was made even worse by the Twitter Police.
When a Twitter user shared Wilson’s obituary on Friday, adding in the caption that she had not wanted to get vaccinated, the post was slapped with a warning label.
“This Tweet is misleading,” it said. “Find out why health officials consider COVID-19 vaccines safe for most people.”
It provided a link so users could “find out more,” adding, “This Tweet can’t be replied to, shared or liked.”
Here is a screenshot of the Twitter warning label, which apparently was removed after many users complained about it.
This is what popped up if you clicked on the retweet button.
Misleading? On the contrary, it’s very clear. A healthy young woman, who believed that the vaccine posed a greater risk to her health than contracting the virus itself, was forced to comply with the school’s vaccine requirement for visitors if she wanted to be involved in her children’s classrooms. She took the vaccine and then died of a vaccine-induced blood clot. She was one of the unlucky ones.
The author of the tweet was not misleading readers, either. She was simply mourning the loss of a young mother who would not have gotten the vaccine (and therefore likely would not have died) had she not been forced to. Nobody was trying to convince others not to take the vaccine or claiming that it will cause mass deaths.
I am not anti-vax. Vaccines are a potent tool in the fight against COVID. That said, these vaccines do pose a risk to some individuals. Some might have medical reasons for rejecting the vaccine, and others are highly skeptical about taking a vaccine that was developed so quickly. Not everyone needs to be vaccinated.
This is tyranny, and it’s hard to believe this is happening in America.
Elizabeth is a contract writer at The Western Journal. Her articles have appeared on many conservative websites including RedState, Newsmax, The Federalist, Bongino.com, HotAir, Australian National Review, Independent Journal Review, Instapundit, MSN and RealClearPolitics. Please follow Elizabeth on Twitter.@StaufferVaughn
President Joe Biden slammed Republicans for not helping Democrats raise the debt limit on Monday and warned that he can’t promise the country won’t reach the ceiling in a few weeks time.
“Not only are Republicans refusing to do their job, but they’re threatening to use their power to prevent us from doing our job – saving the economy from a catastrophic event. I think, quite frankly, it’s hypocritical, dangerous and disgraceful,”the president said at the White House.
The administration is in the midst of juggling multiple crises – the president’s bipartisan bill and his Build Back Better agenda is stalled amid Democratic infighting, Congress is nearing it’s Oct. 18 deadline to raise the debt ceiling and Panama is warning of another possible influx of migrants heading to the U.S.
WATCH:
Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Democrats should use reconciliation to raise the debt ceiling. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are against this measure, though Schumer at first noted it’s “one option” that’s “on the table.”
“There is no chance, no chance the Republican conference will go out of our way to help Democrats conserve their time and energy so they can resume ramming through partisan socialism as fast as possible,” McConnell previously said.
Biden said that “raising the debt limit is usually a bipartisan undertaking” and said it’s only needed now “in part because of the reckless tax and spending policies under the previous Trump administration.”
“In four years, they incurred nearly $8 trillion – in four years, $8 trillion in additional debt and bills we have to now pay off,” Biden declared. “That’s more than a quarter of the entire debt incurred now outstanding after more than 200 years. And Republicans in Congress raised the debt three times when Donald Trump was president, and each time with Democrats’ support. But now they won’t raise it even though they’re responsible for more than $8 trillion in bills incurred in four years under the previous administration.”
“That’s what we’d be paying off,” he continued. “They won’t raise it even though defaulting on the debt would lead to self-inflicted wound that takes our economy over a cliff and risks jobs and retirement savings, social security benefits, salaries for service members, benefits for veterans and so much more.”
Biden voted against increasing the debt limit in 2006 during former President George W. Bush’s time in office. This vote came amid warnings from that administration that defaulting would negatively affect the economy, The New York Times reported.
“White House officials say Mr. Biden’s vote was symbolic, noting that the ability of Republicans to raise the debt ceiling was never in question,” The Times added.
When pressed by a reporter on the likelihood of reaching the debt limit, Biden issued a warning that he can’t guarantee it won’t happen.
“I can’t believe that will be the end result because the consequence is so dire. I don’t believe it. But can I guarantee it? If I could, I would, but I can’t,” the president said, adding that it’s “up to Mitch McConnell.”
The president noted he had received and read a letter sent by McConnell regarding the debt ceiling. McConnell remained steadfastly opposed to helping with the process and told Biden it’s “time” for him “to engage directly with congressional Democrats on this matter.”
“Your lieutenants in Congress must understand that you do not want your unified Democratic government to sleepwalk toward an avoidable catastrophe when they have had nearly three months’ notice to do their job,” McConnell wrote according to Politico.
McConnell noted Biden’s own past opposing raising the debt limit and declared “your view then is our view now.” Biden told reporters he plans to speak to McConnell regarding the letter.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing to discuss the ongoing federal response to COVID-19 on May 11, 2021, in Washington, D.C. | Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images
Chief White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday that it’s “too soon to tell” whether Americans should gather for Christmas this year, as he spoke about the coronavirus pandemic and what to expect in the coming months.
“It’s just too soon to tell. We have to concentrate on continuing to get those numbers down and not try to jump ahead by weeks or months and say what we’re going to do at a particular time,” Fauci said on CBS’ “Face The Nation,” after anchor Margaret Brennan asked if Americans will be able to gather for Christmas.
“Let’s focus like a laser on continuing to get those cases down. And we can do it by people getting vaccinated. Also, in the situation where boosters are appropriate, to get people boosted, because we know they can help greatly in diminishing infection and diminishing advanced disease.”
Fauci received criticism on social media for his comments.
“It’s bad enough that Fauci says these ridiculous things, but it’s worse that journos keep framing questions to him as if he has any say over whether we get together for Christmas,” Washington Free Beacon reporter Chuck Ross wrote, according to Fox News.
Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that Americans avoid traveling for Christmas. “The best thing for Americans to do in the upcoming holiday season is to stay at home and not travel,” Henry Walke, CDC’s COVID-19 incident manager, said at the time, The Hill reported.
In the United States, there have been over 42.9 million reported COVID-19 cases thus far, with 688,099 deaths counted as being from COVID-19 as of Monday, according to WHO, which also says, as of last Thursday, a total of 398,284,216 vaccine doses had been administered.
An investigative report found that states are counting deaths by suicide, murder and auto accidents as deaths from COVID-19, inflating death totals.
Dr. Fauci told CBS that complacency needs to be avoided. “We need to continue to get those individuals, now 70 million people who are eligible to be vaccinated, vaccinated.”
Fauci supported President Biden’s vaccine mandate, which requires federal employees, contractors and private employers with 100 workers or more to mandate vaccinations or weekly testing for the novel coronavirus.
“I think what the president said about companies greater than 100 individuals is a good thing, and you’re seeing also local groups, universities and businesses are doing that, mandating vaccines in particular,” Fauci said.
However, in August, when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was asked about requiring members of Congress to be vaccinated, she responded, “We cannot require someone to be vaccinated. It’s just not what we can do,” Forbes noted.
The vaccination status of members of Congress, she added, “is a matter of privacy.”
Several governors and members of Congress denounced Biden’s plans.
“I will pursue every legal option available to the state of Georgia to stop this blatantly unlawful overreach by the Biden administration,” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp tweeted.
Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts also responded, saying: “This plan isn’t about public health — this is about government control and taking away personal liberties. Americans, not the federal government, are responsible for taking charge of their personal health.”
Pastor Artur Pawlowski | Courtesy of Artur Pawlowski
Canadian Pastor Artur Pawlowski, who was recently arrested on the airport tarmac upon his return home from a trip to the U.S., has issued a warning to Americans: “You’re next.”
The Canada Border Services Agency arrested the pastor last week for two outstanding warrants — one for not wearing a face mask and another for holding a church service in June. He has an upcoming court hearing on Oct. 13, where a judge will decide whether he’ll be sentenced to 21 days in jail for “contempt of court” for holding worship services in violation of lockdown restrictions.
“If they came for me, be sure of it, they’re coming for you as well,” Pawlowski, who serves as pastor of Street Church and Cave of Adullam Church in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, told Fox News in an interview.
“What they’re doing today is identical to what I remember growing up,” added Pawlowski, comparing the measures taken by law enforcement officials to enforce COVID-19 restrictions to the actions taken by authorities in his native Poland when it was under communist rule.
“I was handcuffed like a common criminal, like a terrorist,” he said, talking about his previous arrest in May. “They wanted to break me. They wanted to show the whole world, ‘You see what we do to those who dare to speak against our tyranny? If you will follow … you’re next.’”
Pawlowski was born in Poland and lived under Soviet rule during part of his childhood.
A video posted on YouTube in May showed that Calgary Police Service sent at least five police vehicles to arrest him and his brother, Dawid Pawlowski, from on the street. The brothers knelt on the road and refused to walk on their own during the arrest. A voice can be heard telling the officers, “Shame on you guys, this is not communist China. Don’t you have family and kids? Whatever happened to ‘Canada, God keep our land glorious and free?’”
Artur Pawlowski previously shared a video documenting police visiting his church in April. In that video, Pawlowski can be seen calmly greeting the officials at the front door. The public health officer presented Pawlowski with a warrant after previously interrupting worship services days earlier during the Holy Week. As he videotaped the encounter, one of the police officers accompanying the public health officer told Pawlowski, “you don’t have to get into her personal space,” as he attempted to zoom his phone in on the paperwork.
“You’re in my personal space,” Pawlowski responded.
He referred to the officials as “brown shirts” and “Nazi Gestapo communist fascists.”
Pawlowski told The Christian Post in June that police frequently monitored his church services to make sure he was abiding by coronavirus restrictions and social distancing guidelines. He said the intrusions weren’t necessary because he streamed the church services online. The livestreams illustrated that “I was not hiding the fact that we are not following those restrictions.”
