Good morning! Here is your news briefing for Thursday July 9, 2020
THE DAILY SIGNAL
Jul 09, 2020
|
Good morning from Washington, where the Supreme Court sides with the Little Sisters of the Poor, ruling that the nuns don’t have to cover abortion drugs for employees. We’ve got analysis from three Heritage Foundation experts, and one joins “Problematic Women” to unpack the case. On the podcast, author Horace Cooper cites evidence that black Americans flourished after President Trump took office. Plus: Sen. Rick Scott on a strong national defense; risks of reopening schools during COVID-19; and a transgender writer targets a colleague. On this date in 1947, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower appoints Florence Blanchfield as a lieutenant colonel in the Army, making her the first woman in U.S. history to hold permanent military rank. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Add morningbell@heritage.org to your address book to ensure that you receive emails from us.
You are subscribed to this newsletter as rickbulow1974@gmail.com. If you want to receive other Heritage Foundation newsletters, or opt out of this newsletter, please click here to update your subscription. |
THE RESURGENT
THE EPOCH TIMES
INDEPENDENCE DAY SALE
$64 OFF (Ends Soon)
Subscribe to The Epoch Times newspaper 🗞️ for a year for $203 $139, $2.67/week. Plus, get a Free FISA Infographic Poster! Get it Now
A classic broadsheet newspaper beautifully laid out with premium content.
“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”
ROBERT FROST
Good morning,
The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that religious organizations are exempt from lawsuits stemming from a requirement to provide contraceptive coverage.
More than 100 lawsuits had been filed since the contraception mandate was passed in 2011, by religious groups and others opposing it.
The CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google will all testify later this month at an antitrust hearing before the U.S. House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee, which is continuing its probe into competition… Read more
|
A British court on July 8 ordered Christopher Steele to pay damages to Russian businessmen who sued him over claims in one of the memos in Steele’s infamous dossier. Read more
|
President Donald Trump hosted Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at the White House for the first time to celebrate the launch of the new North American trade agreement known as USMCA. Read more
|
In recent days, Chinese state-run media have run commentaries encouraging young people to move to rural areas, as there aren’t enough jobs in the cities as a result of the pandemic’s economic impact. Read more
|
Hong Kong authorities have outlawed a popular protest song from being played or sung on school grounds, on the same day Beijing’s national security agents set up an office in the Chinese-ruled city. Read more
|
President Donald Trump said he may cut off funding to schools that don’t reopen from lockdowns imposed by governors across the nation. Read more
You may have read our articles on our website, but did you know we have a print edition as well?
Each week our team of reporters, editors, and designers produce a beautifully designed broadsheet newspaper with the best of our in-depth content. It includes news and opinion, as well as inspiring content in our Life & Tradition section, advice on healthy living in our Mind & Body section, our amazing Food section, and puzzles—a reader favorite.
It’s a reading experience you don’t want to miss!
Get the limited time deal now to save $64 (Ends Soon)
Plus, get a Free Poster!
America Should Shed the Mask of Zero
By Michael Walsh
There are two contagions raging in America as she celebrates her 244th birthday. The first is the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which has bedeviled the nation and the world since its effects began to be felt… Read more
|
Trump Must Overcome Deluge of Lies
By Conrad Black
There has never in U.S. history been a presidential election remotely like the present one. It isn’t really between two candidates, but between one candidate representing a moderate traditional view… Read more
Will Netflix Dominate TV Networks, Hulu?
By Ram Srinivasan
(July 3, 2015)
Can anyone beat Netflix Inc.? That seems to be the question that many, including Netflix’s closest rivals such as Hulu and other TV networks, are asking, even as the company’s stock price keeps rising to record heights… Read more
CCP officials are told to prepare for global crisis—including tensions with the United States, food shortages, currency wars, and others—and are being told to prepare “countermeasures”.
|
Copyright © 2020 The Epoch Times, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because you opted in to receive newsletter communications from The Epoch Times.
Our mailing address is:
The Epoch Times
229 W. 28 St. Fl. 5
New York, NY 10001
DAYBREAK
|
THE SUNBURN
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
FOX NEWS
JUST THE NEWS
THE FLIP SIDE
- Subscribe
- Past Issues
- RSS
- Translate
|
AXIOS
Good Thursday morning.
⚡ Joy Reid, 51, today was named host of MSNBC’s 7 p.m. ET hour, making her one of the nation’s leading Black anchors. “The ReidOut” succeeds “Hardball.” (N.Y. Times)
- 🎧 “Axios Today” — Smart Brevity™ for your ears — is ready. Subscribe here.
Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
The Trump administration’s full-steam-ahead push to fully reopen schools this fall is on a collision course with America’s skyrocketing caseload and its decades-long neglect of public education, Axios’ Caitlin Owens and Marisa Fernandez write.
- In a worst-case scenario, schools could become one of the most effective ways the virus travels from family to family.
Why it matters: Getting kids back to school is of paramount importance for children and families, especially low-income ones. But the administration isn’t doing much to make this safer or more feasible.
- “They’re sort of asking schools to do the undoable,” said Anita Cicero, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which focuses on epidemics and disasters.
The big picture: How to handle schools and daycare centers amid the pandemic is one of the most vexing questions around the world.
- Keeping kids at home risks learning setbacks, and prevents them from getting services like food or special needs assistance. It also removes some 40 hours of weekly child care that working parents rely on.
Implementing strong safety measures will require resources that many school districts don’t have, especially as the coronavirus economy depletes tax revenues.
- The cost of stringent sanitation, personal protective equipment and new personnel would be astronomical.
- “We want children to be back in schools,” said Will Hite, superintendent of Philadelphia’s school district. But the cost of additional cleaning and sanitizing alone could be an extra $60 million to $80 million.
As the virus disrupts life for the youngest and oldest Americans, the generations in the middle are buckling under the strain of having to take care of both, Axios’ Kim Hart writes.
- Why it matters: People who make up the so-called sandwich generation — typically in their 30s, 40s and 50s — are in their prime working years.
- The increasing family and financial pressures on these workers means complications for employers, too.
The pandemic has forced this generation to make near-constant, stressful decisions about how to safely care for their own young children, while also trying to reduce health risks for elderly parents and grandparents.
- Grandparents are often back-up child care. But many parents are wary of asking grandparents to watch children, and possibly expose them to germs.
The big question: How flexible employers are willing or able to be.
- Francine Blau, Cornell University professor of economics and industrial and labor relations, said some workers may have to quit their jobs, or look for one that has more flexibility to work from home or during off-hours.
- “Just like child care, women do a disproportionate amount of parent care of older family members,” Blau said. “This puts more stress on women. … I am concerned some will fall out of the labor force.”
The pandemic keeps getting worse, all across the country.
- Thirty-three states saw their caseloads increase this week, continuing a scary nationwide trend that’s been getting worse since mid-June, Axios’ Sam Baker and Andrew Witherspoon report.
Why it matters: The U.S. is right back in the situation we were afraid of earlier this year, with a rapidly spreading outbreak, strained hospitals, and projections of more than 200,000 deaths by the end of the year.
What we’re watching: New coronavirus cases surged over the past week in places that were already heading quickly in the wrong direction.
- That includes Arizona (a 23% jump over the past week), California (38%), Florida (25%) and Texas (28%). All of those states have experienced dramatic increases for several weeks in a row, and those cases are now threatening to overwhelm some local hospitals.
- Deaths are beginning to tick up in these hotspots.
If you read only one sentence: These worsening conditions across the board make clear that these numbers aren’t a product of increased testing, but rather a worsening outbreak.
- Nationwide, testing increased by 7% over the past week. Cases rose by 24%.
In Minneapolis, artist Eric Rieger (HOTTEA), works on a portrait of George Floyd made of hundreds of individually painted magnets. Photo: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
Bodycam transcripts made public yesterday show that as George Floyd told Minneapolis police officers he couldn’t breathe more than 20 times, the officer with his knee against Floyd’s neck dismissed the pleas, AP’s Amy Forliti writes:
- “Then stop talking, stop yelling. It takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk,” said Derek Chauvin, the white officer.
- “You’re going to kill me, man,” Floyd said. “They’ll kill me. They’ll kill me. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”
The transcripts show Floyd appearing cooperative at times but becoming agitated as he begged not to be put in a squad car, saying repeatedly he was claustrophobic.
- “Oh man, God don’t leave me man, please man, please man,” he begged, later adding: “I’ll do anything y’all tell me to, man.”
As the encounter began, “a confused Floyd apologized to the officers, whom he called ‘sir’ and ‘Mr. Officer,'” the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.
- “Mom, I love you. I love you,” Floyd said. “Tell my kids I love them. I’m dead.”
Biden supporters outside their home in Joplin, Missouri, on July 2. Photo: Terra Fondriest for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Six of Joe Biden’s former 2020 rivals are barnstorming the airwaves and virtual campaign trail in crucial states this week to pitch a new economic recovery plan he released today, “Build Back Better,” Axios’ Alexi McCammond reports.
- Why it matters: Biden outperforms President Trump on every issue except for the economy, according to a Pew Research poll of 4,000 adults last month.
Biden is anchoring the economic recovery tour in person, with remarks this afternoon in Dunmore, Pa.
- The plan proposes investing at least $700 billion to create 5 million U.S. jobs, and tightening “Buy American” laws.
Many of the supporting Democrats aren’t under consideration to be Biden’s V.P. But the campaign is trying to bring all parts of the Democratic coalition together for the final four months of the election.
- Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris are scheduled to talk about the plan on MSNBC and CNN today.
- Mayors Pete Buttigieg and Keisha Lance Bottoms, and Sens. Chris Coons and Tammy Duckworth, will appear across MSNBC and CNBC.
- Sen. Amy Klobuchar will host a virtual roundtable with Arizona voters; Buttigieg is doing the same in New Hampshire; and Beto O’Rourke will join a press call with Texans.
The hometown of Joe Biden and “The Office” is polishing its perennial status as a guidepost for the nation’s political mood, Axios AM editor (and Scranton native) Shane Savitsky writes.
- Biden returns to Scranton, Pa., today with a stop just outside the city limits at a metalworking plant, where he’ll unveil his economic recovery plan.
- President Trump joined a Fox News town hall in Scranton in March.
Why it matters: Scranton, with its mining and railroad roots, is a microcosm of demographic trends and political anxieties that propelled Trump’s 2016 election.
- Trump won Pennsylvania by less than one percentage point in 2016, but Biden now leads Trump in RealClearPolitics poll averages.
Between the lines: The national press has long had a fascination with Scranton’s presidential implications. It helps that it’s just a few hours’ drive from the corridors of power in Washington and New York.
- In. 2008, RealClearPolitics called it “the new Peoria … the psychic heartland.”
Brooks Brothers, founded in 1818, “dressed the American business class in pinstripes for more than 200 years and survived two world wars,” but was no match for the pandemic, The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription).
- “The closely held company, which is owned by Italian businessman Claudio Del Vecchio, filed for bankruptcy protection in Wilmington, Del.”
- “One of the few brands to make clothes domestically, it plans to halt manufacturing at its three U.S. factories on Aug. 15 and will use the bankruptcy process to search for a new owner.”
In 1896, according to Brooks Brothers’ official history:
At a polo match in England, John E. Brooks, grandson of the founder, noticed something peculiar about the players’ collars: they were buttoned down so as to prevent their flapping in the wind.
John brought his discovery back to Brooks Brothers, and thus was born the Button-Down shirt, a Brooks classic and what some have called “the most imitated item in fashion history.”
Parishioners attend Spanish-language Mass at Saint Bartholomew Roman Catholic Church in Queens on Monday. Photo: John Minchillo/AP
The two New York churches have mostly Hispanic congregations, AP reports:
- Saint Bartholomew Roman Catholic Church in Queens, which lost at least 74 parishioners, this week hosted its first large-scale in-person services since mid-March.
- At Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Manhattan — with a death toll of at least 60, almost all of whom attended services in Spanish — the pastors say it’s too risky to open any time soon.
The seats were empty, but fans watching on ESPN got fancy new sounds and visuals — including drones, super-slow-mo replays from cameras behind the goals, and microphones buried in the turf, Bloomberg’s Chris Palmeri writes:
- Why it matters: Major League Soccer’s return last night in Kissimmee, Fla., was a proving ground for tech ESPN will use for other pandemic-era sports.
The cost of producing games this way is more than double the normal, Amy Rosenfeld, ESPN’s vice president of production, told Bloomberg.
- “That includes … as many as four times the number of microphones.”
- “The network ruled out putting mics on players and referees because it wanted to minimize contact” with its crew.
📱 Thanks for reading Axios AM. Please invite your friends to sign up here.
THE WASHINGTON POST MORNING HEADLINES
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
|
Copyright © 2020 MEDIADC, All rights reserved.Washington Examiner | A MediaDC Publication 1152 15th Street NW Suite 200 | Washington, DC 20005 |
You received this email because you are subscribed to Examiner Today from The Washington Examiner. Update your email preferences to choose the types of emails you receive.We respect your right to privacy – View our Policy Unsubscribe |
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
|
PRO TRUMP NEWS
THE HILL
|
ROLL CALL
|
Morning Headlines
GOP strategists say President Donald Trump’s endorsement still carries significant weight, especially in races with potentially lower turnout, like Tuesday’s primary runoffs for two House districts in Texas and for Senate in Alabama. Trump’s personal connection to two of the races makes them a key indicator of the value of his support. Read More…
Sen. Tammy Duckworth will keep her hold on more than 1,100 military promotions in place despite Wednesday’s announcement of the retirement of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a key witness in the impeachment of President Donald Trump. Read More…
Democrats rebuke White House over possibly directing virus aid away from public schools
President Trump’s apparent proposal that future coronavirus aid for schools be tied to students, rather than school districts, has drawn rebukes from key Democrats, who are not on board with any plan that could involve the administration redirecting aid away from public school systems. Read More…
Click here to subscribe to Fintech Beat for the latest market and regulatory developmentsin finance and financial technology.
Foreign students’ dilemma: Risk COVID-19 exposure or deportation?
On Wednesday, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sued to block the Trump administration from enforcing new Immigration and Customs Enforcement guidance, citing hardships to students and the universities themselves. Read More…
CDC to revise school reopening guidance
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will release updated guidelines for reopening schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, Vice President Mike Pence announced Wednesday, after President Trump said he disagreed with guidance from his own administration for doing so. Read More…
Census to start door-knocking after pandemic pause
The Census Bureau will plan a “final push” outreach effort this month to encourage many communities that haven’t responded to the census to do so, the agency said Wednesday during an update of plans. Read More…
House lawmakers use campaign money for membership dues to plush clubs
Several House members have reported paying for membership dues to luxurious social clubs from their campaign coffers, expenditures the Federal Election Commission automatically deems as prohibited personal use. Read More…
CQ Roll Call is a part of FiscalNote, the leading technology innovator at the intersection of global business and government. Copyright 2020 CQ Roll Call. All rights reserved Privacy | Safely unsubscribe now.
1201 Pennsylvania Ave, NW Suite 600
Washington, DC 20004
POLITICO PLAYBOOK
POLITICO Playbook: A special day for DJT
DRIVING THE DAY
TODAY IS SHAPING UP TO BE THE KIND OF DAY when the president of the United States could find himself sitting in the White House stewing. He has but two events on his calendar — both in the afternoon — and if he turns on the television, he’ll find much to be extremely interested in.
— THE CITY OF NEW YORK will begin painting a Black Lives Matter mural outside of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan this morning. Mayor BILL DE BLASIO will join in this afternoon, per NBC 4 New York.
— AT 10 A.M.: THE SUPREME COURT will announce its last rulings of the session — including whether President DONALD TRUMP’S financial and tax records will get sent to Capitol Hill. JOSH GERSTEIN and KYLE CHENEY on the cases
— AT NOON: GEOFFREY BERMAN, the recently ousted U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, will testify in a closed session in front of House Judiciary. The format: one hour of Dem questioning, one hour of Republican questioning.
— AT 1 P.M.: Defense Secretary MARK ESPER and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs MARK MILLEY will testify in front of House ARMED SERVICES about “Department of Defense Authorities and Roles Related to Civilian Law Enforcement” — a timely topic after the Lafayette Park and St. John’s Church episodes, and certainly an irritant to one DONALD JOHN TRUMP.
— TONIGHT: Former President BARACK OBAMA and HILLARY CLINTON will hold separate big-donor fundraisers for the BIDEN VICTORY FUND. REMEMBER: JOE BIDEN beat TRUMP in the fundraising game the past two months.
OBAMA’S EVENT is with Illinois Gov. J.B. PRITZKER. Giving levels range from $50,000 to $250,000.
CLINTON’S EVENT is with Rep. DONNA SHALALA (D-Fla.) and California Lt. Gov. ELENI KOUNALAKIS. Tickets rage from $1,000 to $25,000.
THE PRESIDENT is leaving town for Miami on Friday, and then will go to New Hampshire on Saturday. Bet there will be people who want to escort him to Air Force One today.
TRUMP THE SUPERSPREADER? … AP/OKLAHOMA CITY: “Health official: Trump rally ‘likely’ source of virus surge”: “President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Tulsa in late June that drew thousands of participants and large protests ‘likely contributed’ to a dramatic surge in new coronavirus cases, Tulsa City-County Health Department Director Dr. Bruce Dart said Wednesday.
“Tulsa County reported 261 confirmed new cases on Monday, a one-day record high, and another 206 cases on Tuesday. By comparison, during the week before the June 20 Trump rally, there were 76 cases on Monday and 96 on Tuesday. Although the health department’s policy is to not publicly identify individual settings where people may have contracted the virus, Dart said those large gatherings ‘more than likely’ contributed to the spike.
“‘In the past few days, we’ve seen almost 500 new cases, and we had several large events just over two weeks ago, so I guess we just connect the dots,’ Dart said.”
— “What Will Trump’s Rally in New Hampshire Be Like? It’s Anyone’s Guess,” by NYT’s Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni: “Three days before President Trump’s latest rally, in a state that Hillary Clinton narrowly won in 2016, the only thing that seems clear is that the president’s team has no idea what to expect.”
NEWSOM TO TRUMP: SHUSH … LAT: “Newsom says reopening of California schools to be based on safety, not pressure from Trump,” by Patrick McGreevy in Sacramento: “‘I’m not worried about the latest tweets’ from the president, Newsom said during a news conference Wednesday. ‘What we need to address is safely reopening schools and we need to make that a foundational principle. That to me is not negotiable.’
“Newsom said the state is providing local schools with face masks, gloves and sanitation supplies to ensure that those in classrooms are protected. But he said the virus is affecting some areas of the state more than others, so school districts may vary in when and how they resume instruction. ‘All of these things need to be managed at the local level with the foundational framework of keeping our kids and our teachers healthy and safe,’ Newsom said.”
ALSO DRIVING TODAY: BIDEN will tour and speak about his economic recovery plan at a metalworks facility in Dunmore, Pa. … The HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE is getting briefed on the Russia bounty situation at 9 a.m. … House Minority Leader KEVIN MCCARTHY will hold a news conference at 10:15 a.m. in the Capitol … Speaker NANCY PELOSI holds her news conference at 11 a.m.
Good Thursday morning.
WHAT TWITTER WILL BE ABLAZE ABOUT … JOHN HARRIS column: “A President Who Makes Us Puke—Just Like He Was Hired To Do”
WSJ: “FBI Probes Chinese Exile, Including Work With Former Trump Aide Steve Bannon,” by Aruna Viswanatha, Brian Spegele and Rebecca Davis O’Brien: “The FBI is examining exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui and the money used to fund his media efforts in the U.S., including his work with Steve Bannon, a former senior adviser to President Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.
“Federal Bureau of Investigation national security agents in recent months have asked people who know both men for information on Mr. Guo’s activities, including the source of funds of a media company linked to him that hired Mr. Bannon in 2018 as a consultant, the people said.
“As recently as last week, the FBI met with one person familiar with the companies tied to Mr. Guo, the people said. The probe has been under way for more than six months, and prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s offices in Manhattan and Brooklyn have been involved, some of the people said.”
MCCONNELL GOES FULL MASK … AP’S LISA MASCARO: “Trump aside, McConnell becomes GOP’s preacher on masks”
CORONAVIRUS RAGING …
— “Grim projection: 200,000 dead by Election Day,” by Dan Goldberg and Adam Cancryn: “It took just four weeks for the U.S. to jump from 2 million coronavirus infections to the 3 million mark. Most forecasters now say that, as case counts accelerate at a record pace, it will likely take even less time to surpass 4 million.”
— NYT: “U.S. Coronavirus Cases Reach Another Daily Record, Passing 59,000”: “As President Trump continued to press for a broader reopening of the United States, the country set another record for new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, with more than 59,400 infections announced, according to a New York Times database. It was the fifth national record set in nine days. The previous record, 56,567, was reported on Friday.
“The country reached a total of three million cases on Tuesday as the virus continued its resurgence in the West and the South. At least five states — Missouri, Texas, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia — set single-day records for new infections on Wednesday.”
— “America is running short on masks, gowns and gloves. Again,” by WaPo’s William Wan: “Health-care workers on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic are encountering shortages of masks, gowns, face shields and gloves — a frustrating recurrence of a struggle that haunted the first months of the crisis.
“Nurses say they are reusing N95 masks for days and even weeks at a time. Doctors say they can’t reopen offices because they lack personal protective equipment. State officials say they have scoured U.S. and international suppliers for PPE and struggle to get orders filled. Experts worry the problem could worsen as coronavirus infections climb, straining medical systems.”
HOW’S THIS FOR AN EXCUSE! … NYT, by Steve Eder and Ben Protess: “President Trump’s annual financial disclosure report was due to be released more than a week ago. But the filing, the only official public document detailing his personal finances, was not published, and neither the White House nor federal ethics officials offered a public explanation. The White House addressed the issue on Wednesday night. An official said Mr. Trump had requested a deadline extension because the report was ‘complicated’ and the president had ‘been focused on addressing the coronavirus crisis and other matters.’”
HOLLY OTTERBEIN and LAURA BARRÓN-LÓPEZ: “The left gets rolled on legalizing pot — and legal protections for cops”: “Joe Biden’s ‘unity’ task forces were created to bring the progressive wing of the Democratic Party into the fold after the sting of Bernie Sanders’ defeat. But on key policies involving the biggest issue of the day — criminal justice — the left flank got rolled.
“Amid nationwide protests against police brutality, the criminal justice panel formed by Biden and Sanders got into heated debates in recent weeks over qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that shields police from being sued for misconduct. Progressives pushed to end it, but Biden appointees agreed only to sign onto a commitment to rein in the rule.
“Another flash point over marijuana ended similarly: Sanders’ team argued in private meetings that they should legalize cannabis, but that idea was rejected. One task force member described the disagreements over qualified immunity and pot as ‘huge battles,’ and multiple people involved said the criminal justice panel presented some of the biggest challenges for compromise.” POLITICO
FORMER HAWAII GOP REP. CHARLES DJOU is endorsing BIDEN. DJOU served eight months in the House from 2010 to 2011. Video
TRUMP’S THURSDAY — The president will participate in a roundtable with Hispanic leaders at 2:15 p.m. in the Cabinet Room. He will sign an executive order on the “White House Hispanic Prosperity Initiative” at 3 p.m. in the Rose Garden.
PLAYBOOK READS
AREA FOOTBALL TEAM UPDATE — “Redskins’ review appears to be informal process; new name, logo unlikely to use native imagery,” by WaPo’s Les Carpenter: “When the Washington Redskins announced Friday that the organization is conducting a ‘thorough review’ of the team’s name, the statement did not say who would be doing the review, how long the study would take or what the franchise hoped to accomplish. … People familiar with this review and similar ones conducted by the Redskins in the past say it is a more informal process, primarily led by Snyder, with the owner speaking to key advisers and league officials.
“One development in the process is that the organization is not expected to use Native American imagery with its new name and logo, according to a person familiar with the deliberations of the team and league, but the person cautioned that plans are not finalized. ESPN also reported Wednesday the franchise is not planning to use native imagery.” WaPo
POLITICO Playbook newsletter
Sign up today to receive the #1-rated newsletter in politics
BEYOND THE BELTWAY … MATT FRIEDMAN: “A Kennedy strikes a blow to New Jersey’s most powerful political machine”: “George Norcross, a wealthy insurance executive, has for decades run New Jersey’s most vaunted Democratic political machine, a seemingly unstoppable behemoth that carries huge influence over who leads the state Legislature and what bills become law.
“But after a series of political and legal setbacks over the past year, culminating in Amy Kennedy’s landslide primary victory Tuesday over a Norcross-backed candidate in southern New Jersey’s 2nd Congressional District, some Democrats see signs that the machine’s grip on power is starting to slip.
“It’s a stunning turn of events. Just over a year ago Norcross, incensed by a state investigation that dug up dirt on his insurance brokerage and his allies, made a semi-veiled threat of a primary challenge to Gov. Phil Murphy.
“Fourteen months later, the question in New Jersey political circles isn’t whether the governor will face such a challenge. Rather, it’s just how weakened the Norcross machine has become, and whether his most influential ally, state Senate President Steve Sweeney, has reached the end of his time atop the chamber after more than a decade in power.”
— “Florida Democrats return PPP money amid scandal,” by Marc Caputo and Matt Dixon: “The Florida Democratic Party announced late Wednesday that it was returning at least $780,000 in small-business loans after its own lawmakers criticized the acceptance of the money as highly questionable if not illegal and unethical.
“The party immediately applied for the loan after Congress first passed the $670 billion Paycheck Protection Program, known as PPP, even though there was discussion at the time that the money should go to neither lobbyists nor political causes.” POLITICO
ACROSS THE POND … REUTERS: “Melania Trump statue set on fire in Slovenia”
THE FRIENDLY SKIES — “American, United stop flying to Hong Kong amid crew testing requirements,” by Sam Mintz and Brianna Gurciullo: “United Airlines and American Airlines have temporarily halted flights to Hong Kong after its government imposed coronavirus testing requirements for airline crews, the latest twist in a simmering scuffle between the U.S. and China over access to aviation markets.”
— WSJ: “United Airlines Warns It May Furlough 36,000 Staff,” by Doug Cameron and Alison Sider
PLAYBOOKERS
Send tips to Eli Okun and Garrett Ross at politicoplaybook@politico.com.
TRANSITIONS — Michael Hacker is joining TikTok’s Washington office. He most recently served as senior adviser to House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.). In addition to two stints working for Clyburn, Hacker previously worked for the late John Dingell and former Rep. David Bonior of Michigan. … Anna Pacilio is now national press secretary for EMILY’s List. She previously was director of women’s messaging for Beto O’Rourke’s presidential campaign, and is a Marc Veasey alum.
WELCOME TO THE WORLD — Jake Perry, founder and principal of Jake Perry + Partners, and Amanda Fox Perry, attorney at the Fay Law Group, on Wednesday welcomed Lila Elizabeth Perry, who came in at 7 lbs, 1 oz. Pic
BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: KP Trueblood, chief of staff at the ACLU. A trend she thinks doesn’t get enough attention: “Redistricting — as a truly nonpartisan issue. Politicians on both sides pick their people, instead of people picking their politicians. If we had federal and state maps that made sense, our representatives would look much more like the communities they represent. We’d have more representatives from directly impacted communities at the policymaking table.” Playbook Q&A
BIRTHDAYS: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is 65 … POLITICO’s Patrick Steel and David Wertime … Emma Doyle, deputy chief of staff for policy to first lady Melania Trump … Jaclyn Gelfond, deputy director of advance for Biden’s campaign (h/t TJ Ducklo) … Drew Hammill, deputy chief of staff for Speaker Nancy Pelosi … Lauren Nunnally, deputy assistant Treasury secretary (h/ts Justin Sok and Jennifer Pett) … HuffPost’s Amanda Terkel … Brian Blase, president and CEO of Blase Policy Strategies … Tom Beaumont, AP national political correspondent (h/t Teresa Vilmain) … Donna Imperato, CEO of BCW (h/t Catherine Sullivan) … Danny Diaz, a founding and managing partner at FP1 Strategies, is 45 (h/ts Emily Keith) … Donald Rumsfeld is 88 … Mohsin Syed, chief counsel for House T&I Dems, is 4-0 … Floyd Abrams is 84 … Fox Business’ Lori Rothman … Mercury’s Kirill Goncharenko … Sara Durr, comms director for the U.S. Conference of Mayors …
… Michael Abate … Patrick Stevenson, chief mobilization officer for the DNC … Megan Ortiz, COO at the Cohen Group … Mike Britt, SVP of public policy and comms at Red Rock Resorts Inc. … former Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) is 61 … former Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) is 67 … DOJ’s Mollie Timmons is 26 (h/t Kelly Laco) … Randall Jackson, partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher … Irene Jay Liu … Stephanie Gaskell … Spencer R. Schecht … George-Alexander Attia … Amanda Gonzalez Thompson … Tom Rossmeissl … NYT’s Amy Fiscus … Jimmy Bondi … Ann Lathrop … Libby Hambleton Sharp … Tim Schlittner … Elisa Bolduc … Caroline Scullin … Jerry Russo … Edna Ruano … Matthew Yurus … Jean Medina … Nick Rathod … CNN’s Jeff Simon … Goldman Sachs’ Amy Hunt … Qorvis’ Jennifer Baskerville … Mineko Tokito … Jeff Wexler … Emily Ethridge … Elizabeth McMahon … Doug Badger … Todd Kliman … Cathy St. Denis … Maria (Miller) Lohmeyer
Follow us on Twitter
AMERICAN MINUTE
CAFFEINATED THOUGHTS
|
CONSERVATIVE DAILY NEWS
|
PJ MEDIA
The Morning Briefing: Jill Biden Wants to Trash Her Husband’s Dignity to Be Edith Wilson 2.0
Jill Biden Is the Real Democrat Running for President
This first came up during a VIP Gold chat I did with Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey and Townhall’s Kurt Schlichter back in early May. We were discussing Joe Biden’s obvious decline and wondering whether he had anyone who loved him enough to stop this spectacle. We all know that his son Hunter is a little too busy with cocaine, his Chinese overlords/business associates, and avoiding his baby mama to care about Pops embarrassing himself. It’s Dr. Jill Biden who should be looking out for her man, but she seems to revel in his spotlight, no matter how painful it is to watch.
I said then that I truly believe Jill Biden wants to be Edith Wilson 2.0. Woodrow Wilson’s wife basically ran the White House after his stroke in 1919. She only had to do that for two years. I’m pretty sure that Jill Biden would like at least an eight-year run at the gig.
When Crazy Joe the Wonder Veep’s handlers first began letting him do videos from his quarantine basement, Jill was often sitting at his side, grinning like a proud mother whose idiot underachieving kid had just successfully recited the alphabet for the first time. It was, quite frankly, very creepy to watch.
I’m still convinced that the overarching Democratic National Committee plan is to get Biden elected, whisk him back to the basement until Inauguration Day, then tell everyone that he’s had a medical situation of some sort shortly after that. Then his progressive VP can take over the job of running the country off a progressive cliff.
I am also firmly convinced that Jill Biden has other plans.
For reasons beyond my comprehension, Team Biden keeps releasing videos of this drooling moron. They are all painful to watch, and it seems at times to be a little cruel to mock him. He is, however, making a bid for becoming the most powerful man in the world. As long as he is running, Biden is fair game.
Jill Biden knows that and she doesn’t care.
The longer the Joe Biden Obvious Decline Circus is allowed to go on, the more I’m convinced that Jill Biden is a power-hungry madwoman who so desperately wants to be in the White House that she is willing to subject her husband to what has now become bipartisan ridicule. If Joe Biden were your grandfather you would be worrying yourself into an ulcer about him and making sure that you helped him maintain as much dignity as possible.
This is yet another scenario that I would have considered a wild conspiracy theory just a year ago. The worse Biden gets, however, the more I’m convinced there’s something to it.