As law enforcement repeatedly descended on his church services, “the mosques were fully operational.” He added that “no one harassed them, no one interfered with them.”
“Not one Imam was being harassed or intimidated. And to this day, there’s not one Imam or one Muslim that has a ticket, even though we have video evidence and pictures [of] them gathering … through the whole Ramadan by the thousands,” he said.
Pawlowski’s YouTube channel includes a video of a gathering of thousands of Muslims that took place on the last day of Ramadan, the holiest month in the Muslim calendar, which police allowed without interruption. He estimated that “about 2,000 people, maybe more, were there.”
In March of 2020, Pawlowski was informed that his church, which ministers to the homeless and less fortunate in Calgary, would have to “shut down and stop taking care of the poor.” He refused to obey that order, however, concluding that by issuing “orders to stop feeding them [and] giving them necessities of life, they were sentencing them to death. [And] some of them did die,” he said.
At the time, Pawlowski sent a plea to the ministers in Alberta asking them for an exemption from COVID-19 restrictions, but they refused to grant an exemption and ordered him to shut down.
The Colosseum is lit up in red to draw attention to the persecution of Christians around the world in Rome, Italy, February 24, 2018. | Reuters/Remo Casilli
Government restrictions on religious practice remained high during the year before the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, according to a recent report by the Pew Research Center. Pew released findings from its 12th annual study on global religious persecution Thursday, analyzing 198 countries during 2019, the most recent year with data available.
When it came to public policy and laws that infringed on religious practices, 2019 had a similar rate of intolerance to 2018, which was noted as a year with a high rate of government-imposed restrictions. Pew found that 57 countries had “high” or “very high” restrictions on religious practice, which was slightly higher than 2018’s 56 countries that reported the same and the highest rate since 2012, which also reported 57 countries. It was also a considerable increase from 2014, when 47 countries were listed as having “high” or “very high” government restrictions on religious belief and practice.
“The analysis shows that government restrictions involving religion, which in 2018 had reached the highest point since the start of the study, remained at a similar level in 2019,” explained Pew.
“The global median score on the Government Restrictions Index (GRI), a 10-point index based on 20 indicators, held steady at 2.9. This score has risen markedly since 2007, the first year of the study, when it was 1.8.”
While government restrictions across the world remained high in 2019, the level of social hostilities toward religion and religious terrorism both saw a decline compared to earlier years. Pew found that 43 countries were found to have “high” or “very high” social hostilities regarding religion, which was lower than the 53 countries reporting the same in 2018 and well below the 65 countries reporting the same in 2012. Additionally, there was a decline reported in the number of countries experiencing “religion-related terrorism,” defined as including “deaths, physical abuse, displacement, detentions, destruction of property, and fundraising and recruitment by terrorist groups.”
“In 2019, 49 countries experienced at least one of these types of religion-related terrorism, a record low for the study. That was down from 64 countries in 2018, and from a record high of 82 countries in 2014,” continued Pew.
“Among the reasons for the decline in the study’s terrorism measures is that ISIS subsequently lost control of a large swath of territory in Iraq and Syria,” The report added.
In 2017, the Trump administration declared that the U.S.-led coalition had defeated the Islamic State terror group in Iraq and seized the de facto capital of its self-declared caliphate in Raqqa, Syria. On Dec. 9 of that same year, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared that the country is now “fully liberated” from ISIS.
Since 2014, it’s believed that over 40,000 people from more than 110 countries had traveled to Iraq and Syria to join ISIS’ caliphate. In the U.K., it was estimated that more British Muslims were fighting for IS than served in its armed forces. Although U.S.-led troops killed tens of thousands of jihadis, insurgents still remain in parts of the country and ISIS terror cells are operating worldwide.
The Pew report added that “the number of violent attacks perpetrated by the group declined in Iraq in 2019, according to the Global Terrorism Database.’
“Still, ISIS’ multinational network of organizations remained active. Groups pledging allegiance to ISIS carried out bombings in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, 2019, killing more than 250 people and injuring approximately 500 others at churches and hotels,” Pew added.
Pew noted that the numbers reported in this study came before the 2020 government lockdowns that took place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which often involved controversial measures believed by many to be in violation of civil liberties, including freedom of religion. There has been extensive litigation in the United States aimed at state-level measures that critics claimed unlawfully treated houses of worship worse than comparable non-religious businesses. In the decision Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that pandemic restrictions could not treat churches worse than secular entities.
“ Members of this Court are not public health experts, and we should respect the judgment of those with special expertise and responsibility in this area. But even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten,” read the majority opinion.
“The restrictions at issue here, by effectively barring many from attending religious services, strike at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) grilled Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra during a congressional hearing on Thursday over the Biden administration’s seeming refusal to recognize natural immunity against COVID-19. Paul began the tense exchange, which happened during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing, by asking Becerra whether he was aware of an Israeli study that found natural immunity provided significantly stronger protection than the COVID-19 vaccine.
When Becerra admitted he is “not familiar with that study,”Paul tore into the secretary.
“I think you might want to be if you’re going to travel the country insulting the millions of Americans, including NBA star Jonathan Isaac, who had COVID, [and] recovered — look at a study with 2.5 million people, and say, ‘Well, you know what, I should make the decision,'” Paul said. “Instead, you’ve called Jonathan Isaac and others, myself included, flat-earthers. We find that very insulting, it goes against the science.”
“Are you a doctor or a medical doctor?” Paul pressed.
Becerra, in fact, is not a medical doctor or public health expert. He spent three decades in politics before joining President Joe Biden’s Cabinet this year. Becerra dodged the direct question, telling Paul that he has “worked over 30 years on health policy.”
Paul continued:
You’re not a medical doctor. Do you have a science degree? And yet you travel the country, calling people flat-earthers, who have had COVID, looked at studies of millions of people, and made their own personal decision that their immunity they naturally acquired is sufficient but you presume somehow to tell over 100 million Americans who survived COVID that we have no right to determine our own medical care. You alone are on high and you’ve made these decisions, a lawyer with no scientific background, no medical degree. This is an arrogance coupled with an authoritarianism that is unseemly and un-American.
You, sir, are the one ignoring the science. The vast preponderance of scientific studies, dozens and dozens, show robust, long-lasting immunity after COVID infection. Even the CDC does not recommend measles vaccine if you have measles immunity. The same was true for smallpox. But you ignore history and science to shame the flat-earthers, as you call them. You should be ashamed of yourself and apologize to the American people for being dishonest about naturally acquired immunity.
If the Biden administration wants to increase vaccination rates, then Paul told Becerra that officials must stop “lying to people about naturally acquired immunity.”
“Quit lording it over people, acting as if these people are deplorable and unwashed. Try persuasion instead of government cudgels. Try humility instead of arrogance. Try freedom instead of coercion,” Paul said. “Most of all, try understanding there is no more basic medical right than deciding what we inject into our bodies.”
“Today, after hearing that millions of people in a study prove — show without a doubt that there is a great deal of immunity from getting it naturally — do you want to apologize to the 100 million Americans who suffered through COVID, survived, have immunity, and yet you want to hold them down and vaccinate them?” Paul continued. “Do you want to apologize for calling those people flat-earthers?”
In response, Becerra did not address any of Paul’s points, but claimed the HHS is following “facts” and “the science.“
Paul responded by telling Becerra the HHS is not following the science, and explained he is not arguing against the COVID vaccine, but rather government mandates for people who have naturally acquired immunity.
“You are just ignoring [sciene] because you want submission. You just want everybody to submit to your will, do as you’re told, despite the evidence, the large body of scientific evidence that says naturally acquired immunity does work, is an important part of how we’re going to recover from this,” Paul said.
Dr. Anthony Fauci infamously said last month he cannot explain why Americans with naturally acquired immunity against COVID-19 need the vaccine.
Alarm bells should be going off in the White House after a new poll showed that President Joe Biden is hemorrhaging support among a voter demographic critical to winning presidential elections. The Associated Press-NORC poll shows that Biden’s approval rating sits at 50% while his disapproval rating stands at 49%. In this particular poll, Biden’s approval has tanked nearly 10 points since July when the same survey found Biden’s approval rating to be 59%.But the real story is how poorly Biden is viewed by independent voters, the demographic critical to winning the White House.
Since July, Biden has hemorrhaged more than 20 points among independent voters; only 38% of independents now approve of Biden, according to the poll, whereas 62% approved of him just two months ago. Biden even lost seven points among Democrats, down to 85% approval from 92% in July.
Among black Americans, Biden’s support has cratered from 86% to 64% in just two months. The AP tried to soften the blow by characterizing the massive decrease as Biden’s support among black Americans having “dipped somewhat.”
In its story covering the bad news for Biden, the AP attempted to draw blame toward former President Donald Trump:
In follow-up interviews, some of those who had mixed feelings about Biden’s performance still saw him as preferable to former President Donald Trump. They said that Biden was dealing with a pandemic that began under the former president, an Afghanistan withdrawal negotiated on Trump’s behalf and an economy that tilted in favor of corporations and the wealthy because of Trump’s tax cuts.
“Trump had a lot to do with what’s going on now,” said Acarla Strickland, 41, a health care worker from Atlanta who voted for Biden yet now feels lukewarm about him.
However, Trump cannot be blamed for Biden’s self-inflicted wounds. Not only is Biden facing massive legislative battles on Capitol Hill that are not going in his favor, but the COVID-19 pandemic has ranged on under his leadership, as has the border crisis, which has generated bipartisan blame. Biden also presided over the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, with resulted in more American casualties.
Not only is support for Biden cratering, but another poll shows his promise to unify America is becoming a foregone possibility. The poll — conducted by the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia in partnership with Project Home Fire — discovered that 41% of Biden supporters and 52% of Trump supporters agree the United States should be split between Republican-controlled states and Democratic-controlled states.
Dr. Anthony Fauci declared last week that people hesitant to receive the COVID-19 vaccine should “give up” their individual freedoms “for the greater good of society.”
After delivering a lecture via livestream at McGill University, which is located in Montreal, Fauci fielded several questions. One question asked Fauci how to approach “the value of individual freedom within the context of this global pandemic.”
First, Fauci took the opportunity to bash Fox News and other right-leaning media outlets. Then, he bashed individual freedom, framing vaccination as one’s responsibility toward others.
“I think what people have to appreciate, that indeed you do have personal liberties for yourself and you should be in control of that,” Fauci began. “But you are a member of society, and as a member of society, reaping all of the benefits of being a member of society, you have a responsibility to society.”
“I think each of us, particularly in the context of a pandemic that’s killing millions of people, you have got to look at it and say, ‘There comes a time when you do have to give up what you consider your individual right of making your own decision for the greater good of society,'” he explained.
“There is no doubt that that’s the case,” Fauci added.
The importance of vaccination, Fauci later explained, is that unvaccinated people “inadvertently” and “innocently” transmit COVID-19 to people who are vulnerable to hospitalization or death. He compared living unvaccinated to a person recklessly driving 95 mph on a highway.
“If I get hurt, that’s my problem. No! It’s somebody who you might kill’s problem, also,” Fauci said.
Earlier in the interview, Fauci said people opposed to the vaccine need to be convinced to get vaccinated by a “trusted messenger,” suggesting clergymen, family members, and sports figures.
During an interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” Sunday, Fauci said “it’s just too soon to tell” whether Americans should gather together for the Christmas holiday.
“We’ve just got to concentrating on continuing to get those numbers down and not try to jump ahead by weeks or months and say what we’re going to do at a particular time,” Fauci said.
In that same interview, Fauci praised California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who last week announced all California students age 12 or older will be required to get vaccinated. Fauci implied every state should follow Newsom’s lead.
“People need to realize that having a vaccine requirement for schools is not a new, novel thing that is very peculiar or specific to COVID-19. We’ve been doing this for decades,” Fauci said. “My own children could not have gone to school if they had not gotten vaccinated with the measles, mumps and rubella. So when we see pushback on that, it’s as if this never happened before. It’s actually ongoing with other vaccines. So, let’s do it with a virus that’s very, very serious.”
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg are the Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt of rap music. They’re pornographers, all four of them. Hefner and Flynt dominated the visual form of pornography. Dre and Snoop earned fame and fortune dominating lyrical pornography. You’ll read that as a harsh rebuke of the Four Horsemen of Smut. But I am not a hypocrite.
I wrote for Playboy magazine. In June 2008, my name appeared on its cover alongside a lovely photo of a model, Jayde Nicole. Years ago, I attended two parties at Hefner’s mansion. I’ve socialized with women who graced the magazine’s pages.
Dr. Dre is the only celebrity who has made me feel starstruck. His mastery of music and beat amazes me. In the 1990s, I shook his hand at a Mike Tyson fight and mumbled a few words signifying astonishment and admiration.
I don’t have a problem with Dre, Snoop, Hef, or Flynt. At one time, I adored and supported their work. Even today, in all honesty, I’d have to categorize their art as an occasional guilty pleasure, sins of solitude and seclusion.
I do have a problem with Dre and Snoop performing at halftime of the Super Bowl. Pornography and pornographers are unworthy of America’s biggest stage.
Yesterday, the NFL announced that Dre, Snoop, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, and R&B singer Mary J. Blige will perform at halftime of Super Bowl LVI. The announcement was greeted as a historic moment of progress, a triumphant landmark in black culture. The country’s strongest pop culture force — the NFL, the No. 1 TV show on five different networks — wrapped its arms around commercial hip-hop music. The conservative and previously traditional NFL embraced the musical genre that defines the liberal NBA.
Free at last, free at last, thank Sodom and Gomorrah, the NFL will let lyrical pornography blast!
We can only hope that censors won’t stop Dre, Snoop, Slim Shady, and Kendrick from repeatedly shouting n***a, bitch, hoe, and motherf***a in front of 100 million Americans. Or maybe a Black Lives Matter flag will fly as Dre brags about never hesitating to put a n***a on his back as gunfire blares in the background.
This is not progress. This is not a great moment in American history, NFL history, or black history. The Super Bowl halftime will be a satanic ritual, a celebration of America’s moral decay.
I’m not saying that as an outsider, as someone with a severe disdain for hip-hop music. I’m saying it as an insider. I’m saying it because I know the music quite well. I own virtually every song Dr. Dre ever produced. I know Snoop’s catalogue of music nearly as well. The same goes for Eminem. It’s a musical collection of old Playboy and Hustler magazines.
It’s hedonism, materialism, immorality, and violence in rhyme form set to music. It’s the soundtrack for a movie about Babylon.
How did this happen? How did a country founded in Judeo-Christian values come to legitimize pornography and allow pornographers to sit atop our cultural throne?
Hefner and Flynt never occupied the space Dre, Snoop, and Jay Z share. Despite their wealth, Hefner and Flynt remained outsiders. They weren’t public friends with presidents (Jay Z and Barack Obama). They weren’t center stage at major mainstream cultural events. They were kept in their lane. They were pornographers, guilty pleasures to be experienced in the shadows.
Hefner and Flynt did not have the right complexion for the connection white liberals have afforded black rappers.
The left has cleverly established race as America’s new religion of choice, replacing Christianity. Black is the highest denomination of the left’s race religion. Their doctrine argues that bowing to blackness is a righteous and responsible response to America’s history of racism.
Anything framed as black cannot be chastised, criticized, or shunned. To do so would be blasphemous and racist. Through hip-hop, pornography has been wrapped in black packaging. Through hip-hop, a self-destructive culture has been wrapped in black packaging.
Music that promotes the degradation and exploitation of black people has been framed as the salvation and glorification of black people.
No one can safely challenge this despicable orthodoxy. I watched a white female host on the NFL Network celebrate alongside Michael Irvin the announcement that Dre and Snoop would host the Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime.
Has she heard Snoop rap that “bitches ain’t shit but hoes and tricks/lick on these nuts and suck the dick”? Does she remember Dre’s lyrics on the N.W.A. song “One Less Bitch”?
We’re in the MeToo era and everyone is going to catch amnesia about Dr. Dre’s violent assault on Dee Barnes in the 1990s?
That’s the power of the race religion. Dr. Dre is black. His history of violence toward women is irrelevant. I’m all about forgiveness and people moving past their mistakes. But Dre’s 2015 album “Compton” featured Eminem rapping about making the women he rapes orgasm.
The race religion is killing America. The Alphabet Mafia — BLM-LGBTQ-CRT — has wrapped every issue in black packaging. Earlier this week, Playboy magazine promoted a bunny outfit using a young black man as the model. The gay and transgender issues have been framed as a black issue.
We’re being used to promote causes that defy God and the principles taught in the Bible.
But you go right ahead and celebrate Dre and Snoop performing at halftime of the Super Bowl. Keep being a useful idiot in the race religion.
Seldom, if ever, have I been more dejected at having been proven right about my prediction for over three decades now about the catastrophic impact the spiritual and emotional cancer of hard-core internet pornography would have on all levels of our culture.
Imagine my surprise when I began to read my copy of TheNew York Times on September 25, 2021 (I should confess I have been reading TheNew York Times every day since age 18. Considering how far the former “paper of record” for the country has fallen from its former glory, it is more of an addiction than a search for knowledge).
Ms. Goldberg reports what I suspect was a very surprising development to her. She reports philosopher Amia Srinivasan’s experience while teaching students at the University of Oxford about “second-wave anti-porn activism.” Ms. Srinivasan assumed that her Oxford students (late millennials and early Gen Z’ers, who have been immersed in a porn-saturated culture, as were their parents, would “find the anti-porn position prudish and passé.”
On the contrary, they seemed to be channeling the spirit of Andrea Dworkin in their responses. Responding to the massive and impassioned response of her students, Ms. Srinivasan said, “The warnings of the anti-porn feminists seem to have been belatedly realized.” Somewhere Ms. Dworkin and her supporters are saying, “I told you so.”
The responses of the Oxford students are revelatory. They overwhelmingly affirmed the belief that porn bears “responsibility for the objectification of women,” the “marginalization of women,” and “sex and violence against women.” One young man in the Oxford class expressed doubt about whether “sex that was ‘loving and mutual’ was even possible.”
How indescribably sad, and yet how predictable. When one looks at descriptions of the content of online porn (I would not advise anyone to view the actual product—you don’t want those images burned into your consciousness), it is impossible not to see it as grotesquely anti-woman.
Real feminists who understand what hard-core porn really is would picket every “adult” bookstore and porn outlet in the country if they had the courage of their convictions. And women are not the only victims. The average age of first exposure to hard-core porn for American males has dropped from 17 to 11 with the advent of the internet. Now, every home in America is just one of two clicks way away from having material that was previously confined to the worst areas of the worst cities in America ooze up into their hearts and minds through the internet.
Hard-core internet pornography is analogous to an electronic river of malignant and toxic emotional slime running just under the surface waiting to be uploaded into the hearts and minds of Americans, young and old alike.
While pornography does exploit and objectify women, it also victimizes young men. Millions of these boys and young men are receiving their sex miseducation from internet porn. Having been exposed and too often addicted to this twisted view of human sexuality, they are daily having their ability to become the husbands and fathers they desire to be stunted, twisted, and destroyed.
Hard-core internet pornography has poisoned the basic building block of human relationships, the man-woman interaction that produces marriage and families. When I hear the responses of Ms. Srinivasan’s Oxford students, my heart breaks for both the male and female students as they testify to how pornography has shaped their interaction with each other.