This Is So Sad for All of the Student-Athletes
After seeing my daughter’s collegiate athletic career come to an abrupt, unceremonious end because of this damn plague, I feel for these kids and their parents. This probably won’t be the last NCAA league to do this.
History Will Not Be Kind to Bill de Blasio
PJM Linktank
POP. CORN. Madison Ave. Business Sues Cuomo, De Blasio for Riots, Estimates $100M in Damages
Virtue Signaling Overload: Calif. Dems Try to Make False 911 Calls MORE Illegal With CAREN Act
Erdogan Looks to Assert Islamic Authority by Turning the Hagia Sophia Into a Mosque
America Is So ‘Racist’ That Another Guy Just Made Up a Bogus Hate Crime
Desperate Portlanders Should Thank Trump for Busting 7 More Accused Antifa Terrorists
Black Activists in Minneapolis: ‘Utopia Is a Bunch of B.S. We Are Not in Mayberry RFD’
Betsy DeVos Takes on Dems and COVID-19 Science-Deniers in the Teachers’ Union to Reopen Schools
VodkaPundit: Today’s Insanity Wrap: Racism Comes to Reddit, CAREN Comes for 911 Callers
Berkeley Students Looking to Defraud ICE by Creating Fake Class for Foreigners
Supreme Court Vastly Expands Religious Freedom in Obamacare Contraceptive Case
New Evidence Shows DOJ Was Skeptical of FBI’s Case Against Michael Flynn
Sanity prevails. For now. Chicago Blackhawks Announce They Will Keep Their Team Name and Mascot
Orwellian: Teacher Blames ‘Western Imperialism,’ ‘Colonization’ for Concept of 2+2=4
The Mask Revolt Is Just the Start of America’s New ‘Age of Defiance’
Media’s ‘Told Ya So’ Moment: Brazil President Tests Positive for Coronavirus
We Need More Statues and Ways to Interact With History, Not Less
Stossel: Fired for Speaking Truth
What Is Joe Biden Hiding? U of Delaware Refuses to Hand Over Docs, Prompting Lawsuit
Remember when Biden was the moderate option? Why Did Joe Biden Call Police ‘The Enemy?’
Don Lemon Shutting Down Criticism of BLM Is a Feature Not a Bug
VIP
Halle Berry Destroys the Very Idea of Acting in Caving to the Outrage Mob
VIP Gold
Schlichter: What Happens When Your Book Happens?
Ezra Klein’s Bizarre View On Free Speech Gives Us Frightening Insight to the Left
From the Mothership and Beyond
Bob Ross’ ‘The Joy of Painting’ gains new popularity during pandemic
Iowa City Lifts Ban On Guns In Public Buildings, Buses
The Second Amendment Sanctuary Movement Is Back
Meet The Pro-2A Trauma Surgeon Gunning For A U.S. Senate Seat
What The Guardian Fails To Ask About ‘Two Americas’
Coronavirus: Budget airline AirAsia’s future in ‘significant doubt’
Even his puppet masters are plagiarists. Uh Oh: Sleepy Joe’s Caught Stealing Policy Agendas… Again
Environmentalist Censored for Opposing Climate Alarmism
LAPD Investigating ‘Blue Flu’ Call-Out Over Fourth of July Weekend
Republicans Demand Answers From WHO After False Statement About China’s Coronavirus Response
Schlichter again: This Is A Great Opportunity To Destroy Academia
‘Sowing Division and Distrust:’ Sen. Loeffler Eviscerates Stacey Abrams
NYPD Speaks Out About Having Their Powers ‘Taken Away’
CDC Director: Our Guidelines Shouldn’t Be Used as a Reason to Keep Schools Closed
Super stable. Chelsea Handler Says She Would Scream at People Watching Fox News in the Airport
Could Durham Have Indictments Ready By Labor Day?
Former Fox News Anchor Shephard Smith Heads to CNBC as ‘Chief General News Anchor’
Kira: Lady A(ntebellum) Sues Black Singer Lady A Over Trademark Rights
British Court Finds Christopher Steele Lied About Parts of the Dossier
Another SUV Drives Through A BLM Road Blockade
AP Wonders: What Could Be Causing “A Surge In Violence” In America’s Cities?
Um…OK. Monmouth: People Don’t Think ‘Defund The Police’ Literally Means ‘Defunding’
Coming Soon To Trump Rallies: Statues?
Conjoined twins separated at Vatican-owned hospital
Savage: J.K. Rowling tells author to be sure to repent before unfollowing her on Twitter; Updated
It looks like NBA players aren’t impressed with the food inside the Orlando bubble
Stop, silly children. Ford employees ask the company to stop making police cars
These Disinfectants Have Been Proven to Work Against the Coronavirus
Opinion: Why is painting over a BLM sign a hate crime but these 5 vicious assaults are not?
Pro-life pregnancy center opens across from largest Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas
Bee Me
The Kruiser Kabana
We ride at dawn.
___
Kruiser Twitter
Kruiser Facebook
PJ Media Senior Columnist and Associate Editor Stephen Kruiser is the author of “Don’t Let the Hippies Shower” and “Straight Outta Feelings: Political Zen in the Age of Outrage,” both of which address serious subjects in a humorous way. Monday through Friday he edits PJ Media’s “Morning Briefing.” His columns appear twice a week.
THE DISPATCH
The Morning Dispatch: New COVID Cases Hit Daily Record
Plus, the questions that surround reopening schools in the fall.
The Dispatch Staff | 12 min |
Happy Thursday! Prepare yourself for some #data in this newsletter.
A reminder: This is the version of TMD available to non-paying readers. We’re happy you’ve made The Dispatch part of your morning routine, and we hope you’re enjoying The Morning Dispatch and the rest of our free editorial offerings. If you do, we hope you’ll consider joining us as a paying member. In addition to the full version of TMD each day, you’ll get extra editions of French Press, the G-File, Vital Interests, and our other paid products. And members can engage with the authors and with one another in the discussion threads at the end of each of our articles and newsletters. If this appeals to you, we hope you’ll please join now.
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- As of Wednesday night, 3,054,650 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the United States (an increase of 60,891 from yesterday) and 132,298 deaths have been attributed to the virus (an increase of 843 from yesterday), according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Dashboard, leading to a mortality rate among confirmed cases of 4.3 percent (the true mortality rate is likely much lower, between 0.4 percent and 1.4 percent, but it’s impossible to determine precisely due to incomplete testing regimens). Of 37,431,666 coronavirus tests conducted in the United States (553,560 conducted since yesterday), 8.2 percent have come back positive.
- In the penultimate day of the term, the Supreme Court delivered two wins for religious liberty advocates. In a 7-2 ruling, the court affirmed the Trump administration’s ability to exempt religious organizations like the Little Sisters of the Poor from an Affordable Care Act mandate that required covered employers to provide health insurance coverage for birth control. In another 7-2 decision, the high court also expanded the rights of religious institutions to hire and fire certain ministerial employees without being being subject to employment discrimination laws. The court is expected to hand down its decision on whether the president must turn over personal financial records to Congress and the New York County District Attorney later this morning.
- Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security in an effort to block its recently announced rule barring international college students from studying at universities that move entirely online when classes resume.
- Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman—a key witness in President Trump’s impeachment inquiry—announced via Twitter his retirement from the U.S. Army after more than 21 years of service. His lawyer said Vindman has experienced a “campaign of bullying, intimidation, and retaliation” since testifying in the inquiry last year.
- The Ivy League became the first Division I conference to suspend all fall sports in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The State of the Virus
After locking down economic activity almost entirely for two months in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, most states across the country began gradually moving through the White House Coronavirus Task Force’s phased reopening approach in mid-to-late May or early June. The result? We’ve seen 1,264,478 new confirmed COVID-19 cases since June 1, per the Johns Hopkins University dashboard, and 60,891—a daily record—yesterday alone.
Some of these numbers—as the president is wont to point out—can be attributed to increased testing capacity. The country conducted roughly 510,000 thousand COVID-19 tests per day in June, up from about 350,000 per day in May. But rate statistics show COVID-19 transmission is growing faster than our ability to test for it. In the first seven days of June, just 4.6 percent of tests came back positive. That figure is nearly double for the past week: 8.2 percent.
Increases in the daily number of new cases are happening in states across the country—36 to be exact—but trends in Arizona, Florida, Texas, and California are among the most worrisome.
Are Schools Going to Open in the Fall?
When the coronavirus pandemic led state and local officials to begin shutting things in mid-March, school closures were some of the most disruptive. Schools provide education, of course, but also child care, meals, and counseling to millions of children and their families across the country, five days a week. If the objective is to regain some semblance of normalcy in the fall, schools will have to reopen.
With the fall term set to begin in less than two months, schools—public and private, from pre-K to college—are grappling with exactly how and when to proceed. The president offered his two cents earlier this week:
But plenty of education systems are ignoring his demand. Harvard University made news on Monday when it announced that “all course instruction (undergraduate and graduate) for the 2020-21 academic year will be delivered online.” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio released the city’s hybrid approach for the fall on Wednesday: Some in-person an thlearning will be available to students, but only one to three days per week in order to promote social distancing. No more than 12 students will be permitted in classrooms at any given time.
But these two examples—although prominent—aren’t necessarily emblematic of the country at large. The University of Notre Dame announced in May its plan to reopen academics and athletics in the fall, and the University of Virginia will also resume full operation for all students in a few months. Many colleges are adopting a hybrid approach, encouraging students to return to in-person instruction but putting a cap on the number of students allowed in each class. Princeton University is welcoming freshmen and juniors to campus in the fall, and sophomores and seniors in the spring.
Worth Your Time
- Among the less-discussed casualties of the COVID-19 lockdowns: Victims of drug overdoses, domestic violence, and mental health crises. This piece from Jacob Stern in The Atlantic tackles the last of those three—predicting grim aftereffects of the coronavirus on our nation’s psychological health. Mixed messages from public health officials early on, combined with an already inadequate mental health-care system, will create a wave of psychological stress of massive proportions, he writes. “A pandemic, unlike an earthquake or a fire, is invisible, and that makes it all the more anxiety-inducing,” Stern writes. “Mental-health professionals can’t reassure [people living through a pandemic] that the danger has passed, because the danger has not passed.”
Presented Without Comment
Japan’s theme parks have banned screaming on roller coasters because it spreads coronavirus. “Please scream inside your heart.”
Toeing the Company Line
- The gang recorded a Dispatch Podcast yesterday! Tune in for a discussion of the open letter on free speech that ran in Harper’s, the school reopening debate, mask wearing and culture warring, and President Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech last Friday.
- In yesterday’s G-File, Jonah mounts a defense of the American founding, shedding light on the revolutionary liberal principles that drove the creation of a more perfect union. He disputes narratives that cast the American Revolution in the singular light of white supremacy, writing, “I understand that race is the most important issue—even the only issue—for a lot of people today. But it wasn’t then.”
- This week, Thomas Joscelyn takes a look into the Chinese Communist Party’s “Fox Hunt.” On its face, the campaign targets Chinese nationals at home and abroad suspected of corruption charges. In practice, the wide-reaching operation takes aim at a variety of political deviations from the CCP, investigating and repatriating dissidents through a vast espionage apparatus. Learn more in the latest edition of Vital Interests (🔒).
- Is there a better way to unpack a big day of Supreme Court decisions than by tuning into a bonus episode of Advisory Opinions? We don’t think so. Be sure to check out Sarah and David’s latest for an examination of the mounting legal tension between religious liberty and LGBTQ protections.
- On the site today, Ronald Rubin Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in which the majority found that the CFPB’s structure that allowed the director to be removed by the president only “for cause” to be unconstitutional. Rubin explains how the decision could have a lasting effect on the administrative state.
Reporting by Declan Garvey (@declanpgarvey), Andrew Egger (@EggerDC), Sarah Isgur (@whignewtons), Charlotte Lawson (@charlotteUVA), Audrey Fahlberg (@FahlOutBerg), Nate Hochman (@njhochman), and Steve Hayes (@stephenfhayes).
Photograph by Tom Pennington/Getty Images.
LEGAL INSURRECTION
|
THE DAILY WIRE
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
DESERET NEWS
|
BRIGHT
|
AMERICAN THINKER
|
|
LARRY J. SABATO’S CRYSTAL BALL
|
||||||||
KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE— Over the last few decades, Georgia has gone from a swing state to reliably GOP. But it’s now looking like a genuinely competitive state again. — Democrats have made major inroads in both urban Atlanta and its suburbs, but their gains have been somewhat blunted by the sharp Republican trend in other parts of the state. — In the state’s regular Senate election this year, we’re downgrading Sen. David Perdue’s chances from Likely Republican. We now have both Georgia’s seats rated as Leans Republican. Table 1: Senate rating change
States of Play: GeorgiaThough the fundamental camps of red states and blue states have remained relatively static since the 2000 presidential election, some states have entered — or left — the intermediate purple state category since then. Such is the case with Georgia. Since George W. Bush’s double-digit margins there in 2000 and 2004, Democrats have made serious efforts to turn it blue. In fact, despite performing 5% worse nationally than Barack Obama in 2008, Hillary Clinton matched his showing in Georgia. Maybe Bush’s dominance in the state was an aberration: After all, he’s the only Republican presidential nominee who has carried the state twice. Either way, as part of the Crystal Ball‘s States of Play series, we’ll be looking at why Georgia may be one of the most hotly-contested states this fall. A recent historyLike most of the South, Georgia was a Democratic stronghold for most of the 20th century. Georgia was so reliably Democratic that, in the razor-close 1960 election, John F. Kennedy got a higher share there (62.5%) than in his home state of Massachusetts (60.2%). Democrats consistently won all the state executive offices with ease, and enjoyed plush majorities in the legislature. By the 1990s, Georgia looked like a truly competitive two-party state. The Atlanta suburbs served as the early bastion of Republicanism in the state, while in the rural areas, whites were steadily shaking off their Democratic roots — this was a familiar pattern throughout the South at the time. Let’s look back at how state politics has evolved since then. During the 1990s, Gov. Zell Miller was the most prominent statewide Democrat. An institution in state politics, he served as lieutenant governor for 16 years before winning a promotion in 1990. As governor, he was known for establishing the state’s popular HOPE Scholarship. But Miller was term-limited in 1998. State Rep. Roy Barnes (D) was elected governor by defeating a wealthy self-funder, Guy Millner (R). Despite his loss, Millner will be a recurring character in our historical analysis: In addition to his 1998 candidacy, he was the GOP nominee against Miller in 1994, and he ran for Senate in between those cycles, in 1996 — in all three cases, he lost the general election by single-digits. In terms of timing, there are few more frustrating storylines in electoral politics than Millner’s ballad; had he run a decade later, he would have almost certainly had better luck, given that the state had become more Republican in the 2000s. In any case, during his time in office, Barnes earned the nickname “King Roy” for his ability to pass his agenda in the state legislature. He is best known for spearheading the movement to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag. Though this was supported by Blacks and moderate suburbanites, it was unpopular among rural white voters across the state. Barnes was also hurt by his administration’s education policy 2002 ended up being a breakout year for Peach State Republicans. Barnes was challenged by state Senate President Pro Tempore Sonny Perdue (R). Rural whites, who were alienated by Barnes during the state flag episode, propelled Perdue to a 51%-46% win — it was considered a major upset at the time. He became the first Republican to win the governor’s mansion since Reconstruction. At the same time, Democratic Sen. Max Cleland was defeated by Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss. Both Perdue and Chambliss hailed from the more rural southern part of the state, and defeated Atlanta area-based Democratic opponents — this dynamic would mark future statewide races as well. Aside from the statewide races, the sweetest victory for Republicans was ousting state House Speaker Tom Murphy (D). Representing a rural western district, Murphy had led the chamber since 1973. After defeating Barnes, Republicans continued to make gains in the state. In 2000, Barnes appointed Miller to the Senate following the death of Republican Sen. Paul Coverdell. Miller easily won the special election that November but did not seek a full term in 2004 — the same year the conservative Democrat spoke in favor of President George W. Bush’s reelection at the Republican National Convention. Georgia Republican Rep. Johnny Isakson easily flipped the open seat, and across the South, Republicans flipped open Senate seats in four other states. In 2006, Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor (D) challenged Perdue for reelection. Perdue won in a landslide, 58%-38%. Exit polling from 2006 showed Perdue winning 17% of the Black vote — impressive for a southern Republican. Down the ballot, state Sen. Casey Cagle (R) flipped the open Lieutenant Governor’s office, becoming the first Republican lieutenant governor in Georgia history. In 2008, Barack Obama made a serious play for Georgia’s electoral votes, but the state ultimately stuck with GOP nominee John McCain by five percentage points. Obama’s coattails were enough to hold Sen. Saxby Chambliss under 50% on Election Day, but he won the ensuing runoff with ease the next month — we’ll talk more about Georgia’s unique runoffs later. In 2010, Barnes sought to regain the governor’s mansion, but lost to then-Rep. Nathan Deal (R, GA-9). Further cementing their dominance, Republicans won all the statewide executive offices and netted seats in the legislature. Democrats continued to express optimism about regaining their lost ground in the state but came up short cycle after cycle. In 2014, Chambliss decided not to seek a third term — that gave the Democrats a rare offense opportunity in a year where they were largely focused on defending their Senate majority. Michelle Nunn, the daughter of longtime former Sen. Sam Nunn (D), was the Democratic nominee for the open seat. One of Nunn’s ads featured an endorsement from Zell Miller — since leaving office in 2004, he had mostly endorsed Republicans, so Miller had rare credibility. Wealthy businessman David Perdue — cousin of then-former Gov. Sonny Perdue — emerged from a crowded primary and then a won a close runoff. In the race for governor, Deal stood for a second term against state Sen. Jason Carter (D), the grandson of President Jimmy Carter. Despite being highly touted by the national party, both Nunn and Carter lost by an eight-point margin. In 2016, Donald Trump won the state over Hillary Clinton 50%-45%, and Sen. Isakson won reelection by double-digits against minimal Democratic opposition. Though Clinton lost the state, there were some signs of a shift in the Atlanta suburbs. Cobb County and Gwinnett County, two suburban counties that backed Mitt Romney in 2012, voted for Clinton. She managed to hold Trump to just a 1.5-point victory in the 6th Congressional District, a suburban seat in north Atlanta that was long the anchor of the state’s GOP coalition. These political shifts can be attributed to a huge demographic change in suburban Atlanta, as well as anti-Trump sentiment among white moderates, particularly women. Gwinnett County, in particular, has a growing Asian and Hispanic community. In fact, an analysis by Elections Daily argues that even though North Carolina voted for Obama in 2008, it lacks a county comparable to Gwinnett — so Georgia may actually be a better Electoral College target for Democrats than the Tar Heel State. Writing in the Center for Politics’ post-2018 book, The Blue Wave, National Journal Hotline reporter Madelaine Pisani recalled that in 2018, Georgia Democrats were excited about the candidacy of Stacey Abrams — she was their leader in the state House and the first Black woman to be nominated by either party for governor in any state. Her Republican opponent was then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who defeated Cagle in a GOP runoff after earning Trump’s endorsement. 2018 was a very polarizing general campaign, with accusations of voter suppression and hacking. Kemp narrowly prevailed by 1.4%, though Abrams made major inroads in metro Atlanta. Abrams took 54% in Cobb County and 57% in Gwinnett County — they had voted GOP for governor four years earlier — but Kemp’s rural strength carried the day. Democrats did see some success in non-statewide races, though. After losing a high-profile special election there in 2017, they flipped GA-6, and nearly took the neighboring GA-7. Democrats also improved their standing in the state legislature, as they gained about a dozen seats that were located, mostly, in the northern Atlanta suburbs. This time around, a preponderance of recent polling suggests Georgia is competitive. The Biden campaign will aim to hold and expand on Democrats’ new coalition of suburban voters, but outreach to Black voters in rural Georgia should be a priority. Still, the state has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1996, so Democrats’ optimism needs to be tempered with some dose of caution. But if the national picture doesn’t improve for Trump, Georgia’s 16 electoral votes could end up in the blue column. Shifting regions move Georgia into playThe divergent political currents churning within Georgia have helped push it to swing state status, so breaking things down by region may be insightful. James Comerford, a Georgia-based friend of the Crystal Ball, condensed the state’s 159 counties down into 18 political regions (Map 1). Map 1: Regions of GeorgiaTable 2: Georgia regions by race and 2016 partisanshipLike many states, politics in Georgia is often cast as a tug-of-war between a major urban area — in this case, Atlanta — and the rest of the state. In some ways, the breakdown bears this out: 4.8 million residents, or just over 47% of the state’s 2018 population, live in either the Urban Atlanta or Suburban Atlanta regions. In 2010, the two regions claimed a lesser 45.5% of the statewide population, so they’ve grown at a rate faster than the state as a whole. Add in the non-contiguous Exurban Atlanta (purple on Map 1), and the three Atlanta regions claim 52% of the state’s 2018 population. In 2016, Clinton carried the combined Urban and Suburban Atlanta regions 57%-40% — but that couldn’t make up for her 62%-35% deficit in the rest of the state. In 2008, Barack Obama lost the state by the same 5%, and his formula was similar, but the gap was less severe: he carried those two Atlanta regions by an aggregate 55%-44% while losing the rest of the state about 60%-40%. Atlanta is the metro area that receives the most attention in Georgia — perhaps merited, given its size — but Comerford identifies four key metro regions south of Atlanta: Columbus, Macon, Augusta, and Savannah. Each is at least 1/3 Black, giving Democrats something of a base to work with. On either side of the state, Clinton carried the Columbus and Augusta regions in 2016, while doing slightly worse than her statewide performance in Savannah and Macon (each region gave Trump 52%, compared to his overall 50%). Just east of Atlanta, the Athens region is somewhat competitive. Though it’s more than two-thirds white, the faculty and employees of the University of Georgia make Athens-Clarke County blue, but that’s more than cancelled out by the presence of a few adjacent, ruby red counties in the region. While much talk about Georgia’s political trends centers on Atlanta’s suburbs, other parts of the state have seen even more dramatic shifts. Let’s consider two recent gubernatorial elections. In 1994, Democratic Gov. Zell Miller was running for reelection. As discussed at the beginning of the article, 1994 was Republican Guy Millner’s first statewide run. Against a well-financed opponent, Miller admits in his autobiography, “I barely got by,” while noting that he was lucky to win, even as bigger personalities in the Democratic Party, such as New York’s Mario Cuomo and Texas’ Ann Richards, went down in that red wave year. If Miller scraped by in a red wave year, 2018 was the opposite. With a favorable national environment, Democrats were optimistic about winning the governorship with Abrams as their gubernatorial nominee. Despite Democrats’ high expectations, Abrams came up just short. Comparing Miller’s 2% win to Abrams’ narrow loss, some highly nationalized trends emerge (Map 2). Map 2: Georgia 1994 and 2018 governor by regionWhile the blue wave in 2018 aided Abrams in the suburbs, her biggest improvement over Miller actually came in Urban Atlanta. She more than doubled Miller’s margin, taking his 23% edge there up to a 57% margin. Though 53% of the region’s population is Black, that it has a large contingent of wealthier, college-educated whites — specifically in the northern part of Fulton County — suggests that Democratic gains there weren’t driven by minority voters alone. Outside of metro Atlanta, the sole region Abrams flipped from Millner was Augusta. Comerford defines the region as the duo of Richmond County — which is coterminous with the city of Augusta — and Columbia County, which is less urban. Looking at long-term demographic trends, the increasing presence of minority voters does seem to be a factor in its political shift. In 1994, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that the Richmond-Columbia County pair was 58.5% white — by 2018, that dropped to 49.6%. Abrams won the same four regions that Clinton carried in 2016: Urban Atlanta, plus the smaller Augusta and Columbus metros, as well as the Southwest, with its sizable rural Black population. In 1994, there was a notable lack of landslide regions. Of the 18 regions, only two, Urban Atlanta and Columbus, gave either candidate more than a 20% margin, and they were both in Miller’s favor. By 2018, landslide regions were a hallmark of the map — only eight regions were within 20%, and as the maps show, that had much to do with the rural regions swinging to Kemp. Exit polling from 1994 pegged the Georgia electorate at 16% Black. In 2018, post-election statistics from the Georgia Secretary of State showed that number had nearly doubled, to 29%. That the Democratic margin got worse despite the growth of the Black share of the electorate — a very Democratic demographic — speaks to the massive red shift among rural whites. As unusual as this seems in today’s context, until the mid-2000s, rural whites in southern Georgia used to be a prime swing constituency. Let’s consider another pair of elections, this time from 1998. In 1998, GOP Sen. Paul Coverdell was reelected to a second term 52%-45%. Though it was a single-digit race, the last three cycles that Coverdell’s seat was up — 1980, 1986, and 1992 — the result was 51%-49% vote either way. So Coverdell’s 7% win in 1998 was a relative landslide, and it looked like the Republican had begun to lock down the seat (though he tragically died two years later). Down the ballot, after Miller hung on in that 1994 gubernatorial race, Democrats had an easier time holding his office. In a more neutral year and against the same Republican candidate (Millner) who ran four years earlier, Roy Barnes won the governorship by just over 8%. 1998 was the last time that Georgia split its ticket in its big contests, with Coverdell and Barnes each sporting comfortable, though not overwhelming, margins. (Map 3) Map 3: Georgia in 1998On Barnes’ map, an anomaly — by today’s standards — is the Southwest. As Crystal Ball guest columnist Drew Savicki pointed out in an article earlier this year, the region is split about evenly between Blacks and blue collar whites. The latter group has trended GOP, as the party has taken a more populist direction, while the former has generally turned out in lower numbers since President Obama left office. Rep. Sanford Bishop (D), the area’s longtime representative, carved out a unique niche as a moderate Black incumbent, but his crossover appeal doesn’t extend to all local Democrats. In 1998, the Southwest was Barnes’ best region, giving him a 66%-33% vote compared to his 64%-33% margin in Urban Atlanta. With those trends in mind, let’s look at how the down ballot picture is shaping up this year. At the senatorial level, the Peach State is in a rare situation — in what we call a “double-barrel” scenario, both its Senate seats are up this year. Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) was scheduled to face voters this year anyway, while in late 2019, his colleague Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) stepped aside, citing his health. Isakson was replaced by wealthy businesswoman Kelly Loeffler (R-GA). A critical structural difference between the contests is that the special election will be held under Louisiana-style “jungle primary” rules — if no candidate clears 50% in an all-party primary in November, an early January runoff will be in order. The regular Senate electionThe Crystal Ball last visited Georgia in April, when we changed the rating of the regular Senate race from Leans Republican to Likely Republican. Since then, Democrats do seem to have picked up some momentum against Sen. Perdue. Though the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee didn’t endorse him before last month’s contest, 2017 GA-6 special election candidate Jon Ossoff (D) emerged as the frontrunner in the Democratic primary and won the nomination outright. Had Ossoff fallen under 50%, a nine-week runoff against a fellow Democrat would have been in the offing. In April, Perdue himself seemed to be sounding the alarm, warning donors that Democrats have made the state competitive. In fact, Republican outside groups are starting to come in with major ad buys. Perhaps we were a bit too bullish on the GOP’s prospects in moving the race to Likely Republican. Presidential polling in Georgia is close, and it seems like the regular Senate race will be more closely linked to that than we originally anticipated. Leans Republican seems like the fairer rating. The Senate special electionThe special election for U.S. Senate in Georgia is living up to its name. Appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler is trying to hold her seat, but she faces stiff competition on the Republican side from Rep. Doug Collins (R, GA-9), whose national profile skyrocketed during the House impeachment investigation. On the Democratic side, the national party is trying to rally around the Rev. Raphael Warnock, who preaches at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church. Loeffler was on the receiving end of bad news headlines earlier this year after it was revealed that she and her husband sold millions of dollars in personal stock following a White House briefing on the coronavirus. Though federal investigators cleared Loeffler of any wrongdoing, the story may have damaged her standing with the voters, as many were introduced to her through the negative headlines. Her unfavorable rating was as high as 59% in a May poll. She has a lot of time (and money) to turn things around, but it’s hardly an ideal vantage point, especially for a new senator. Special elections, particularly jungle primaries, tend to be very unpredictable. We are going to keep this race at Leans Republican for now, but Democrats’ best shot at winning this seat would be an outright victory in November, as the runoff election in January would likely have lower turnout. But because there are multiple Democratic candidates, including former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman’s son, Matt, an outright victory by Warnock seems very unlikely. As University of Georgia professor Charles Bullock summed up in the Crystal Ball’s post-2002 book, Midterm Madness, “being a Georgia senator used to be a career.” Bullock contrasted the shorter tenures of the state’s more recent senators to some of its former members from the 20th century — such as Richard Russell, Herman Talmadge, and Sam Nunn, who each spent decades in the chamber. Loeffler’s tenure may end up taking Bullock’s maxim to the extreme, but the dynamics of the race favor Republicans. In Senate races, runoffs offer Republicans an insurance policyDigging back into the state’s history, one of the biggest hurdles for Democrats in Georgia this year is that it’s the only state (aside from a state like Louisiana, which uses a jungle primary system with a 50% threshold for victory) that requires general election runoffs if no candidate clears 50% of the vote in November. In neighboring North Carolina, it’s easy to see the Democratic nominee, Cal Cunningham, squeak by in November with a plurality — in fact, his opponent, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) did just that in 2014, as he won 49%-47%. But Georgia requires that candidates, except for those running in presidential contests, must win a majority of the vote. Since the 1990s, the runoff dynamic has helped Republicans. In 1992, Bill Clinton carried Georgia with a 43.5% plurality. Down the ballot, Sen. Wyche Fowler (D-GA) was held to just 49.2%, and was forced into a runoff a few weeks later against his Republican challenger, Paul Coverdell. In the runoff, Coverdell won 51%-49%, as turnout was down by nearly 50% — perhaps Democrats, who had just flipped the presidency and held their majority in the Senate, had gotten complacent after the initial vote. After that senatorial loss in 1992, Democrats in the legislature, under Speaker Murphy, repealed the runoff law — sure enough, that change paid dividends. When Clinton was up for reelection, he expanded his margin nationally, but did so without Georgia’s electoral votes. Clinton’s coattails were notoriously short that year, but Democrats held the seat of veteran Sen. Sam Nunn. Max Cleland, at the time the Democratic Secretary of State, finished with 48.9% to Republican Guy Millner’s 47.5% (yes, that one). If that race had gone to a runoff, a redux of 1992 could have played out, especially considering voters’ willingness to split their tickets that year, and to the benefit of congressional Republicans. In 2008, amidst a national wave in their favor, Senate Democrats targeted Sen. Saxby Chambliss but the race was considered something of a reach — in part, because by 2008, Georgia’s law requiring general election runoffs had been reinstated. As Obama lost the state by a respectable 52%-47%, Chambliss was held to 49.8% on Election Day. In the ensuing December runoff, a familiar pattern took hold: as turnout dropped by more than 40%, Chambliss beat the Democratic nominee, former state legislator Jim Martin, by 15%. As with 1992, Democrats won the presidency and were already in firm control of Congress, so any sense of urgency seemed to evaporate after the November election. The pattern of Democratic underperformance in runoffs is a key reason why we don’t have either race rated as more competitive than Leans Republican. Perhaps, for the regular election, Ossoff’s polling will improve to the point that winning outright in November seems feasible. For now, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Recent polling from Fox News gives Perdue a 45%-42% edge — within the margin of error, to be sure, but Ossoff isn’t close to 50%. The special election seems headed to Jan. 5 runoff regardless of the November outcome, given the structure of the race. If control of the chamber is in play — a real possibility — the dynamics could be volatile. Congressional racesIn addition to the Senate races, national political observers will certainly be watching two congressional races in the Atlanta area. Moving northeast from the state capitol building in Atlanta, Interstate 85 runs right through the heart of Georgia’s 7th Congressional District. It is one of the fastest-growing districts in the United States. The bulk of the district’s residents are in diverse Gwinnett County. GA-7 also takes in most of Forsyth County, which is wealthier and much whiter, but has a high share of college graduates. For the past several decades, neither side saw the area as especially competitive — but that’s changed in the Trump era. Despite the broadly favorable national environment, GA-7 was not seen as a top pickup opportunity for Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections. As Trump received 51% of the vote here in 2016, the Republican incumbent, Rob Woodall, was reelected with more than 60% of the vote. Trump’s showing here was a huge drop from McCain and Romney, whose numbers were both on par with Woodall’s. Still, GA-7 ultimately ended up being the site of the closest House race in the country in 2018. Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux, a college professor, held Woodall to a victory of fewer than 500 votes. Following his narrow reelection, Woodall — who was initially elected in 2010, when the seat was much more amicable to Republicans — announced in early 2019 that he would not run for reelection in 2020. His retirement triggered crowded primaries on both sides. To the surprise of at least some observers, neither primary was forced to a runoff. Bourdeaux and emergency room physician Rich McCormick (R) managed to emerge from crowded primaries with more than 50% of vote, and the race is now in general election mode. In addition to her name recognition, Bourdeaux also has the trends of the district, and state, on her side. Fox News polling from late June showed Biden with a slight lead in Georgia. If this is the case, it is not difficult to imagine Biden doing well in GA-7. In the 2018 gubernatorial race, Abrams lost statewide by 1.4% but carried GA-7 by exactly that margin. As Map 4 shows, Abrams’ showing was a dramatic improvement from how Barack Obama fared there a decade earlier. Map 4: GA-7 in 2008 and 2018Looking to November, Georgia seems poised to receive attention from both sides, up and down the ballot. While it does seem to be shifting more into the purple state category, if Biden carries the state, he would likely already be over 270 electoral votes. With one, or both, of its Senate races likely heading to a runoff, political junkies could have Georgia on their minds even after the November general elections. Finally, Georgia’s two competitive House seats speak to the rapid pace of changes that parts of the state have seen. In 2016, the Crystal Ball rated both GA-6 and GA-7 as Safe Republican. After nearly a full term of the Trump presidency, Democrats are favored to hold the former and have at least an even money chance to flip the latter.