Those of us who came of age before the tsunami of hard-core internet porn engulfed us have a difficult time understanding the world which this has created for millennials and Gen Z’ers. I continue to be haunted by a story related to me by a women’s dean at a prominent liberal arts college. She expressed to me how painful it was to have a steady stream of young women come for counseling with the lament that they felt extremely pressured to have casual sex and that they just “wanted sex to mean something”! How unspeakably sad.
I believe that internet porn is the Madison Avenue ad campaign that promotes sexual immorality and creates the market for sexual slavery. I believe that Satan has figured out that the most powerful weapon in his arsenal in his incessant attempts to degrade and defile humanity is hard-core internet pornography.
One measure of the level of his success is that vulgar and leud terms for sexual intercourse are now routinely used to describe acts of hostility and aggression and exploitation. The devil has taken the relationship that God intended to be the most giving and loving relationship between husband and wife and has deformed it into synonyms for the exact opposite.
It is well past time for Christians of all denominational persuasions to covenant together to seek to reclaim God’s gift of gender and sex and to redeem them for the purpose for which God gifted them—to make of the two one flesh, a knowing and a being known beyond the human capacity of speed to describe.
Let us be about our Heavenly Father’s business.
Dr. Richard Land, BA (Princeton, magna cum laude); D.Phil. (Oxford); Th.M (New Orleans Seminary). Dr. Land served as President of Southern Evangelical Seminary from July 2013 until July 2021. Upon his retirement, he was honored as President Emeritus and he continues to serve as an Adjunct Professor of Theology & Ethics. Dr. Land previously served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1988-2013) where he was also honored as President Emeritus upon his retirement. Dr. Land has also served as an Executive Editor and columnist for The Christian Post since 2011.
Dr. Land explores many timely and critical topics in his daily radio feature, “Bringing Every Thought Captive,” and in his weekly column for CP.
Nebraska has become the first state saying that they will not comply with the Biden administrations plan to allow the IRS to view any transactions a person makes a transaction over $600.
Nebraska State Treasurer John Murante said that they will not comply and if the administration sues he will take it all the way to the Supreme Court. Murante, along with the treasurers and auditors for 24 other states, recently sent President Joe Biden a letter opposing the proposed plan.
Murante hopes other states will join Nebraska and stand against this massive invasion of privacy.
“This could lead to a tremendous invasion of privacy the likes of which our country has never seen. Millions of law-abiding Americans would suddenly have their bank accounts opened to federal investigators for no more reason than buying a refrigerator. This is simply unconscionable. To make matters worse, under this proposal, saving for college could put an American family on the IRS’s radar,” Murante said in a statement.
“I don’t typically engage in legislation that’s going through the Congress, but on an issue like this, it’s something that myself and many of my colleagues across the country believe that we have to stand up and fight,” Murante said.
Cassandra Fairbanks is a former leftist who came out in support of Donald Trump in 2016. She has been published in the International Business Times, RT, Sputnik, The Independent and countless other publications.
Republican senators warned this week that the U.S. House of Representatives’ $3.5 trillion budget bill championed by congressional Democrats creates “harmful penalties for marriage”that will make families more dependent on the federal government.
In a Thursday letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, 35 Republican senators, led by Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, expressed their concerns about the package.
“We were disappointed to learn that in some instances the House of Representatives’ reconciliation bill creates harmful penalties for marriage,” they wrote. “Discouraging marriage is not in our country’s best interest and sends the wrong message to our families.”
In August, the House passed a $3.5 trillion budget resolution that expands social safety net programs, including childcare, free community college, paid leave and programs that combat climate change. Meanwhile, the Senate passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package. On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., delayed voting on the Senate’s $1.2 trillion even though moderates sought a vote. President Joe Biden signed a continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown and give Congress nine more weeks to negotiate 2022 appropriations bills.
The Republican senators defined a marriage penalty as “when a household’s overall tax bill increases due to a couple marrying and filing taxes jointly.” They also mentioned that federal programs such as Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Section 8 housing reduce or eliminate benefits when a couple gets married.
“Federal policy should be designed to foster strong marriages, which are the foundation of strong families and strong communities,” the letter added. “Unfortunately, despite its original rollout as part of the ‘American Families Plan,’ the current draft of the reconciliation bill takes an existing marriage penalty in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and makes it significantly worse.”
The senators provided an example of how the reconciliation bill penalizes married couples.
“For example, a couple in 2019 with two children where one parent earns $12,000 and the other $30,000 could pay $1,578 more in taxes — or nearly 4% of their yearly earnings,” the senators argued.
“The reconciliation bill could make the same family significantly worse off. It could nearly double the marriage penalty, costing the same parents $2,713 if they choose to marry.”
The lawmakers concluded that because “marriage is a vital social good,” it is “misguided and unfair for the government to build bigger barriers for couples to marry.”
The letter comes as the marriage rate in the United States has hit a new low. According to the Institute for Family Studies, 33 out of every 1,000 unmarried adults in 2019 got married. By contrast, that figure stood at 35 out of 1,000 in 2010 and a much higher 86 per 1,000 in 1970.
Republicans have consistently argued that federal programs have had an impact on the marriage rate. Last year, Republicans on the U.S. Senate Joint Economic Committee published a report titled “The Demise of the Happy Two-Parent Home,” which attributes the decline in marriages to the increased availability and use of federal welfare programs.
“Public ‘anti-poverty’ programs often exacerbated the problem of family instability by making single parenthood a more viable option and by discouraging marriage among those receiving benefits,” the report stated. “A safety net marginally reduces the costs of single parenthood, nonmarital childbearing, and divorce. It also can create a significant tax on marriage because the addition of a spouse with income typically reduces safety net benefits, and if he has only modest earnings or unsteady employment, the trade-off may not be worthwhile.”
The report argued that through the safety net, “a single mother can achieve about two-thirds of the standard of living she could get from marrying a sole breadwinner at that compensation level.”
“The safety net would put her about one-third higher, with no additional income, than the 10th percentile of male compensation,” the report reads.
Additionally, the report explained that “children raised by married parents do better on an array of outcomes.” Specifically, they have “stronger relationships with their parents, particularly with their fathers,” are “much less likely to experience physical, emotional, or sexual abuse” or “engage in delinquent behavior,” have “better health … and exhibit less aggression.”
Increased educational attainment and higher wages as adults, and a lower likelihood of living in poverty were also cited as benefits enjoyed by children of married couples.
The report provided empirical evidence attempting to demonstrate that the expansion of the social safety net in the 1960s led to a drop in the number of married people and the number of children born to unwed parents. Data found that the share of married American women dropped from 71% in 1962 to 42% in 2019. The percentage of children born to unmarried mothers rose from 5% in 1960 to 40% in 2019.
While the share of American children living in two-parent households has declined dramatically since the 1960s, one recent study from the Institute for Family Studies showed that the phenomenon of increased illegitimacy may have begun to reverse itself. The study found that in 2020, 70.4% of children under 18 lived with both parents, a slight increase from 69.1% in 2000 and 69.4% in 2010. At the same time, the percentage of American children residing in two-parent households remains far below the 87.7% recorded in 1960.
The Democratic mayor of a Texas town along the U.S.-Mexico border is slamming President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party over their failure to secure the border, calling the deteriorating situation “an embarrassment for us as a country.”
In a recent conversation with the Washington Free Beacon, Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz charged his own political party with largely ignoring the crisis and abandoning the local border communities in favor of other interest groups. With tens of thousands of migrants pouring into the country every month — often times bringing disease — the mayor even reluctantly acknowledged that things were much better for border communities like his under former President Donald Trump.
“We need to truly secure the border,” Saenz told the Free Beacon. “It was working under Trump, call it whatever you want to call it, but it was working.”
Yet instead of addressing the situation head-on, Democrats have opted to put forward trillions of dollars in federal spending that does little to bolster physical border security or support Customs and Border Protection operations. Meanwhile, the brunt of the migrant influx burden is being borne on border towns.
“We’re spending billions of dollars on alternative things but immigration isn’t given priority. Border Patrol isn’t being funded to the extent that Border Patrol has to be funded,” Saenz said. “Their workload has increased to three times or four, and yet they’re not funded. So, that kind of leads me to think the Democrats have the same mentality [toward the Border Patrol] as defunding law enforcement, generally.
“The key, ultimately, is removing the incentive to come to the border and file for asylum,” the mayor argued, adding that while he believes in the asylum process, it needs to be reformed.
To prevent influxes of migrants showing up at the border and overwhelming U.S. immigration enforcement, Saenz suggests asylum-seekers be processed virtually from their country of origin.
According to the Free Beacon, the border crisis has caused Saenz to rethink his own political perspective:
The mayor in 2015 told then-candidate Donald Trump that a large wall across the southern border was not practical. He told NPR in 2019 that Trump’s proposal to order the Pentagon to construct fencing in Laredo would be less effective than the “virtual wall” backed by Biden. But, Saenz says, Laredo residents are growing tired of empty promises from Democrats, particularly as the city’s fire department is forced to serve as shuttle service for migrants who get dropped off by charities and federal agencies. Saenz has not heard from the Biden administration on any plans for a “virtual wall” or any other measure to stem the tide of illegal immigrants.
“If Biden doesn’t come out with implementing a virtual wall [soon], people here will be begging for a wall, a physical structure, simply because of his lack of attention to the border and especially the size of these surges,” Saenz predicted.
He acknowledged that a physical wall would “deter or at least buy time, so to speak, for law enforcement.”
“It’s really an embarrassment for us as a country now,” he added of the ongoing crisis. “You know we can do so much better.”
The U.S. Department of Defense on Thursday released its calendar year 2020 Annual Suicide Report which revealed the tragic news that 580 service members took their own lives last year.
“The findings are troubling. Suicide rates among our service members and military families are still too high, and the trends are not going in the right direction,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement.