|
||||||||
The Clock’s Ticking for Kanye And anyone else who wants to make a late entry into the presidential race |
||||||||
By Kyle Kondik Managing Editor, Sabato’s Crystal Ball |
||||||||
KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE— Kanye West tweeted over the weekend that he is running for president. — He has already missed some state deadlines to file for president as an independent, and other deadlines loom. Presidential filing deadlines loomRapper Kanye West tweeted the following over the weekend: “We must now realize the promise of America by trusting God, unifying our vision and building our future. I am running for president of the United States! #2020VISION” He also spoke with Forbes. As best as we can tell, West has not taken any concrete steps toward running for president. He stressed that he has 30 days to decide because of filing deadlines, although he’s actually already missed a few. West’s tweet prompted us to look at the various state filing deadlines to run for president as an independent. If West or someone else wanted to gear up and try to run a national campaign for president, could they? The answer is, for the most part, yes, but the hour grows late. Table 1 shows the filing deadlines for all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, to get on the ballot as an independent presidential candidate. We gathered this information through the Federal Election Commission, the Green Papers, Ballotpedia, Ballot Access News, and official state sources. These deadlines refer to the last day a candidate can file to actually be on the ballot; in some instances, there are later deadlines to be an official write-in candidate. Just as a caveat, it is possible that some of these deadlines have changed because of the pandemic (some of those changes are reflected in our table). If you see a deadline we need to update, or if you’re curious about how we determined which filing deadline to include on our list when sources conflicted, please email us at goodpolitics@virginia.edu. As we did our research for Table 1, we had this thought: If Kanye actually goes through with this, he could use a good lawyer. The filing deadlines are sometimes hard to find and to understand. Table 1: Independent filing deadlines for president by stateSome of these dates and requirements may be in flux. For instance, Constitution Party nominee Don Blankenship filed a lawsuit Tuesday against California that seeks relief from the state’s requirement that independent presidential candidates get nearly 200,000 signatures by Aug. 7 to appear on the ballot in the nation’s largest state. The California signature count is the highest we saw in our research, and some states just charge a fee in lieu of signatures. Did we mention that Kanye could use a good lawyer if he runs for president? So too could anyone else who decides to take the plunge at this late point. — Crystal Ball interns Ella Berg, Ellie Bowen, Tommy Dannenfelser, Halinta Diallo, Tanmay Gupta, Micah Rucci, Eva Surovell, Krishan Patel, and Bennett Stillerman helped research this piece. Read the fine printLearn more about the Crystal Ball and find out how to contact us here. Sign up to receive Crystal Ball e-mails like this one delivered straight to your inbox. Use caution with Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and remember: “He who lives by the Crystal Ball ends up eating ground glass!” |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
© Copyright by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia |
THE BLAZE
View this email in your browser
July 9, 2020 Trending now
Thug caught on video repeatedly stabbing Brooklyn deli customer — for staring
Nutritionist reveals top 3 harmful foods to avoid in 2020 Sponsored
More from TheBlaze
Democratic Houston mayor shuts down Texas GOP convention over COVID — after he marched in protests
Listen live to Blaze Radio Tune in to the next generation of talk radio, featuring original content from hosts like Glenn Beck, Pat Gray, Stu Burguiere, Steve Deace and more!
One last thing … Kanye West throws away MAGA hat, slams Democratic Party, and explains his presidential campaign Rapper Kanye West revealed Wednesday that he no longer supports President Donald Trump. West, who announced over the weekend that he would run for president in 2020, told Forbes in a wide-ranging interview that he has decided to lay aside his red “Make America Great Again” ball cap. “I am taking the red hat off, with this interview,” West sai … Read more
You might like …
© 2020 Blaze Media LLC. All Rights Reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in to receive emails from Blaze Media. Privacy Policy | Manage your preferences | Unsubscribe 8275 S. Eastern Ave, Ste 200-245 Las Vegas, Nevada, 89123, USA
|
THE FEDERALIST
NOQ REPORT
NOQ Report Daily |
- Republicans must assume there will be no debates
- Brie Larson’s YouTube launch is just as out of touch as you would think
- 30-second clip of Joe Biden struggling mightily to read a teleprompter
- Don Lemon actually gave good advice to African-Americans in 2013
- WA gubernatorial candidate Tim Eyman: ‘Kshama Sawant, you should be in jail, not behind a microphone’
- Amaze.org wants to pay your kids to watch sex education videos
- California AB 262 is the ultimate coronavirus authoritarian loophole
- Stand by for a post-Independence Day pivot on Antifa rioting that would make George Orwell proud
Republicans must assume there will be no debates
Posted: 09 Jul 2020 04:55 AM PDT There are two secrets within DNC circles that are extremely obvious to anyone paying attention. The first is one we’ll cover later, that de facto nominee Joe Biden will be replaced either before the election or after it if he wins. For now, I want to cover the second worst-kept secret in Democratic land, that they do not want Biden in front of a camera for prolonged periods of time, and that definitely includes debates against President Trump. He can’t speak well alone on camera with a teleprompter in front of him. The DNC and his campaign have no illusion that he’ll be able to hold his own against President Trump one-on-one in front of a national audience. Therefore, they will do whatever they can to limit or completely eliminate the presidential debates. Their proxies are already planting the seeds for this by proposing ludicrous criteria for the debates to move forward. In the latest episode of the Conservative Playbook podcast, JD describes why he believes Republicans must move forward with the assumption that the debates won’t happen. If they do, great! Be pleasantly surprised. But assume they won’t because there seems to be complacency among those in his base. It’s common to see comments to stories about polls that say, “Just wait for the debates.” The DNC will do everything in its power to prevent any debates from happening. We have to treat every day like it’s our only opportunity to make the righteous case for President Trump’s reelection. Joe Biden is a coward. Remind people of that daily. Check out the NEW NOQ Report Podcast. American Conservative MovementJoin fellow patriots as we form a grassroots movement to advance the cause of conservatism. The coronavirus crisis has prompted many, even some conservatives, to promote authoritarianism. It’s understandable to some extent now, but it must not be allowed to embed itself in American life. We currently have 8000+ patriots with us in a very short time. If you are interested, please join us to receive updates.
The post Republicans must assume there will be no debates appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes. |
Brie Larson’s YouTube launch is just as out of touch as you would think
Posted: 09 Jul 2020 04:54 AM PDT While YouTube was once a community where Average Joe’s through hard work, time, and luck could build a following producing content on stuff they love, times have changed where the social media giant is more concerned about the type of content on the site. The content must be safe, free of any wrongthink. Last week, NOQ Report reported that YouTube’s social justice algorithm targeted a chess channel, for what probably amounted to a comment like “white knight takes black pawn” or something ridiculous of the sort. The debut of Brie Larson’s channel is every bit an intentional scheme against smaller voices on the site. Brie Larson’s debut is an attempt to sound spontaneous while flaunting a plethora of Susan Wojcicki approved content creators, indicating a massive amount of coordination. The other contemptuous detail is that Brie Larson appears to think herself the content people want to see, as she crowdsources ideas to talk about while towing the politically correct agenda. There is no better YouTuber to welcome Brie Larson than The Critical Drinker, who not only tore apart Captain Marvel but also put a video out on how to make the film palatable. One of the top comments on Larson’s debut was to invite The Critical Drinker as a guest. For obvious reasons, Captain Marvel will avoid the pleb creators. After all, YouTube is promoting the stunning and brave plank of wood and giving her a free pass to the top that would take years for talented creators to achieve. The fact that an elitist Hollywood actress is promoted content according to YouTube spells danger for politically incorrect risk takers out there. The time may come where they are no longer welcome. In the meantime, it appears YouTube is curating approved content for the site’s 1984 future. Still, the disrespect YouTube has for the plebs that they would put out such mediocre politically correct content is worth noting. Perhaps there are no upcoming gigs for the actress. Or maybe she answered the petition for Brie Larson to step down as Captain Marvel so a gay woman of color can take over? And so she has nothing better to do. Yet this acting performance is less sincere and more out of touch than Aaron Paul’s racism video. It’s unfortunate because this YouTube promotion could be going towards black transvestite content creators. Check out the NEW NOQ Report Podcast. American Conservative MovementJoin fellow patriots as we form a grassroots movement to advance the cause of conservatism. The coronavirus crisis has prompted many, even some conservatives, to promote authoritarianism. It’s understandable to some extent now, but it must not be allowed to embed itself in American life. We currently have 8000+ patriots with us in a very short time. If you are interested, please join us to receive updates.
The post Brie Larson’s YouTube launch is just as out of touch as you would think appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes. |
30-second clip of Joe Biden struggling mightily to read a teleprompter
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 07:38 PM PDT In an ideal world, we wouldn’t have to talk very much about Joe Biden. He has continuously demonstrated during literally every opportunity he has in front of a camera that his mental acuity is diminishing rapidly. That ideal world that we envision wouldn’t have such strong Trump Derangement Syndrome rampant across America that Democrats willfully ignore the signs. They’re sticking their collectivist heads in the sand in hopes that whoever he chooses as his Vice President will be competent. I’d call this video the latest example of his fading cognitive skills, but he may have been on camera between the time we posted this and the time you watched it. Nevertheless, this one is bad. It started going downhill when he read “poised” as “posed” and he was never able to recover.
There will be no teleprompters in the room if Joe Biden is sitting across the table from Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, or Kim Jong un. Even if there were, he’d struggle to read them. That should terrify any Democrat, as well as Americans.
Check out the NEW NOQ Report Podcast. American Conservative MovementJoin fellow patriots as we form a grassroots movement to advance the cause of conservatism. The coronavirus crisis has prompted many, even some conservatives, to promote authoritarianism. It’s understandable to some extent now, but it must not be allowed to embed itself in American life. We currently have 8000+ patriots with us in a very short time. If you are interested, please join us to receive updates.
The post 30-second clip of Joe Biden struggling mightily to read a teleprompter appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes. |
Don Lemon actually gave good advice to African-Americans in 2013
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 07:18 PM PDT CNN’s Don Lemon is a joke. He has transitioned from being a semi-relevant journalist to a social justice political commentator who doesn’t even recognize his own massive ideological contradictions. He took heat from many, including some on the left, for his terrible “interview” of America’s Got Talent host Terry Crews, interrupting him throughout and generally making a mockery of his own stance on live television. But he wasn’t always a social justice political commentator. Back in 2013, he gave some pretty sound advice to African-Americans that today would be considered downright conservative.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson picked up on this tonight as well.
Will cancel culture advocates find this video? Will Don Lemon talk about this on his show and say his views have “evolved”? Will he accept his past credibility or continue to clown himself to all but the most woke? Check out the NEW NOQ Report Podcast. American Conservative MovementJoin fellow patriots as we form a grassroots movement to advance the cause of conservatism. The coronavirus crisis has prompted many, even some conservatives, to promote authoritarianism. It’s understandable to some extent now, but it must not be allowed to embed itself in American life. We currently have 8000+ patriots with us in a very short time. If you are interested, please join us to receive updates.
The post Don Lemon actually gave good advice to African-Americans in 2013 appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes. |
WA gubernatorial candidate Tim Eyman: ‘Kshama Sawant, you should be in jail, not behind a microphone’
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 06:40 PM PDT Those in Washington in general and Seattle in particular are very familiar with the neo-Marxist ideology of Councilwoman Kshama Sawant. With last month’s “CHOP” debacle, the socialist gained plenty of national notoriety as well. She’s been in front of cameras and microphones non-stop since becoming the de facto leader of the radical wing of the Democratic Party in her state, and at least one conservative gubernatorial candidate doesn’t think that’s right. Tim Eyman is a populist and a conservative vying for a chance to take on Governor Jay Inslee in November. There will be a “jungle primary” on August 4, and assuming Inslee is one of the two top spots, the other dozen+ candidates will try to take the other spot. With Sawant’s rising visibility, she has been attacked by several of the candidates lately, but none of the attacks have been more spot-on than what Eyman said at a Seattle City Council meeting Monday. At their city council meeting, Eyman blasted the limousine Bolshevik: “Kshama Sawant, you should be in jail, not behind a microphone.” Sawant is an avoid socialist who believes in dismantling the entire economic and political system in the United States. She helped launch the “Capitol Hill Occupied Protest” (CHOP), formerly known as the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” (CHAZ), by opening the doors to City Hall after hours and allowing protesters to enter. She also called for police officers in the East Precinct to vacate their building, which they did. This led to four weeks of anarchy in a six-block area in the heart of Seattle, during which time there were at least four shootings with two fatalities. We have requested an interview with Eyman and await a response. Outside of the Seattle area, Washington is a generally conservative state. But the state’s politics have been controlled by the leftist majority in the metro areas, and socialists like Sawant are the byproduct. Check out the NEW NOQ Report Podcast. American Conservative MovementJoin fellow patriots as we form a grassroots movement to advance the cause of conservatism. The coronavirus crisis has prompted many, even some conservatives, to promote authoritarianism. It’s understandable to some extent now, but it must not be allowed to embed itself in American life. We currently have 8000+ patriots with us in a very short time. If you are interested, please join us to receive updates.
The post WA gubernatorial candidate Tim Eyman: ‘Kshama Sawant, you should be in jail, not behind a microphone’ appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes. |
Amaze.org wants to pay your kids to watch sex education videos
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 05:35 PM PDT Parents, if your child is age 10-16, they can make $50 a month just by watching sex education videos. Sounds great, right? Watch the videos first and then decide, because these aren’t the dry anatomy discussions many of us had in sex education classes as children. These are progressive perspectives on gender, sexuality, abortion, and anything else they can think of to make sure our children are “woke” when it comes to sex. Now, Amaze.org is offering children money to be their “Ambassadors” and help spread the videos to their friends. On the latest episode of Conservative News Briefs, JD and Tammy discuss this company and the damage it does to children. This comes from a Facebook post by Informed Parents of Washington. The blame doesn’t rest solely on the shoulders of those trying to spread their leftist ideology to children. Many parents in the modern era have become too dependent on devices and the internet to keep their children occupied, leaving a gaping whole in many cases through which companies like Amaze can work in their ideology. But that’s not even as bad as what happens when kids are exposed to the actual bad stuff on the internet. If you don’t know if your kids are seeing it or not, assume they are. All of these gadgets and the internet present an opportunity for improved education. But that can only happen if parents are taking a very active role in what their children are seeing online. As JD and Tammy noted, the only way to truly prevent children from being exposed inappropriately is to participate directly and monitor everything. Sex education has been and always should be the responsibility of parents. If we aren’t doing it, companies like Amaze are going to do it for us. If we don’t want our children to become immoral or progressive, we have to take charge. Check out the NEW NOQ Report Podcast. American Conservative MovementJoin fellow patriots as we form a grassroots movement to advance the cause of conservatism. The coronavirus crisis has prompted many, even some conservatives, to promote authoritarianism. It’s understandable to some extent now, but it must not be allowed to embed itself in American life. We currently have 8000+ patriots with us in a very short time. If you are interested, please join us to receive updates.
The post Amaze.org wants to pay your kids to watch sex education videos appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes. |
California AB 262 is the ultimate coronavirus authoritarian loophole
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 04:02 PM PDT Who controls the fate of millions of people in California when it comes to outbreaks and pandemics? Mayors? The Governor? The various levels of legislature? Nope. It’s the unelected “health officers” who have all the power in times of crisis thanks to California AB 262 which was signed into law last year. On the latest episode of the NOQ Report, JD and Tammy discussed this bill and the multiple detrimental effects it has on the people. The most important takeaway is that this bill puts people who have no accountability to voters in charge of major decisions that affect everyone. As Liz Wheeler at One America News noted yesterday:
Lake Elsinor Councilman Bob Magee highlighted the key part of the bill that should worry all in California and the rest of the nation when such legislation finds its way to Capitol Hill: But why, were your local boots on the ground elected officials shut out? Enter Assembly Bill 262, which was passed by our state Legislature just last year, which stated “…the local health officer may issue orders to other governmental entities within the local health officer’s jurisdiction to take any action the local health officer deems necessary to control the spread of the communicable disease.” It’s one thing for healthcare advisers to talk to various executive branches in government when it comes to outbreaks. It’s another thing altogether to put these technocrats in charge. Check out the NEW NOQ Report Podcast. American Conservative MovementJoin fellow patriots as we form a grassroots movement to advance the cause of conservatism. The coronavirus crisis has prompted many, even some conservatives, to promote authoritarianism. It’s understandable to some extent now, but it must not be allowed to embed itself in American life. We currently have 8000+ patriots with us in a very short time. If you are interested, please join us to receive updates.
The post California AB 262 is the ultimate coronavirus authoritarian loophole appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes. |
Stand by for a post-Independence Day pivot on Antifa rioting that would make George Orwell proud
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 12:14 PM PDT Now that we’re had a much needed morale boost with the Independence Day celebration of the greatest nation on Earth, we can all expect a sudden turn around in all of the pandemic panic coverage to justify a revival of the ‘Antifa’ Riots. Matthew Holliday made an interesting observation on Twitter a few days ago. That the national socialist media’s sudden interest in pushing panic seemed to be curiously timed to depress the celebration of Independence Day. Dividing the country with double standardsOur social betters of the nation’s left confirmed this when many of them publicly admonished our celebrating liberty and limited government this past weekend. Seems like that Wiley old SARS-COV2 Virus has the uncanny ability to know when someone is ‘Woke’ and when someone is celebrating freedom. For example, there was this report on Twitchy: Los Angeles mayor tells everybody to ‘cancel plans with others for the 4th’ (but call it a protest and he’ll approve, apparently). Take note that he recently admitted that protests in the city DID lead to a spike in coronavirus cases after he previously insisted there was no link.
He’s not the only one. The Daily Wire reported that Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez told CBS News on Sunday that the recent series of protests in the area “had a lot to do with” the rise in coronavirus cases in the state. Threading the needleThe problem for the left is that this puts them in a quandary. They want to press on with the ‘peaceful’ rioting and looting. But now that it’s known that this heavily contributed to the latest new case count, they have to deal with their hypocrisy on the issue. This never bothered them before, but this is out in the open so their allies in the national socialist media can’t cover for them. They also can’t be obvious in trying to have one standard for themselves and one for everyone else. So now that the threat of a big celebration of freedom is passed they can ease of the pandemic panic in favor of keeping the momentum of the Antifa riots. The bottom line: The left wants pandemic panic and protests, but they can’t have bothThe left would love to keep up the pandemic panic for as long as possible. It lets them control businesses and try to force people to wear placebo masks, never mind that they serve no useful purpose. But it also works counter to their exploiting the racial division crisis they’ve created. Few are going to buy that thousands of people marching in the street won’t spread the disease while a few people congregating in a church will spread the disease. They still want to get what they can out of the peaceful rioting and looting, but that runs contrary to the panic. Therefore, watch them try both and eventually settle on the latter as herd immunity increases the politics of fear decreases. Check out the NEW NOQ Report Podcast. American Conservative MovementJoin fellow patriots as we form a grassroots movement to advance the cause of conservatism. The coronavirus crisis has prompted many, even some conservatives, to promote authoritarianism. It’s understandable to some extent now, but it must not be allowed to embed itself in American life. We currently have 8000+ patriots with us in a very short time. If you are interested, please join us to receive updates.
The post Stand by for a post-Independence Day pivot on Antifa rioting that would make George Orwell proud appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes. |
You are subscribed to email updates from NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. |
Email delivery powered by Google |
Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States |
ARRA NEWS SERVICE
ARRA News Service (in this message: 18 new items) |
- Virginia’s New Four-Letter Word: FLAG
- Confronting Communist China, Two Big Wins, Speaking Of The Culture War, Biden’s Socialist Camp
- President Trump’s Most Important Speech
- America and the Police Presumed Guilty of Racism
- Omar Calls for Marxist Revolution
- Two Big Wins For Religious Liberty
- The NRA Fights Back As Gun Controllers Dismiss The Second Amendment As “Nonessential”
- Stand with Steven Baca
- Fired for Speaking Truth
- Pandemic Is a Great Incubator for Financial Fraud
- Never Shoot Santa Claus: Jack Kemp, Jack Kennedy, Joe Biden and… Unemployment Benefits
- Eat Me Last . . .
- These 18 Corporations Gave Money to Radical Black Lives Matter Group
- The Black Lives Matter Effect is Killing Black Children
- Who Believes the “Nobody is Going to Take Your Guns Away” Line Now?
- The Press Is Already Trying To Whip Up A New Pandemic Panic
- Know Your Enemy: Undeniable Truths About the Left
- Barack Hussein Obama Is Running for a Third Term
Virginia’s New Four-Letter Word: FLAG
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 09:08 PM PDT by Tony Perkins: We can put it on the moon, but not a Virginia construction site. That’s how ridiculous the debate over the flag — and all things American — have become in the chaotic weeks since George Floyd’s death. The state that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, and Patrick Henry called home would be barely recognizable to the great men now, who believed those stars and stripes were the ultimate symbols of freedom, of justice. Now, amazingly, the flag under which slavery was abolished and segregation crumbled is “too offensive” for the state that helped build America. Eric Winston wasn’t trying to make a statement. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing radical or controversial about flying Old Glory. He went through the appropriate channels, got approval from the general contractor — the Gilbane Building Company — and unfurled a one-story American flag on the scaffolding where his company, American Coatings Corp. was working. To a lot of people, it seemed appropriate. This was, after all, the future home of the Virginia General Assembly offices. If an American flag doesn’t belong there, where on earth does it? Almost immediately, the Gilbane company got a phone call from the state. The flag, they said, must come down. It was, they worried, too inciting to protestors. “Over the past month we’ve seen buildings and structures around Capitol Square vandalized and flags, dumpsters, a bus and other items set ablaze during demonstrations around the city,” spokeswoman Dena Potter said in an email Friday. “When we saw the flag, we were concerned that it could become a target, so we told the contractor to remove it.” Winston couldn’t believe it. “Since when is this flag, on this weekend, IN THIS COUNTRY, a target!?!” he argued on Facebook. “Let me guess, if I had a Black Lives Matter flag it would be ‘ok’!?… The American Flag is a symbol of Freedom!” he argued on Facebook. “I’m all for the freedoms and libert[ies] we have in this country, Protest, sure… whatever floats your boat… That’s what this flag represents!” Like a growing number of Americans across the country, he can’t believe these liberal leaders are caving to the angry mobs. “Look, Mr. Governor, Mr. Mayor, or whoever made the call, stop letting the inmates run the asylum! This goes for politicians ‘that work for us’ on both sides of the aisle! Stop thinking everything we have or had in this once great state is offensive.” If you want to remove something, a lot of Virginians fumed, try Governor Ralph Northam (D)! When you consider the place Virginia has occupied in U.S. history, the decision is even more astonishing. This wasn’t just another state. It was a colony whose luminaries led the way to our new experiment in democracy. Surely, a lot of Virginians must be grieved over the direction and the capitulation of Northam. But, as I talked with the statehouse minority leader, Rep. Todd Gilbert (R), Americans need to pay attention to what’s happened in the Commonwealth in the last couple of years. “[Republicans] had a robust supermajority here just a few years ago in the legislature, in the House of Delegates. And I did serve as majority leader — and now I’m the minority leader because of the shifting political winds here in Virginia. And Virginia is a bellwether for the rest of the country. And I think it should be instructive to people all across the country that whatever their values are, if they are godly values, if they are American values… there are forces on the march that really hate those ideals. Everything about [them]. They hate those things and they are coming for them in every form. And unless people are willing to get up and change the way they do business and get engaged as citizens, I’m afraid all may be lost.” To Todd, this flag controversy is the saddest chapter by far. “This was a large American flag that had been constructed out of tarps. And it was just glorious. It was huge. It was beautiful… And it was hung on the side, not just of any building, but it was hung on the side of the new construction of the legislative office buildings for the legislature of Virginia. So this was not just any random building. This was the seat of government authority in Richmond in the state capital… And now, we have to take it down and hide it rather than standing up for it [as] a symbol of everything that unites us as a people.” And in almost every way, that plays directly into the hands of the unhinged Left. They want Americans to be intimidated and to shrink back in fear and silence. And too many Christians are fearing man right along with them. Jesus tells us that we’re the light of the world — “Let [it] so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven.” In many ways, that’s the problem. The light has been hidden. God’s people have allowed the light of the truth to be obscured, because some are offended by it. If we want our leaders to stop giving in to the angry fringe that wants to erase our history and destroy our freedom, we need to stop being complacent. The church has to pray, as the disciples did, for the courage and boldness to face the cancel culture of our day and proclaim the gospel truth. The future of our country depends on it. Tony Perkins (@tperkins) is President of the Family Research Council . Article on Tony Perkins’ Washington Update and written with the aid of FRC senior writers. Tags: Tony Perkins, Family Research Center, FRC, Family Research Council, Virginia’s New Four-Letter Word, FLAG To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks! |
||
Confronting Communist China, Two Big Wins, Speaking Of The Culture War, Biden’s Socialist Camp
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 08:56 PM PDT
by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Confronting Communist China Once hundreds of millions of Chinese started reading the financial pages to see how their stocks were doing, they would put down Mao’s Little Red Book. Or so they thought. History may eventually conclude that this was one of the biggest mistakes ever made by free people in the history of free people making mistakes. Communist China is a rising power. Ironically, its growing strength has been fueled in large part by our economic decisions. And while American youth are tearing down statues of our founding fathers, the communist mass murderer Mao Zedong is enjoying renewed adoration among Chinese youth. Thankfully, President Donald Trump is attempting to reverse this disturbing trend. How bad is the threat from China? FBI Director Christopher Wray gave a shocking presentation yesterday describing what he is seeing. Here’s a brief overview of Wray’s warning:
Two Big Wins In the first case, the justices ruled that religious schools were generally exempt from employment discrimination lawsuits, ensuring they can continue to employ teachers based on the values of that faith. Writing for the court’s 7-to-2 majority, Justice Samuel Alito declared: “The religious education and formation of students is the very reason for the existence of most private religious schools, and therefore the selection and supervision of the teachers upon whom the schools rely to do this work lie at the core of their mission. . . “[The ruling] does protect their autonomy with respect to internal management decisions that are essential to the institution’s central mission. And a component of this autonomy is the selection of the individuals who play certain key roles.” Today’s decision in an important firewall for religious liberty given the court’s recent reinterpretation of sex and gender under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Just how strong that firewall is remains to be seen, as it will undoubtedly be tested many times in the years ahead. In the second case, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump Administration’s authority to greatly expand the religious exemption to Obamacare’s contraception mandate. In spite of previous rulings that exempted religious organizations and some private businesses, left-wing states continued to press the issue. The Little Sisters of the Poor were once again forced to defend their religious convictions against progressive bureaucrats determined to impose their values on Catholic nuns and other faith-based groups. I would like to think that today’s 7-to-2 decision, authored by my good friend Justice Clarence Thomas, would end the left’s hostility to faith. But I know it won’t. The culture war is very real, and I was pleased to see President Trump urging more Republican politicians to get serious about fighting back in defense of our values. That’s exactly what I have been saying for years! Reacting to today’s decisions, Vice President Mike Pence tweeted, “All Americans of faith can be assured that under President Trump, the Obama-Biden assault on religious liberty is over!” By the way, Chief Justice John Roberts reportedly fell last month and was hospitalized with a head injury. Unfortunately for Roberts, he has a history of similar episodes. The news only underscores the tenuous balance on the high court today, as well as the importance of the November election. While Roberts has disappointed conservatives on multiple occasions in recent years, he is still preferable over any potential Biden appointee. Speaking Of The Culture War. . . “We are not merely fighting to tear down the systems of oppression in the criminal justice system, we are fighting to tear down systems of oppression that exist in housing, in education, in health care, in employment, in the air we breathe. . . “We must recognize that these systems of oppression are linked. As long as our economy and political system prioritize profit without considering who is profiting . . . we will perpetuate this inequality. So . . . we must begin the work of dismantling the whole system of oppression wherever we find it.” Only Marxists condemn profit and dictate who should profit. Only Marxists condemn America’s economic and political systems as “whole systems of oppression.” Why is this refugee from Somalia, who is now receiving a generous six-figure salary at taxpayer expense, seemingly so incapable of saying anything good about America? But, my friends, DO NOT dismiss her as a fringe voice. Far too many people are completely missing what’s happening. Bill Clinton’s Democrat Party is dead. Hillary Clinton campaigned against major portions of her husband’s legacy. Barack Obama is too moderate by today’s standards. Joe Biden is running to the left of Hillary Clinton, promising “the most radical” transformation of the economy. We’ve gone from “Abolish ICE” to “Defund the Police.” And now to be considered for high office among the progressive left, one must be “open-minded” when it comes to tearing down monuments to George Washington! There is no compromising with this insanity, my friends. It must be defeated! Biden’s Socialist Campaign The reality is that Biden is very woke, not sleepy. He has made it repeatedly clear that his administration would be the most radical ever, and at its core, the most anti-American administration in history. I say that because he will fill his administration with people like Carol Browner and Tom Steyer. He’s just brought both of them into his campaign as top environmental advisers. You may recall Steyer from his failed presidential bid that focused almost exclusively on climate change. He also spent tens of millions of dollars trying to impeach President Trump less than a year after he was elected. Browner was Obama’s climate czar and she’s also an avowed socialist. And we’ve reported before that Biden now has members of socialist Bernie Sanders’ staff helping to craft his policy agenda. These are the radical progressives a “President Biden” would bring into his administration and empower to control your life. Tags: Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, Confronting Communist China, Two Big Wins, Speaking Of The Culture War, Biden’s Socialist Camp To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks! |