“This is a paramount challenge for our Department. We must redouble our efforts to provide all of our people with the care and the resources they need, to reduce stigmas and barriers to care, and to ensure that our community uses simple safety measures and precautions to reduce the risk of future tragedies,” he said.
According to the Associated Press and other outlets, the 580 suicides in 2020 mark an increase from 504 the previous year, though the Defense Departent’s report for calendar year 2019 indicates that 498 service members died from suicide that year.
“While suicide rates are not going in the desired direction, the Department did not see a statistical change in suicide rates between CY 2020 and CY 2019 or CY 2018 that would indicate a COVID-19-related increase,” according to a news release.
The suicides include 384 among the Active Component, 77 among the Reserve, and 119 among the National Guard.
“Active Component: The suicide rate statistically increased from CY 2015 to CY 2020 (i.e., 20.3 to 28.7 suicides per 100,000 Service members),” the report stated. “A rise in the rate of suicide deaths across all Services was observed. In the near-term, the CY 2020 suicide rate was statistically comparable to both CY 2019 and CY 2018.”
“How can I get hold of ivermectin in case I get sick?” is probably the most common email inquiry I receive daily. It’s a shame we didn’t make this safe, Nobel prize-winning drug as available as we do needles in San Francisco for the injection of dangerous drugs. Perhaps we can ask the Mexican cartels to get into ivermectin production.
In all seriousness, given the data behind ivermectin, it is shocking how our government refuses to even embark on a study. In the meantime, insurers refuse to cover it and pharmacists refuse to dispense it — and that’s if you can get hold of a doctor willing to prescribe it.
Until now, despite dozens of studies and doctors all around the world with no financial gain at stake vouching for its efficacy, our government has balked at ivermectin because, it claims, the studies are too small. Well, the Argentinian Provincial Ministry of Health just published the results of a retrospective study of a trial of over 21,000 participants. The results were unmistakable among those participants above age 40, all non-vaccinated. Overall, when adjusting for confounding factors like less healthy people joining the ivermectin group, those in the ivermectin group had a 66% lower ICU admission rate and a 55% lower mortality rate than those in the control group. Anyone in the ivermectin group was treated with a dose of 0.6mg per kg of weight one time a day for five days.
This is just the latest study, but the key is to look at the preponderance of the evidence. A meta-analysis posted earlier this week of 65 total studies netted the following pooled results.
As the author notes, while many of the studies are small sample sizes, taken together, “The probability that an ineffective treatment generated results as positive as the 65 studies is estimated to be 1 in 403 billion.”
So many people, including actor Louis Gossett Jr., are human testimonies to ivermectin being more than a theoretical statistical benefit. They are alive today, even after having used it at a late stage. The war on ivermectin and the embargo against early treatment are truly a crime against humanity.
Ultimately, it’s important to keep in mind that this has never been about any one treatment. Imagine if along with making ivermectin cheap and available;
exercise more rather than gaining a ton of weight over the pandemic.
Imagine if our government had encouraged doctors to treat this early and often with a cocktail of several drugs plus made the monoclonal antibodies available for everyone the minute they came out, over one year ago,
Well, then the reduction in mortality would have been closer to 100%.
Vitamin D alone could have saved anyone who has gotten seriously ill recently, a year and a half after our government should have been encouraging people to take high-dose supplements. There are now at least 113 studies vouching for the correlation between high vitamin D levels and positive outcomes. The results of a recent systematic review and meta-analysis of eight vitamin D studies showed that the risk of COVID mortality for people with D levels at 50 ng/ml is close to zero.
Then, of course, there is exercise and obesity. Weight is such a strong factor in determining risk of serious illness that BMI is now being used as a way of vetting people for eligibility for the monoclonal antibodies. Yet our government encouraged a lifestyle that caused obesity to skyrocket. The rates have gone up so quickly that, according to the latest CDC data, 16 states now have obesity rates of 35% or higher, an increase of four states in just one year.
Rather than encouraging people, in addition to seeking early COVID treatment, to pound vitamins, exercise, and eat right — which would induce a cascading confluence of benefits in every other area of health and wellness — they placed all of their eggs in the vaccine basket. Now what do they have to offer those people getting infected despite taking on so much known and unknown risk from the shots?
Finally, more than any one drug or therapeutic, it’s about the art of practicing medicine, which involves having a competent doctor prescribe the right course of action for the right patient for the given symptoms at the right time. Every primary care doctor should have been encouraged, rather than discouraged, to treat this virus early with their respective patient workloads. Each drug alone might have a 30%-60% efficacy rate, but a good doctor putting it all together achieves close to 100% success.
Drs. Brian Tyson and George Fareed posted a summary of their patient outcomes after treating thousands of COVID patients in Imperial County, California, since last March. Out of 6,000 patients they treated, they never lost a patient who came to them within the first week of symptoms. What Dr. Tyson explains is so simple, yet eloquent:
“We started seeing inflammation, so we used anti-inflammatories,” Dr. Tyson explains. “We saw blood clots, so we used anti-coagulants. We saw patients having trouble breathing, so we used asthma medications. … It wasn’t just one drug. It was the art of what we see and how those patients responded to what we gave them.” As Tyson notes, if you are not in favor of early treatment, that’s fine, but why do you have to attack others who try to treat the virus? “If I’m wrong, people are still going to die,” asserted Tyson. “But if I’m right, how many thousands of lives would have been saved?”
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Reports have surfaced questioning the validity of the recent Arizona election audit report. First and foremost, there seems to be critical things removed or omitted from the final Executive Summary. Beyond unanswered questions within that report, there are even more alarming facts arising.
The cyber research company Cyber Ninjas was entrusted with the job of auditing 2020 election ballots in Maricopa County, Arizona. They found issues with the election, and an original draft indicated they felt the final results should not be certified. However, another huge problem has been discovered. Cyber Ninjas was unable to identify and authenticate over 80,000 voter registrations. The whole process bleeds of corruption. We have to go back over 15 years to begin digging at the root cause of this problem.
In 2004, Arizona passed a voting registration law that required proof of U.S. citizenship to vote. Arizona Prop 200 seemed to implement safeguards to ensure election integrity. That didn’t stop Democrats from finding a way to cheat. The Democrat Party started to use a federal voter registration form that did not require proof of U.S. citizenship. This fit perfectly into the liberal left’s plan to allow millions of illegal immigrants to vote in a national U.S. election. It’s unconstitutional and blatant fraud.
In 2013, the United States Supreme Court backed the Democrat’s ploy. However, these registrations could only be applied to elections for President or Congress. Democrats didn’t care. That was all they wanted at this stage of the game. The voters are designated as “Federal Only”, but there is no process to ensure that these registrations are authentic U.S. citizens. It doesn’t take a degree in rocket science to figure out exactly what the Democrats were up to here. They found a way to use a federal election loophole to garner up thousands of illegal votes in federal elections. Back in March 2017, the Maricopa Recorder held thousands of unprocessed registrations. They lacked the required documentation. What happened to these registrations?
When Democrat activist Adrian Fontes snaked his way into the head position at the recorder’s office, suddenly no one could account for these unprocessed registrations. There is no way to authenticate them, or tell if they were processed illegally and allowed to vote. To add another dark element to the Arizona election problem, registrations in the state skyrocketed across a two-year period between 2018 and 2020. The number of new voter registrations shot up nearly 15 percent in 24-months. For a state the size of Arizona, this massive increase in registered voters isn’t logical. The number would quickly fall to a more reasonable figure, if the percentage of potential illegal voter registrations is considered. Now the number of new registrations would be palpable.
If a majority of these illegal registrations cast ballots for Joe Biden, it would flip the state for former President Donald Trump. Maricopa County had hacked servers and hacked databases as well. The story in Arizona smells of corruption. But will we ever get to the truth?
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author of the article and not necessarily shared or endorsed by SteadfastClash.com, and WhatDidYouSay.org.
Three parents filed a lawsuit accusing the California state school curriculum of violating the U.S. Constitution over an Ethnic Studies lesson that asks kids to pray and chant to Aztec gods.
“Our clients are not opposed to having students learn about different cultures and religions, including the practices of the Aztecs,” said Paul Jonna, special counsel at Thomas More Society, which is representing the parents in court.
“But the California State Board of Education’s approved Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum goes far beyond that by directing students to pray to Aztec deities,” he explained. “This portion of the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum is not only offensive, but blatantly unconstitutional.”
The curriculum invites teachers to have their kids recite Aztec prayers and an “Ashe” chant as a way to energize students to learn better. The alarming lessons were documented by Christopher Rufo in March.
“This section includes several ethnic studies-oriented chants, proverbs and affirmations,” reads a passage from the curriculum’s “Lesson Resources.”
“This section includes several ethnic studies-oriented chants, proverbs and affirmations,” the document continues. “These can be used as energizers to bring the class together, build unity around ethnic studies principles and values, and to reinvigorate the class following a lesson that may be emotionally taxing or even when student engagement may appear to be low.”
The filing from the parents included a statement from Purdue University anthropology professor Dr. Alan Sandstrom, who is supportive of the curriculum’s goals but not the lesson having kids chant.
“The affirmation as presented amounts to a religious activity that I think has no place in public schools,” he said.
The lawsuit is seeking a temporary restraining order to keep “[d]efendants from authorizing, promoting or permitting the use of Aztec prayers and the ‘Ashe’ chant in California’s public schools and also requiring Defendants to direct those under their authority not to use the Aztec prayer or ‘Ashe’ chant in public schools.”
The California Board of Education and Department of Education are named as defendants in the lawsuit.
Here’s more about California’s Aztec curriculum: PLEASE WATCH AND SHARE.
Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe generated reactions across the country after making a controversial statement about parental involvement in education during the Sept. 28 gubernatorial debate with Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin.
“I’m not gonna let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions,”said McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee who previously served a term as governor from 2014-2018. He went on to boast of his 2016 veto of legislation that would have allowed parents to block sexually explicit books.