||
President Trump’s Most Important Speech
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 08:32 PM PDT by Newt Gingrich: President Donald Trump’s speech at Mount Rushmore may be the most important and historic speech of his career. If he continues to echo and reinforce the message of this profound speech, he will become as essential to the preservation of freedom in America for the 21st century as President Abraham Lincoln was in the 19th century and President Ronald Reagan was in the 20th century. Not since Reagan has a president laid out the core values that make America free – and stood defiantly in defense of those values despite the ridicule and hostility of the elites, news media, academics, and his political opponents. President Reagan was focused on defending freedom from foreign threats – the Soviet Union and international communism. Reagan had a conversation in the late1940s over drinks with a Screen Actors Guild member who proclaimed himself a Stalinist. The actor said if the Stalinists won, Reagan would be imprisoned or shot. After this experience, the future president decided the Communist threat was real. He dedicated his life to defending freedom and defeating communism. Some four decades later, the Soviet Union disappeared. Over the course of this battle, Reagan’s speeches came back to the theme of freedom again and again. President Trump has clearly had a similar epiphany. His Mount Rushmore speech was the clearest statement against a domestic threat to American freedom ever given by a modern national leader. When President Trump said, “Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children, ” he was guaranteeing the further bitter hostility of the propaganda media, which has replaced the news media. President Trump further challenged the radical Left’s destructive agenda: “Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our Founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities. Many of these people have no idea why they are doing this, but some know exactly what they are doing.” Then, he laid down the gauntlet: “They think the American people are weak and soft and submissive. But no, the American people are strong and proud, and they will not allow our country, and all of its values, history, and culture, to be taken from them.” This passage is historically significant, because it places President Trump squarely in the middle of the cultural war on the side of America. He is fighting against those like Joe Biden, whose July 4th statement was the most Anti-American of any presidential candidate in our history. Where Biden in a recent tweet said he did not want to rebuild America but transform it, President Trump clearly believes America is a country worth saving and rebuilding. The gap could not be wider. President Trump used extraordinarily clear language to describe the anti-American strategies: “In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished. It’s not going to happen to us. “Make no mistake: this left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution. In so doing, they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress. “To make this possible, they are determined to tear down every statue, symbol, and memory of our national heritage.” Compare this strong condemnation of the assault on America with the Basement Biden strategy of vaguely promising to “transform” America.” President Trump took direct aim at the killings, rapes, and robberies in our great cities in a flatly politically incorrect way: “The violent mayhem we have seen in the streets of cities that are run by liberal Democrats, in every case, is the predictable result of years of extreme indoctrination and bias in education, journalism, and other cultural institutions.” The Trump analysis was particularly appropriate this Fourth of July weekend, as we learned that tragically, in Chicago alone, 77 people were shot and 14 killed – including a 7-year-old girl at a Fourth of July party. Remember: The left wants to defund the police. As Kevin McCullough pointed out in Town Hall, in six weeks, there have been 600 murders in six cities. All are run by Democrats. McCullough described the situation “a massive expansion in lawlessness, violence, and murder. Stunningly, many news outlets seem gobsmacked and mystified at how or why such an explosion of lawlessness has occurred.” In Atlanta, an 8-year-old girl was killed next to the burned-out Wendy’s, which the city had tolerated as an autonomous zone. President Trump understands that no one from Black Lives Matter will protest the killing of a 7-year-old or an 8-year-old, because it doesn’t fit their political agenda. He also knows that telling the truth about the collapse of Democratic-controlled cities will be seen as divisive by the propaganda media of the Left. We are fortunate that President Trump has the courage to say and do what he believes without regard to his critics. It’s exactly what American needs. Tags: Newt Gingrich, commentary, President Trump, Most Important Speech To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks! |
||
America and the Police Presumed Guilty of Racism
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 08:15 PM PDT
by Lloyd Marcus: A prominent Christian minister said that Jesus does not want us to dismiss the grievances of Black Lives Matter protesters. Republicans are working on police reform. A pundit on TV advised Republicans to learn how to talk to black people and offer more economic programs. These solutions to dealing with racial chaos driven by BLM sound reasonable. However, what sticks in my craw is the presumption that white America and police are harming blacks. Folks, that simply is not true. And what is this nonsense about learning to talk to black people? President Ronald Reagan’s generic appeals to all Americans inspired me tremendously. Why is it assumed that blacks must be courted with new government targeted initiatives and handouts? In some areas, blacks are getting the short end of the stick because of their brain-dead loyalty to voting for Democrats. More free stuff will not fix the moral problems which plague urban black communities. The American people are awesome, the most generous and fair-minded people on the planet. As for the supposed need for police reform, overwhelmingly, data confirms that the greatest defenders of black lives over the years have been police. Black-on-black homicides are on the rise due to police being removed from black neighborhoods. And yet, leftists who portray themselves as paragons of compassion for minorities are clamoring to defund and insanely disband police departments. Cruel Democrat governors, mayors, and city councils have begun defunding their police. Outrageously, Minneapolis city council members who voted to eliminate their police force hired private security which cost taxpayers $4500 a day. Around 1976, my cousin had a nervous breakdown. He held his two toddler sons in the basement, threatening to kill them and himself. I can’t remember if he had a gun or a knife. His terrified wife phoned 911 and me. Two white cops showed up. The young slim cop dashed into the Baltimore row-house. The older morbidly-obese cop waddled up the steps into the house and made his way to the basement door. While wiping sweat and trying to catch his breath, he calmly mentored the distraught young black man. “C’mon son, I know how you feel. But you don’t want to do this.” Amazingly, the awesome cop talked my cousin out of the basement with his sons unharmed. My cousin received the emotional help he needed. To fulfill their mission to transform America into a socialist/communist country, Democrats, fake news media, and anarchists promote the lie that cops awaken every morning with the intention of murdering as many blacks as possible. Selling this lie to low-info Americans is evil beyond words. My brother Jerry, the other Christian conservative Republican in our black family, phoned me to chat about the BLM chaos. Jerry said several years ago, one of our grandparents confronted him extremely concerned. “There is something wrong with the way you think.” One day Jerry heard a guy on the radio explaining the differences between Democrats and Republicans. Jerry had a eureka moment, “So that’s what’s wrong with me, I’m a Republican!” We laughed. The guy Jerry heard on the radio was Rush Limbaugh. We discussed how for years, we have given black friends and family irrefutable evidence of how the Democratic party is not our friend. Democrats founded the KKK — they destroyed the black family – they push for government programs which imply that we are inferior and stupid — they champion Planned Parenthood, which was founded by racist Margaret Sanger to exterminate blacks. Obama’s presidency was a disaster for black wealth. Before Democrats’ intentionally created COVID hysteria to crush Trump’s remarkable economy, blacks were enjoying unprecedented prosperity and historic low unemployment. Frustratingly, none of these truths affect their brain-dead loyalty to Democrats. They passionately believe Republicans and Trump are racists and mean. Jerry concluded that they are totally brainwashed. While I concur to a point, I believe a majority of blacks do not know who Democrats truly are because fake news media covers for them, portraying them in an angelic light. Jerry referenced the Michael Jackson song, “Man in the Mirror.” He said blacks should make the person they see in the mirror fully responsible for their lives rather than viewing themselves as victims, always looking for someone else to blame. I have always had a huge problem with white liberals selling blacks the lie that their success or failure depends upon whites. Real black empowerment is realizing that success or failure is dependent upon you and God. Jerry shared a few racial incidents. Years ago, he was walking through a trailer park. He saw a beautiful little white girl wearing a diaper. Upon seeing him, she became extremely excited, happily waving at him. Grinning ear to ear she said, “Hi n*****! Hi n*****!” Jerry smiled and waved back. Clearly, that child was taught racism. On the flip side of that coin, a countless number of whites have told me the “n” word was never said nor tolerated in their home. For several years, Jerry worked as a truck driver. His coworker was a racist white guy. As senior driver, Jerry had first preference to take Christmas off. Jerry told the racist driver, “You have two small kids. Spend Christmas with your family. I’ll work.” Jerry said he will never forget the stunned look on the guys’ face. Jerry said so much racism is rooted in ignorance. Jerry’s white employer hired part-time helpers. A young black guy was assigned to work with Jerry that day. Upon making their delivery, the client gave Jerry a check which he turned in. Management called Jerry into the office. Someone had attempted to erase the “payable to” name on the check. Management knew Jerry would never do such a thing. As fate would have it, Jerry bumped into his former black helper at a gas station. Jerry gave the guy a severe tongue lashing. “They think we are criminals and people like you make it worse!” Jerry approached a new black hire on his job. Attempting to mentor the young man, Jerry advised him to get a haircut, pull up his pants, and get work gloves and boots. This would cause management to take notice and promote him much sooner. The young man gave Jerry a stone-face stare and walked away. Brother and sister Americans, in any way you can, regardless of how small, you must push back against the evil seeking to dominate and transform our country. Jerry confided that family members are embarrassed by my YouTube videos supportive of Trump and against BLM. This tells me God wants me to do more videos. Tags: Lloyd Marcus,America, and the Police, Presumed Guilty, of Racism To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks! |
||
Omar Calls for Marxist Revolution
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 07:56 PM PDT . . . The radical leftist demands that our economic and political systems be torn down by Thomas Gallatin: America, as it was founded, is the problem. That was essentially the message of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) yesterday. “We can’t stop at criminal-justice reform or policing reform,” Omar stated. “We are not merely fighting to tear down systems of oppression in the criminal-justice system. We are fighting to tear down the systems of oppression that exist in housing, in education, in healthcare, in employment, [and] in the air we breathe.” Omar has been a loud proponent for defunding the police. In her call for ending America’s supposed oppression, Omar pressed her Marxist ideology, arguing, “As long as our economy and political systems prioritize profit without considering who is profiting, who is being shut out, we will perpetuate this inequality. So we cannot stop at [the] criminal-justice system. We must begin the work of dismantling the whole system of oppression wherever we find it.” For someone who as a child escaped Somalia, an East African country steeped in genuine systemic oppression and corruption, one would think she’d know better. Sadly, it appears that the only system Omar believes in is one that grants her and her comrades greater power to rule over the American people in whatever way they choose. A leftist tyranny is their aim. Clearly, Omar has no love for her adopted homeland, nor any commitment to upholding the Declaration of Independence upon which America was founded, nor the Constitution upon which it was built. Put simply, Omar’s message is none other than a call for a Marxist revolution, for the ending of American exceptionalism and individual liberty. If it isn’t downright treasonous, it’s deeply treacherous. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) certainly saw it this way, because she called for Omar’s resignation. “Ilhan Omar took an oath to defend and protect the Constitution, not shred it. Omar and her Marxist comrades are a threat to our Democracy. Omar should resign.” If only more Republicans (and Democrats, for that matter) had the fortitude to step up and demand Omar’s resignation as well. Unless they’re held firmly to account, Marxist radicals like Omar will only become more emboldened. Weakness, after all, invites aggression. |
||
Two Big Wins For Religious Liberty
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 07:37 PM PDT by Bill Donohue: In the last week of its 2019-2020 term, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered two back-to-back victories for religious liberty; they were both 7-2 decisions. Catholic schools and agencies were the big winners. The Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that religious schools enjoyed a “ministerial exception” that protected them from lawsuits brought by teachers whom the school said were ministers. Now it has strengthened that decision by holding that lawsuits alleging employment discrimination—teachers at two Catholic schools claimed they were terminated for discriminatory reasons (age and disability)—are without merit. “The religious education and formation of students is the very reason for the existence of most private religious schools,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito for the majority, “and therefore the selection and supervision of the teachers upon whom the schools rely to do this work lie at the core of their mission.” The other case involved the right of the Trump administration to carve an exception for those with sincerely held moral or religious objections from complying with the Obamacare mandate that abortion-inducing drugs and contraception must be provided in all healthcare plans. The Trump administration and the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic nonprofit entity, appealed to the high court to reverse an appeals court decision that denied the exemption. Justice Clarence Thomas, who authored the court’s ruling, said the Trump administration “had the authority to provide exemptions from the regulatory contraceptive requirements for employees with religious and conscientious objections.” These two victories, alongside the Supreme Court’s decision last week allowing Catholic schools to benefit from tuition-tax credit scholarship programs, will do much to safeguard the religious rights of Catholic institutions, as well as those of other religious organizations. Contrary to the foes of religious liberty—and there are many seated in elite institutions—it is not religious entities that have been encroaching on the state; rather, it is the state that has been encroaching on religion. It is high time that state operatives with an animus against religion, especially Catholicism, were put in their place. It can’t happen too often given their dogmatic zeal to destroy the First Amendment provisions guaranteeing religious liberty. Tags: Bill Donohue, Catholic League, Two Big Wins, For Religious Liberty To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks! |
||
The NRA Fights Back As Gun Controllers Dismiss The Second Amendment As “Nonessential”
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 07:25 PM PDT
by Jason Ouimet: Shoppers wait in line to purchase ammunition and guns at Gun World in Burbank, Calif., on March 17 as U.S. sales of guns and ammunition soar amid the Coronavirus outbreak. The NRA has always been guided by a simple premise: The right to keep and bear arms was recognized as essential in 1791, when it was officially adopted into our Constitution, and no public official has the authority to revisit that decision. History will record how in early 2020, a deadly contagion emerged from China to wreck havoc around the world. America went into “lock-down” to contain the spread, with hundreds of millions effectively confined to their homes. Who can emerge and on what terms hasn’t depended on whether or not a person is infected (there’s often no way to tell), but whether the governing authorities have determined an activity or business to be “essential” or “non-essential.” Many brave people have worked heroically to care for the sick and to ensure the country remains supplied with food, medicine and other necessities. Nurses, farmers, truck drivers, grocers and pharmacists are, to name a few, serving on the front lines of this campaign. Others, however, have been overcome by concern over the virus and willing to accept any new restraint on freedom in hopes of achieving some increment of safety. No doubt, decisive mitigation measures were necessary and appropriate in responding to the outbreak’s early stages, as other countries reeled from its effects, and scientists and doctors scrambled to understand and counter this novel Coronavirus. Yet, the NRA has seen too many crises, real or imagined, exploited by opportunistic politicians and activists to assail America’s essential liberties—not because it was necessary to avert danger but simply because fear made some people more passive to overreach. We recall, for example, how authorities seized firearms from law-abiding residents of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. We remember that a North Carolina city even used the pretext of harsh winter weather to try to ban the otherwise lawful sale and carrying of firearms in 2012. And we haven’t forgotten the governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands signing an order in 2017 for the National Guard to seize residents’ lawfully-owned firearms and ammunition, supposedly in response to the approach of Hurricane Irma. This is hardly an exhaustive list of such abuses. And so we have remained vigilant against any attempt to use the fear and uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 emergency to advance the pre-existing agenda to undermine the Second Amendment. We didn’t have to wait long. Patient Zero of the eventual epidemic of opportunistic gun control was Champaign, Ill., where in early March an ordinance was passed to give the mayor authority to ban the sale, transfer or even “giving away” of “firearms or ammunition of any character whatsoever.” After being rebuffed by a tsunami of complaints, the mayor would later claim she never intended to exercise the authority to infringe Second Amendment rights. But documents would then emerge from a public records request showing that days before the anti-gun ordinance was passed, the mayor was promoting a “training” seminar conducted by a Michael Bloomberg-backed gun-control organization. Soon thereafter, the NRA was forced to disperse most staffers to their homes and to cancel its 149th Annual Meeting in Nashville, Tenn., all as part of our own commitment to being good citizens and to protecting the health and safety of the NRA family and the public. But we remain on the job with the same focus and dedication, facing not just the virus but a pandemic of anti-gun activity. By the second and third weeks of March, events were transpiring so quickly with respect to COVID-19 and the Second Amendment that it was difficult for observers to keep up