Terry McAuliffe: "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." pic.twitter.com/7S15pTv1gY
Virginia’s Fairfax County Public Schools recently were forced to pull two books, “Gender Queer” and “Lawn Boy,” after explicit material was revealed by Stacy Langdon, a mother, during a school board meeting on Sept. 23. Neighboring Loudoun County has been the flashpoint for debates over the use of critical race theory (CRT) in schools.
CRT holds that America is fundamentally racist, yet it teaches people to view every social interaction and person in terms of race. Its adherents pursue “antiracism” through the end of merit, objective truth and the adoption of race-based policies.
“Terry McAuliffe believes that parents should have no say in their children’s education so that he and his radical special interest allies can keep pushing their political agenda into classrooms. As governor, McAuliffe shut down parents who wanted a better education and more choices for their children, and his disastrous policies and lower standards have led to plummeting SOL scores and more students being left behind” Youngkin campaign spokesman Christian Martinez said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Glenn Youngkin will get politics out of our schools and be a champion for parents and students.”
Are you a parent who wants to have a say in your child's education?
“The public schools in Virginia do not exist to raise our children, they exist to teach them math, science, reading, writing, and history. They definitely shouldn’t be providing pornographic material, encouraging gender confusion, and teaching children that they are either oppressed or oppressors,” Ian Prior, a Loudoun County parent and executive director of Fight for Schools, told the DCNF.
“Well, it’s unfortunate that one of our governor candidates, McAuliffe, feels parents do not have a right to their own children in the schools. We do not co-parent with the government, we do not co-parent with teachers or with the school board. We are the parents and ultimately, we have the final decision over our children,” Patti Hidalgo Menders, the president of the Loudoun County Republican Women’s Club and a parent with children in Loudoun County Public Schools, told the DCNF.
“We have every right to know the materials they are reading in the schools. That’s our right as a parent,” she added.
“The intentional efforts made by certain elected officials starting from the school board all the way up to a gubernatorial candidate like Terry McAuliffe to silence and shut out parents from their children’s education and insert themselves as the government as the primary educator instead of the parents being the primary educator of the children is appalling.” Elizabeth Schultz, a former member of the Fairfax County school board who has a child in middle school said.
“Every parent, regardless of their political affiliation, regardless what age their students are, should be repelled by the notion that the government alone is in charge of what your children learn,” she added.
Across the country, parents have been speaking out about the use of critical race theory in classes. In Missouri, an online training seminar became controversial when the trainer, Dr. LaGarrett King of the University of Missouri, coached teachers on how to sneak teaching social justice past “Trump country” parents. In Loudoun County, several school board members were part of a secret Facebook group that sought to publically expose parents who opposed the use of critical race theory in school curricula. The revelation triggered a recall campaign targeting six of the members. Loudoun County Public Schools denied using critical race theory, but evidence provided by parents contradicted that denial.
McAuliffe’s remarks also drew criticism on social media.
“Terry McAuliffe should learn Virginia law. #VAgov § 1-240.1. Rights of parents. A parent has a fundamental right to make decisions concerning the upbringing, education, and care of the parent’s child,” McAuliffe’s opponent, Glenn Youngkin, posted on Twitter,
Glenn Youngkin: "I believe parents should be in charge of their kids' education."
Radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt vowed on Twitter that he was playing McAuliffe’s comment “coming into every break” during his program.
“Last night on the gubernatorial debate stage Terry McAuliffe stood before you and said ‘I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach’. The choice is CLEAR. Vote @GlennYoungkin,” Aliscia Andrews, a Loudoun County parent and former Republican candidate for Congress, tweeted.
Julie Perry, the Republican nominee for the 86th House District for the Virginia House of Delegates, noted McAuliffe’s endorsement of her opponent on Twitter, and after quoting his remarks, asked if her opponent would “distance herself from the top of her ticket.”
Steven Law, whose Twitter profile describes him as CEO of the Senate Leadership Fund, noted in a tweet that the issue with McAuliffe’s statement went beyond what he said.
Terry McAuliffe: "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." pic.twitter.com/7S15pTv1gY
In July, campaign finance disclosures revealed that McAuliffe’s campaign received $250,000 from the American Federation of Teachers. The Virginia Education Association’s political action committee has endorsed McAuliffe’s candidacy.
Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin confirmed Thursday that he proposed a $1.5 trillion maximum spending number for the reconciliation package Democrats are trying to pass. Manchin, a key holdout to the hefty $3.5 trillion bill, proposed a $1.5 trillion deal to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer over the summer, Politico reported Thursday. Manchin has been openly critical of the spending bill, advising members of his caucus earlier in September to “hit the pause button” and raising concerns over its price tag.
While it’s long been reported that Manchin’s top line falls far below the $3.5 trillion proposal, Thursday’s reporting revealed that the Democratic senator compiled a physical one-page document outlining his ideal cost as well as various conditions.
Manchin’s document suggested raising the corporate tax rate to 25% and raising the top tax rate on income to 39.6%, according to Politico, which obtained a copy of the document. Manchin and Schumer signed the document, which noted that the former lawmaker “does not guarantee that he will vote for the final reconciliation legislation if it exceeds the conditions outlined in this agreement.”
Schumer wrote a note on the document vowing to “try to change Joe [Biden] on some of these,” Politico reported.
Manchin confirmed the number to reporters Thursday, and said Biden is aware of his $1.5 trillion top-line. This is the first time the senator shared the number publicly with the press.
WATCH:
Newsy Manchin: Told a group of us $1.5 trillion is his number.
Doesn't explicitly say he won't go higher. But made clear to Biden that was his ceiling. Biden told him he wants more.
Manchin noted that the president wanted “a lot more than” that. The White House has been evasive on whether Manchin or Democratic Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, another holdout, had given Biden a solid number that they’d accept for the package.
“I would point you again to Sen. Sinema and Sen. Manchin,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday. “We knew that it would be a compromise, and that’s exactly what it is. And as you know, the President has spent a great bit of time, relatively so, but given nothing more precious than the time of the President of the United States over the last two days engaging with each of these senators about the path forward. But I would leave it to them to describe what they’re comfortable with.”
Manchin also said that if Democrats want a higher price tag, they should get more progressives elected.
“For them to get theirs, elect more liberals. I’m willing to come from 0 to $1.5,” Manchin said.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, and WhatDidYouSay.com.
Source: AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery
Great news! For the millions of U.S. immigrants who really wanted to immigrate to Haiti, but couldn’t get in … Guess what? The country you’re living in is about to become Haiti. This will also come as good news to the GOP’s top-dollar donors, whose sole political thought is: HOW DO WE WIN THE BLACK VOTE? (Next goal: Reverse the rotation of the Earth.)
Apparently, it’s absolutely humiliating for people who live in 100% white neighborhoods to belong to a party that appeals to white people. Consequently, for several decades now, the GOP has slobbered over Colin Powell, Alan Keyes, Condoleezza Rice, Allen West, Michael Steele, Herman Cain, Ben Carson, John James, Tim Scott, Candace Owens, Herschel Walker and so on.
I, too, slobbered over some of these fine black Republicans. But unlike the Masters of the Universe, I noticed, after the first half-dozen or so, that the GOP is never going to win more of the black vote. (The GOP’s donor class is dying of embarrassment right now, horrified that their party appeals to white people, aka “the only swing voters in the country.”)
For the last half-century, African Americans have given approximately 90% of their vote to the Democrats. (Hispanics: 70%; Asians: 70%) But the Hamptons-Manhattan-Palm Beach Brain Trust is focused like a laser beam on increasing the GOP’s minority vote. Somehow they’ve made billions of dollars, but cannot grasp, if their lives depended on it, that every election outcome is determined by the white vote.
QUIZ: What is the one demographic Trump lost in 2020 compared to 2016? Answer: White men.
[For more on Republican donors’ neurotic obsession with the black vote, see “Adios, America!,” Chapter 16, I Wrote This Chapter After Noticing How Stupid Rich People Are.]
With hordes of Haitians pouring across our border — because a certain lying conman didn’t build a wall — this weird compulsion of the donors will only get worse. Before Republican geniuses start proposing “enterprise zones” for Haitians, maybe they should take a look at Haiti.
Haitian President Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier (1957-1971) began his regime by killing off or exiling the educated elite for being too light-skinned, then expropriated the peasants’ small parcels of farmland, leading, like night into day, to mass starvation. Result: Haitian peasants adored him! Even after a regime of mass murder and widespread starvation, followed by Duvalier maneuvering his teenaged son into the presidency, the Associated Press reported in 1980 that “the Duvalier family’s support comes from the dark-skinned peasants of the countryside.”
Downside: insane execution squads, malnutrition, illiteracy and chaos. Upside: Duvalier persecuted light-skinned Haitians and embraced voodoo.
GOP donors: What if we offer them school vouchers?
George Mason economics professor Garett Jones has a vitally important article posted on the Evonomics website right now titled, “Do Immigrants Import Their Economic Destiny?”
He asks whether immigrants bring cultural attitudes, religious beliefs, a work ethic, etc. that will kill “the golden goose of first-world prosperity.” Phrased otherwise, do immigrants make “the countries they move to a lot like the countries they came from?”
Ann’s answer: Duh.
Jones’ answer: Duh — with a lot more data and analysis.
He cites a study by economists Diego Comin, William Easterly and Erick Gong of Dartmouth, New York University and Middlebury College, respectively, published in the American Economic Journal, showing that the descendants of people who were the most technologically advanced in 1500 A.D. today live in countries vastly richer than countries populated by the descendants of those not as technologically advanced in 1500 A.D.
The New York Times described the results of the study thus: “As it turns out, technology in A.D. 1500 is an extraordinarily reliable predictor of wealth today.”
Forget 1500. How’s Haiti been doing for the last 50 years? A report by the Council on Foreign Relations describes Haiti as “the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.” And that’s despite more than $13 billion in international aid in the past decade.
Let’s just hope they bring their Satan-worshipping voodoo! As Haitians worldwide descend on our country, it’s worth mentioning that their homeland is often described as “90% Catholic and 100% voodoo.”
While The New York Times (which hates our country and wants it destroyed) burbles giddily about Haitian voodoo — “a healing-based religion,” “an affirmation of national pride,” “a vibrant but gentler faith,” “equal parts happening and psychoanalysis” — other news outlets have produced vivid accounts of the actual ceremonies.
Quote:
“(A) group of men and women dressed in white circled a pole. … A few hours later, the drumbeat had intensified … A few of the women grabbed live chickens and whirled them in the air before ripping the heads off with their teeth. Then, with their hands clenched like claws and their chins dripping with blood, the women jumped up and down, screeching, ‘Ke-ke-ke, Ke-ke-ke.'” — Times-Picayune (New Orleans), 1994
Quote:
“Suddenly, the woman’s body jerks upright. She spins wildly, arms and legs flailing, and her eyes roll back in her head until only the whites show. Two men rush to her side and support her in their arms. A yellow kerchief slips off her head and her shiny, straightened hair tumbles down.
“Body rigid, muscles taut, she stomps the ground with her bare feet. She whips her head from side to side, eyes stretched wide, sweeping the room with a fierce gaze …” — The Ottawa Citizen, 2000
You can read more about these “vibrant” rituals in the book “Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Contemporary Americans.” Or just wait for them to show up in your neighborhood.
If you thought moving 100,000 Somalians into Minnesota posed challenges to assimilation, that will be a pleasant dream compared to the multitudes of Haitians Biden is letting into the country right now.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
President Joe Biden, left, meets with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and committee chairs to discuss the coronavirus relief legislation in the Oval Office at the White House on Feb. 5, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Stefani Reynolds – Pool / Getty Images)
President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda is supposed to tax the wealthy to help the middle class. If you don’t believe me, just ask Biden, who’s more than willing to tell you about it on his Twitter account.
To be fair, I’m assuming the messages aren’t written by Biden himself, a man who seems like his relationship with technology involves yelling at his phone, either asking Siri to find his slippers or telling Scotty to beam him up. However, whoever tweets for him stays on message when it comes to the president’s tax-and-spend plan.
“We’re going to pass a historic middle class tax cut — and we’ll do it by making those at the top pay their fair share,” one tweet from Sunday read. “I know the crowd on Park Ave might not like it, but it’s time we give people in towns like Scranton — the folks I grew up with — a break for a change.”
“From health care to child care, my Build Back Better Agenda will lower everyday costs for middle class Americans,” a tweet from this Monday read.
“I’m not looking to punish anyone, I just think it’s only fair that the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share once again. Then, we’ll use that money to invest in the middle class,” a tweet from last week reads.
“For me it’s pretty simple: It’s about time working people got the tax breaks in this country,” a tweet from the day before that read. “That’s the Build Back Better Agenda.”
From health care to child care, my Build Back Better Agenda will lower everyday costs for middle class Americans. pic.twitter.com/eqzWKmw1wy
I’m not looking to punish anyone, I just think it’s only fair that the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share once again. Then, we’ll use that money to invest in the middle class. pic.twitter.com/xZYMMUo5yi
If someone has to repeat themselves this much, it’s usually because they’re lying — and, lo and behold, the Joint Committee on Taxation seems to have confirmed that.
According to a media release from the Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday, the Joint Committee on Taxation — a non-partisan congressional tax scorekeeper — found that almost every income level below the threshold the Biden administration said would be immune would take a hit.
Furthermore, the committee’s analysis found the vast majority of taxpayers would see no benefit from the plan in its current form.
According to the analysis, by the calendar year 2023, nearly 5 percent of those making between $40,000 and $50,000 would see a tax increase. Nine percent of those making between $50,000 and $75,000 would see an increase, 18 percent earning between $75,000 and $100,000 would see their taxes go up and 35 percent of those earning between $100,000 and $200,000 would be subject to a hike.
The media release also noted that the benefit most people see will pretty much be nil.
In 2023, two-thirds of all taxpayers won’t get see any kind of real benefit from the legislation, either seeing their tax bill changed by less than $100 or getting a tax increase.
By 2027, this number would balloon to 85.5 percent, with huge swaths of the middle class seeing a sizable tax increase; these numbers are projected to stay mostly steady until 2031.
Meanwhile, the Joint Committee on Taxation also found that hiking corporate taxes would hit middle-class Americans hard, too.
“Within 10 years of a corporate tax increase from 21 percent to 25 percent, 66.3 percent of the corporate tax burden would be borne by lower- and middle-income taxpayers with income well below $500,000,” an August media release from the Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee read.
“This statistic becomes only more striking in absolute number of taxpayers. Of the more than 172 million taxpayers who would bear the burden of the increased corporate tax rate, 98.4 percent, or about 169 million, have incomes under $500,000.”
Of course, the charge from the left would be that this doesn’t take into account what the spending these tax hikes will pay for is going to buy for the middle class. Beyond the fact these “investments” never bring back the kind of returns that are promised, Biden promised a middle-class tax cut. At least in the plan’s current form, it doesn’t look like it’ll end up delivering — no matter what the president says.
Do you know who did lower taxes on the middle class? Former President Donald Trump.
Joe Biden may have spent much of the campaign whining about Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which slashed taxes across the board. Most of the outrage focused on the fact he didn’t soak the rich: “Tax experts estimate that over the long run, 83% of Trump’s tax giveaway will flow to the top 1% of earners in this country,” Biden’s campaign website read.
And yet, in March of 2020, MarketWatch reported that “Americans paid almost $64 billion less in federal income taxes during the first year under the Republican tax overhaul signed into law in late 2017 by President Donald Trump, with some of the sharpest drops clustered among taxpayers earning between $25,000 and $100,000 a year, even as the overall number of refunds dropped during a turbulent tax season” in 2019.
Biden plans on taking that away. In return, he’s offered nothing of substance — except, as promised, he’s soaking the rich. And the upper-middle class. And some people in the middle class, too. But mainly the rich. See, priorities!
Biden may not be giving people in towns like Scranton — the folks he grew up with — a break the same way Trump did. But at least they can watch as his administration takes (and then squanders) Park Avenue’s money. He’ll be squandering Scranton’s money, too, but at least they get the joy of class-based schadenfreude out of the deal.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
Former President Barack Obama — who routinely pushed for open-borders immigration policies during his time in office — acknowledged recently that such an idea is “unsustainable.” Obama made the statement while commenting on the Biden administration’s ongoing immigration crisis at the U.S. southern border during an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” which aired Tuesday.
“Immigration is tough. It always has been because, on the one hand, I think we are naturally a people that wants to help others. And we see tragedy and hardship and families that are desperately trying to get here so that their kids are safe, and they’re in some cases fleeing violence or catastrophe,” Obama said.
“At the same time, we’re a nation-state. We have borders. The idea that we can just have open borders is something that … as a practical matter, is unsustainable,” he added.
Elsewhere in the interview, the former president called the scenes playing out along the border in Del Rio, Texas, “heartbreaking” and “a painful reminder that we don’t have this right yet and we’ve got more work to do.”
Nearly 15,000 migrants, the majority of whom are Haitian, reportedly camped under a bridge in squalid conditions in Del Rio amid a surge in border crossings in recent weeks. On Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted that rather than repatriating the migrants as promised, the Biden administration had, in fact, released roughly 12,000 of them into the U.S.
It’s the latest disastrous episode in a growing crisis that has seen well over 1 million migrants flood into the country since January in expectation of lenient treatment from the Biden administration. Rather than getting tough on illegal immigration, the administration has responded by releasing tens of thousands of migrants directly into the U.S., many presumably without court dates. The federal government’s ineptitude has resulted in state and local entities stepping up to defend the border themselves.
Yet, despite obvious evidence to the contrary, Obama claimed that America is in good hands under his former vice president’s leadership.
“As big-hearted as he is, nobody understands that better than Joe Biden,” he argued. “And the question is now: Are we gonna get serious about dealing with this problem in a systemic way, as opposed to these one-offs where we’re constantly reacting to emergencies? And I think that that’s something that every American should wanna put an end to.”
In an admission that may boost claims that the Biden administration’s border crisis is partly driving a COVID-19 surge in the U.S., Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas acknowledged on Monday that approximately one out of every five migrants entering the country illegally have an “illness.”
The DHS chief did not specify whether the illness he was referring to was COVID-19 during his speech at the virtual Immigration Law and Policy Conference. But he noted in his remarks that the rise of the COVID-19 Delta variant caught him off guard and that amid a pandemic, the U.S. immigration system is not capable of handling a rapid influx of migrants.
“We are confronted with a population of people that, as a general matter, have a rate of illness of approximately 20%,” Mayorkas said, according to the Daily Mail. “When one is speaking of 7,000 or 7,500 people encountered at the border every day, if one takes a look at that system, it is not built for that in a Covid environment where isolation is required.”
“What I didn’t expect was the tragic rise of the Delta variant,” the secretary noted, adding, “We took a step back by reason of that. I did not expect to be in late September where we are.”
Moreover, that figure does not include the nearly 15,000 predominantly Haitian migrants who have been processed in recent days after camping out in squalid conditions under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas.
Mayorkas told reporters at the White House on Friday that U.S. immigration authorities did not test those migrants for COVID-19.
“We did not test that population of individuals,” he said. “We do not know, I do not know, I should say if I may be perfectly accurate, I do not know if anyone was sick with COVID. We certainly had some people get sick, not with COVID to my knowledge, and we addressed their illnesses.”
Nevertheless, at least 12,000 of those migrants have reportedly been released into the U.S. in spite of the Biden administration’s promises to repatriate them. Since the start of the border surge earlier this year, the administration has released tens of thousands of migrants directly into the country, many without being tested for the virus.
The Daily Mail cited the administration’s inability to test migrants to note it is unclear how exactly the secretary arrived at the 20% figure. At the time of publication, neither video nor a transcript of Mayorkas comments was available. A representative for the Immigration Law and Policy Conference said a video would be posted by Tuesday evening.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Apparently unaware of basic economics, White House press secretary Jen Psaki stated Monday that the White House believes it is “unfair and absurd” if businesses raise prices in response to the Biden administration increasing corporate tax liability.
For several days now, the Biden administration has been pushing the absurd claim that its $3.5 trillion spending bill actually “costs zero dollars.” They argue that tax increases will offset spending. Biden has promised not to raise taxes on American households earning less than $400,000. But as a reporter noted in questioning Psaki during Monday’s White House press briefing, analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation says the spending bill would result in tax increases for “more than 16% of taxpayers.”
When asked whether Biden would seek changes to the spending bill to maintain his promise, Psaki noted how terrible the White House thinks it is for corporations to offset government-imposed tax increases by raising prices to cover the difference.
“The president’s commitment remains not raising taxes for anyone making less than $400,000 a year,” Psaki said.
“There are some — and I’m not sure if this is the case in this report — who argue that, in the past, companies have passed on these costs to consumers. I’m not sure if that’s the argument being made in this report,” she continued. “We feel that that’s unfair and absurd, and the American people would not stand for that.”
Jen Psaki: It’s “unfair and absurd” that companies would increase costs for consumers in response to us taxing them more. 😳 pic.twitter.com/rHilrYdj4j
Basic economics demonstrate that corporations often increase prices to cover higher taxes or forced wage increases. In fact, contrary to the White House’s claims, someone is always on the hook for increased corporate taxes. “It is important to remember that corporate taxes must be paid by people. Any corporate tax increase will be paid by either shareholders/owners, employees in the form of lower wages, or customers in the form of higher prices,” Forbes reported.
That fact aside, the Wall Street Journal explained why the $3.5 trillion spending bill neither “costs zero dollars,” nor raises enough revenue via tax increases to cover its cost.
From the WSJ:
In the real world, Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation says the bill raises $2.1 trillion over 10 years. Somebody must be paying more. Among the tax hikes are a 5.5 percentage point increase in the corporate income tax rate that will be paid by workers in lower wages, consumers in higher prices and investors in lower returns. Though they’ll be pleased to know this all adds up to “zero dollars.”
As for the spending, the $3.5 trillion figure that Bernie Sanders considers a “compromise” doesn’t even capture the full cost of what Democrats are proposing. As we explained Friday, that amount is based on budget gimmickry including entitlement phaseouts and phase-ins, and the real cost will be at least $5 trillion, probably far more.
So even after $2.1 trillion in tax hikes, the entitlements in the reconciliation package that include the child allowance, college tuition, national pre-K, universal child care, expanded Medicare and a new Medicaid program will add to the U.S. debt for decades to come.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the net cost of the “Build Back Better” agenda is more than $4 trillion over the next 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office, which conducts economic analysis on legislation, has not yet scored the $3.5 trillion spending package.
In late August, Marine Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Stuart Schellertook a blowtorch to the woke military leadership for their failures in Afghanistan that resulted in 13 US servicemen dying. Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller, a 17-year veteran, risked his career and pension when he posted a scathing rebuke of the senior military leaders who failed US servicemen serving in Afghanistan.
Joe Biden’s incompetence and corruption led to the death of 13 US servicemen and 15 more were critically wounded in a blast by a suicide bomber in Kabul on Thursday.
“I’m not saying we’ve got to be in Afghanistan forever. But I am saying, did any of you throw your rank on the table and say, ‘Hey, it’s a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield, a strategic airbase, before we evacuate everyone’? Did anyone do that? And when you didn’t think to do that, did anyone raise their hand and say, ‘We completely messed this up’?” Scheller added.
“I thought through, if I post this video, what might happen to me — especially if the video picks up traction, if I have the courage to post it,” he said. “But I think what you believe in can only be defined by what you’re willing to risk. If I’m willing to risk my current battalion seat, my retirement, my family’s stability to say some of the things I want to say, I think it gives me some moral high ground to demand the same honesty, integrity, and accountability from my senior leaders.”
On Monday Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller was arrested and sent to the brig.You are not allowed to speak out against Joe Biden. Even if you retire from your post earlier in the month.
Scheller is “currently in pre-trial confinement,” a spokesperson for Training and Education Command said of the officer’s status.
“The time, date, and location of the proceedings have not been determined. Lt. Col. Scheller will be afforded all due process,” the statement continued.
But the elder Scheller defended his son, arguing that he was only asking for “accountability” from the military’s top brass.
“He’s asking for the same accountability that is expected of him and his men,” he said.
“I’ve had Vietnam veterans contacting me applauding him for his courage because they too want to know: Was it all worth it?” he continued. “And by demanding accountability and honesty from his senior leaders, that’s all he was asking. And the way the Marine Corps has dealt with it: They have now put him in jail.”
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.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki fields questions at a White House news briefing on Monday, where she had to answer for a comment from President Biden on Friday that discouraged the prime minister of India from taking questions from the media. (Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)
On Jan. 24, just days after President Joe Biden took office, official CNN Democrat brown-noser Brian Stelter shared a chyron from his television show on Twitter.
“Psaki Promises to Share ‘Accurate Info’ (How Refreshing),” it read. The insinuation, of course, is that there wasn’t any accurate info from the Trump administration — but don’t worry, help was on the way!
Now, as it turns out, there’s a caveat to that refreshing promise: Psaki will be sharing “accurate info” (if often incomplete or misleading), but if President Joe Biden is going to be sharing information, your questions had better be “on point.” If they’re on a topic he doesn’t like, he’s not going to answer. (Psaki herself will probably promise to “circle back” to whatever the question was at a later date.)
On Friday, Biden met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Before their meeting, however, the president badmouthed the U.S. media and counseled Modi not to take any questions.
“The Indian press is much better behaved than the American press,”Biden told Modi. “I think, with your permission, you could not answer questions because they won’t ask any questions on point.”
WATCH: President Biden, during meeting with Indian PM Modi:
“The Indian press is much better behaved than the American press…I think, with your permission, you could not answer questions because they won’t ask any questions on point.” pic.twitter.com/VppL7973ma
That didn’t seem quite so refreshing, particularly after an incident with U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson earlier in the week when Biden’s staff shooed away reporters in the Oval Office.
During a meeting between Biden and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, staff abruptly order journalists to leave. pic.twitter.com/kJ4itX2kU4
Psaki was called on the carpet by the Washington press corps on Monday, given that reporters weren’t happy at the president telling the Indian prime minister to avoid taking questions. The White House press secretary tried to recontextualize — and made the problem worse in the process.
“I think what he said is that they’re not always on point,”Psaki said.
“Now I know that isn’t something that anyone wants to hear in here, but what I think he was conveying is, today he might want to talk about COVID vaccines, some of the questions were about that,” she continued.
Psaki was just confronted by two reporters about Biden asking Indian Prime Minister Modi to not take questions from the American press.
Psaki then embarrassingly justifies the remark by saying sometimes the Press doesn't ask about what Biden wants to talk about.
“Some of the questions are not always about the topic he’s talking about in that day. I don’t think it was meant to be a hard cut at the members of the media, people he’s taken questions from today and on Friday as well,” she added.
Another reporter — CBS News Radio’s Steven Portnoy — followed up, saying, “It happened that he was sitting next to prime minister of India, the world’s largest democracy, when he said that. It also followed the incident on Wednesday when he was sitting next to the prime minister of Great Britain. Is the president reticent to take questions when he’s sitting next to a foreign leader in the Oval Office? Can we expect him to do that in the future?”
“Steve, he took questions earlier that day on Friday. He’d already taken questions that day. I think that was the context of his comments,” Psaki said. “And he’s taken questions standing next to a foreign leader many, many times in the past, and will continue to.”
Good on @WSJ's @Catherine_Lucey & @CBSNewsRadio's @StevenPortnoy for repeatedly pressing Jen Psaki on the fact that Biden blew off the press last week with U.K. PM Boris Johnson & took a swipe at them last week behind their backs, telling Indian reporters not to ask questions. pic.twitter.com/dUS24W8X90
There was also one other problem with Biden’s remark, as Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich noted.
“The president said that the Indian press was better behaved than the U.S. press, but the Indian press is ranked 142nd in the world, according to Reporters Without Borders, for press freedoms,” she asked.
“How does he say that about the U.S. press compared to the Indian press?” she asked.
“Well, I would just say to you that, having now worked for the president, serving in this role for nine months, having seen that he’s taken questions from the press more than 140 times, including today and Friday, that he certainly respects the role of the press, the role of the freedom of free press,” Psaki said.
“We ensure that we have press with us, of course, when we travel, that we have press with us for sprays in foreign capitals, and we will continue to. I think that should speak to his commitment to freedom of press around the world.”
It’s worth noting that Psaki had all weekend to work on her answer to this. She knew full well this was going to be one of the things she had to answer when she walked into the Brady Press Briefing Room in the West Wing of the White House. The best the press secretary and her team could come up with: You guys need to start asking the kinds of questions the president wants to hear. Talk about what he’s talking about. See, this is why he never takes questions from the press. Focus, people!
It was an embarrassment — to Psaki and the president. And even the shamelessly pro-Biden press corps had to know it.
For whatever reason, Brian Stelter hasn’t weighed in on how refreshing that answer was. Perhaps he missed it.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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Political
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
NEWSMAX
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Spiritual
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
Bible Gateway
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AG Merrick Garland
What Did You Say? 
Written
on October 6, 2021