with it all. As the media breathlessly (and often inaccurately) reported on the virus, concern amongst the American people about the virus, and the response by many governors, spread. Stores began to run low on food and supplies, with America’s newfound shortage of toilet paper becoming a national topic of discussion. Big city mayors, sheriffs, and police chiefs—prodded by anti-incarceration activists—announced plans to reduce arrests and even free some inmates from jails and prisons, measures they claimed were necessary to curtail the virus’s spread. Whatever else Americans believed about what they were seeing and hearing on their radios, televisions, and computer screens, they understood it was time to take proactive measures to protect themselves and their loved ones. During middle and late March, firearm and ammunition sales soared to record levels, driven largely by first-time buyers and those who admitted in news reports that, despite prior political aversion to guns, they now understood the need for a prudent safeguard against the unknown. Americans themselves, in other words, reached a consensus across political and cultural divides that the ability to obtain firearms and ammunition is, in fact, essential. So many people were buying firearms that the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) and points of contact for NICS operated by the states became mired in backlogs, with systems periodically crashing and becoming unavailable. This underscored how when the system is stressed, background checks, licensing and private sales prohibitions can all lead to de facto sales bans. Meanwhile, new gun buyers unacquainted with the bureaucracy of retail firearm sales were shocked to discover that—despite Barack Obama’s past assertions—it really is harder to buy a gun than a fresh vegetable, even in an emergency. Gun-control activists, of course, reacted to the run on gun stores with horror, and many abandoned the “moderate” pose they normally (and unconvincingly) try to portray. Some even suggested that buying a gun is more dangerous than the virus itself. A writer for Salon insisted, “Bringing a gun into your home is stupid” and is “the last thing anyone should be doing in this crisis, if they want to stay safe.” This same aversion to the widespread embrace of the Second Amendment was shared by a number of anti-gun local officials, who began campaigns to close gun shops as “non-essential” businesses during the crisis. Some blamed the supposed dangers—not of contamination—but of “first-time gun buyers.” Then the governors of a handful of states upped the ante, banning sales of guns in their respective jurisdictions statewide. Other governors, however, explicitly announced that gun sales would be considered essential and could continue, in some cases with measures designed to mitigate unnecessary person-to-person contact. An under-reported part of this story was that some of these decisions (especially in normally anti-gun states) were no doubt prompted by laws the NRA helped pass after the Katrina debacle to limit infringements on the Second Amendment during declared emergencies. Throughout these developments, your NRA has kept its members informed of every late-breaking story, often in real time. We even launched a new website—nraila.org/coronavirus—to update gun owners on developments in their own jurisdictions. The site features an interactive map and state-specific information from across the country. In the meantime, the Trump Administration backed the citizenry’s right to arms by issuing guidance to the states via the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) classifying firearm retailers as part of America’s essential emergency infrastructure. This was crucial, as some officials who were banning gun sales had cited a lack of clarity from DHS on the matter. The NRA and others also filed or threatened lawsuits challenging gun store closure orders, including in California, Delaware, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York. These efforts caused even some of America’s most anti-gun politicians to change course, with the governors of Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and the sheriffs of Los Angeles County and Wake County, N.C., all reversing earlier decisions to infringe their constituents’ right to obtain firearms. But the endgame for Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety—America’s most well-funded firearm prohibition organization—was unmasked (so to speak) when its lawyers released a March 31 memo to encourage the outright banning of gun sales to law-abiding people, en masse. And it may have worked in a couple of cases. After the memo’s release, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker reversed his prior determination that gun stores are essential and ordered them to close statewide. Andrew Cuomo, perhaps the most anti-gun governor in America, also joined the gun prohibition cause. Cuomo, like a few other anti-gun governors, focused on restricting the rights of law-abiding Americans, while releasing those accused or convicted of actually breaking the law. Unsurprisingly, some of the released individuals didn’t only ignore rules regarding social distancing, they also returned to the same path of crime that led to their incarceration in the first place. In one particularly terrible example in New York, a criminal released by Governor Cuomo violently assaulted and robbed a 62-year-old man. Yet Cuomo seemed more interested in generating headlines with his gun ban than protecting the people of New York. Cuomo reacted to the NRA’s challenge to his unconstitutional sales ban by bragging that he is “immune to NRA lawsuits.” He may have been encouraged by the deference emergency sales bans have received so far in lower courts. But will the higher courts or the U.S. Supreme Court itself—with its two Trump appointees—prove to be the antidote to the attacks being launched against the Second Amendment under the cover of COVID-19? Time will tell. Rest assured, however, that whatever the future holds for America during these extraordinary times, your NRA will be fighting every day to ensure you and your essential liberties remain healthy and secure. Tags: NRA, Fights Back. As Gun Controllers Dismiss. The Second Amendment, Covid-19 Outbreak, Non-Essential Business, Gun Control, Everytown For Gun Safety, Jason Ouimet To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks! |
||
Stand with Steven Baca
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 07:24 PM PDT
by Michelle Malkin: If you support the Second Amendment, oppose mob anarchy and reject the monumental madness gripping America, then you stand with Steven Baca. If you have been outraged by the persecution and prosecution of brave patriots across the country defending their homes, their families, our downtowns, our national heritage and history — like the armed St. Louis couple, or the armed pregnant Michigan mom, or the armed citizens in the Fishtown suburb of Philadelphia, Boise, Idaho, and Provo, Utah, facing down the saboteurs of civil order, then you stand with Steven Baca. On June 15, Steven and several other friends and neighbors gathered peacefully at Tiguex Park in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to protect a statue of Spanish conquistador Juan de Onate targeted by agitators identified as Black Lives Matter protesters. What does Onate have to do with St. George Floyd or any of the other clients of race hustler Benjamin Crump? Nothing. The coordinated violence and chaos unleashed by a toxic convergence of BLM, antifa, jobless college students and garden-variety cop-haters have nothing to do with black lives. Or with “justice.” Or police brutality. Or equality. It’s all about making money, securing power and reimagining this nation by eradicating every vestige of the settlers, pioneers, colonizers and founders who made America America. Esther Rivera, a 14th-generation mixed Hispanic and Native American grandmother from Albuquerque, showed up to guard the memorial. “I wasn’t there to protest,” she told me: “I was there to pray for peace and the preservation of these statues and preservation of historical art… If we start pulling these down and renaming buildings and burning books, that’s fascism.” During the melee at Tiguex Park, as agitators wielded pickaxes and strapped chains to the Onate statue, several belligerent women verbally assaulted Rivera. Some screamed falsely that she was a cop, stirring anger among the cop-hating BLM mobsters. In several videos of the toppling of the Onate statue, at least two of the thuggish protesters can be seen laying hands on Rivera. She told me one woman tried to steal her phone. As she was pushed to the ground, Baca tried to rescue her. A swarm of women blocked Baca and multiple videos show him trying to peel the women off of him and Rivera. He was a defender, not an aggressor. Then the scene turned uglier. As the savages ripped the statue from its pedestal, unidentified assailants screamed falsely that Baca was a cop. “I’m gonna f—ing kill you,” another yelled. Baca can be seen retreating from the crowd, separated from Rivera. He ran into the street, where several rioters beat him in the head and body with a large longboard and other unidentified objects. At least one video appears to show an assailant wielding a switchblade or knife. That is when Baca drew his weapon and fired several shots at his attackers. Initially charged with felony aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, Baca was held in jail for a week before the Bernalillo County district attorney Raul Torrez dropped that charge. Baca’s justified self-defense is plain as day to anyone who watches the videos. Here’s the thing: This story is far from over. Baca still faces potential reintroduction of the felony weapons charge, as well as aggravated battery charges involving three women — none of whom have come forward, none of whom the D.A. has located and all of whom can be seen on camera laying hands on Baca and Rivera first. Here’s another thing you need to know: Torrez is not just any run-of-the-mill D.A. He’s one of dozens of George Soros-subsidized subversives who could put “social justice” above equal justice. A Soros front group called the “New Mexico Safety & Justice” PAC — pro-criminal, pro-rioter, anti-cop, anti-Second Amendment — dumped more than $107,000 into Torrez’s campaign in 2016. Tim Keller, the Albuquerque mayor who has spent the past eight weeks pandering to BLM, defamed Baca as the agitator. The head of the police union, however, condemned city leaders for creating an “operations plan” that tied the hands of cops, who were “spat upon” and had rocks thrown at them as they tried to secure the riot and crime scene. I had the privilege of meeting Steven this Independence Day weekend. He is a gentle soul, overwhelmed by his predicament but grateful for the outpouring of grassroots support. “We now have to wait for the district attorney to complete the investigation. We do not know how long this will take,” he told me. “I stand ready to have my conduct and the conduct of others at the protest fully and thoroughly reviewed.” If you stand with Steven Baca, I have created a crowdfunding campaign that you can donate to at: https://fundly.com/stand-with-steven-baca. This isn’t just one statue and one armed American’s freedom at stake. If you believe in the sacred right of self-defense and the sovereignty of our nation, then we are all Steven Baca now. Tags: Michelle Malkin, Rasmussen Reports, Stand with Steven Baca To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks! |
||
Fired for Speaking Truth
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 06:59 PM PDT
by John Stossel: The online mob came for Harald Uhlig. What terrible thing had he done? As I show in my new video, he tweeted that Black Lives Matter “torpedoed itself, with its full-fledged support of #defundthepolice.” Instead of defunding, Uhlig suggested, “train them better.” Hundreds of people then signed a petition to demand that Uhlig, a University of Chicago professor and head of the Journal of Political Economy, resign. Even prominent economists like Janet Yellen and Paul Krugman joined the mob. Krugman called Uhlig “another privileged white man who evidently cannot control his urge to belittle the concerns of those less fortunate.” But that’s just a lie. Uhlig wasn’t belittling concerns of anyone less fortunate. “There was nothing racist or discriminatory in how he said it,” says Reason Magazine editor Robby Soave, who covers the new “woke” protests. “But because he has some different views from the protesters, he must be a racist.” Uhlig was placed on leave by the journal he ran. The new totalitarians demand that no one criticize their view of the world. The online mob even attacks its fellow Democrats. David Shor, an analyst at Democratic polling firm Civis Analytics, tweeted a study that concluded, “race riots reduced Democratic vote share.” That study was probably accurate. Obviously, rioting alienates voters. But the mob attacked Shor. “Come get your boy,” one tweeted. His bosses did. Even though Shor issued a groveling apology, he was fired. Soave points out, “There’s a cruel streak in activism that says, ‘If you disagree with me … you have no right to speak.'” “Why are they winning?” I ask. “Their argument is ridiculous.” “People are afraid to challenge them,” explains Soave. “It just takes one employee at one company, to say, ‘Here’s the law that protects my rights to feel safe and comfortable in this workplace. If you’re not making me feel safe and comfortable, I’m going to get you in trouble.'” So cowardly corporations cave. A Boeing executive was even forced out for opposing women’s service in the military — 30 years ago. A Los Angeles soccer team fired a player because his wife posted racist comments. Michigan State pushed out a physicist when a twitter mob from its “Graduate Employees Union” labeled him a “scientific racist.” What racist thing had the physicist done? He “rejects the idea that scientists should categorically exclude the possibility of average genetic differences among groups,” is how a Wall Street Journal column explained it. Now “cancel culture” has moved abroad. “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling is being smeared as “transphobic.” When a tax researcher was fired for saying, “Identifying as a woman does not make a person a woman,” Rowling tweeted, incredulously, “Force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?” She said she has nothing against trans people, but she’s “concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition.” The Twitter mob claimed her “hate” was “killing trans people.” Some staff at Hachette, her publisher, refused to work on her next book. Actors in her “Harry Potter” movies spoke out against her. But Rowling didn’t back down. “It isn’t hate to speak the truth,” she tweeted. She also mocked a charity that used the phrase “people who menstruate” instead of women, tweeting: “There used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” That further incensed the mob. It claimed her “hate … leads to trans women, especially teens and black trans women, becoming victims of sexual assault.” But Rowling is the rare person popular enough to be able to resist the mob. Her publisher spoke up for her, saying, “Freedom of speech is the cornerstone of publishing.” And the University of Chicago stood up to the mob, too. The school, after a 10-day investigation, announced there was “no basis” for taking away Harold Uhlig’s job. He’s been reinstated. That’s how these cases should be handled. “The solution is to challenge these people,” says Soave. “We just have to speak up.” Those of us who can, must. Tags: John Stossel, Fired for Speaking Truth, commentary, Rasmussen Reports To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks! |
||
Pandemic Is a Great Incubator for Financial Fraud
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 06:47 PM PDT by Joe Nocera: The Berkeley Center for Law and Business held its annual “fraud fest” a few weeks ago — virtually, of course — and there was a new item on the agenda. Along with the usual panels about whistle-blowers and short sellers, the organizers added a panel titled “Fraud and Covid-19.” “The pandemic is the perfect storm for fraud,” one of the panelists said, and who can doubt it? The federal government hastily pushed hundreds of billions of dollars out the door in the largest bailout in U.S. history with only the most vague requirements for recipients; bankers working from home doled out those billions to small businesses; regulators loosened rules to help institutions get through the crisis. As my colleagues Timothy L. O’Brien and Nir Kaissar noted recently, “the White House has made it easier for government insiders to obtain bailout loans from the Small Business Administration, creating a raft of conflicts of interest.” That certainly sounds like a recipe for financial fraud. “A crisis is like the fog of war,” said Thomas Curry, the former comptroller of the currency during President Barack Obama’s administration. “Banks redirect resources to critical areas and neglect other risks that bite you down the road.” Before becoming comptroller, Curry was on the board of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. It was from that perch that he watched the financial crisis unfold — and became one of the financial regulators frantically trying to keep the U.S. financial system from melting down. The government ultimately gave the big banks billions in bailout loans and other forms of support, such as buying their toxic securities. But once the crisis was averted, Congress, regulators, and the press all began to dig into scandals that were previously unnoticed: the abuse of subprime mortgages by the big financial players; the craven behavior of the credit-rating companies; the willingness to mislead investors who bought those toxic securities, and so on. According to the boutique investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, banks were fined a staggering $243 billion for their misdeeds during the financial crisis. (Bank of America leads the pack with $76.1 billion in fines.) Those fines inflicted some pain, but they weren’t the most consequential result of the financial misdeeds that were exposed. The larger issue was the enormous resentment and anger they generated in a broad swath of the country. People on both sides of the political divide were furious that the big banks were being saved despite bad behavior that helped create the financial crisis. Meanwhile, millions of bank customers lost their homes to foreclosure. The financial crisis and its aftermath helped bring about the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements and helped pave the way for Donald Trump’s presidency. So here we are again, in the middle of another crisis, only this one is being overseen by an administration that doesn’t seem to care much about corruption or fraud. Early on, Trump removed Glenn Fine, the acting Pentagon inspector general, from taking charge of a group that was supposed to monitor the pandemic relief effort, replacing him with someone more to his liking. Nobody is monitoring the White House’s involvement in procuring N-95 masks and other scarce personal protective equipment. And only on Monday did the Treasury Department finally release the names of companies that received PPP funds. Guess what? One recipient was the law firm of Kasowitz Benson Torres, where one of the name partners, Marc Kasowitz, has represented Trump for years. The firm received between $5 million and $10 million, according to the New York Times. As for the banks, the SBA has put them in a terrible spot, giving them the responsibility of hastily vetting the hundreds of thousands of businesses seeking PPP funds. Even with the best of intentions, it is inevitable that scam artists found ways to bilk the banks out of PPP loans. Indeed, prosecutors have already arrested a handful of executives for doing so. The larger issue is that, just like in 2008, regulators aren’t focused on preventing misconduct. Instead, their focus is on making sure banks have the ability to lend — even if it means loosening rules that were designed to make banks safer. In late March, for instance, the Federal Reserve relaxed several lending rules, including one that measured counterparty credit risk. And in early April it loosened capital requirements. “The Fed has been trying to say to the banking community that in this crisis environment we don’t want the constraints we normally put on you. We don’t want to hamper your ability to lend to clients,” said Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs executive who served as Trump’s first chief economic adviser. What’s more, Cohn said, banking is not a business that is meant to be conducted from home. “Banks need people to be working together in a cooperative fashion and watching and listening to each other,” he told me. “That is what the Fed would call a first line of defense: Overhearing conversations, looking at presentations, or looking at the way you talk to a client. Or calling a compliance officer – ‘Can you guys look at this?’ When people are sitting in their bedrooms,” he added, “there is no one there to look over their shoulder.” Bankers operating on their own is a recipe for trouble. When the pandemic finally ends, there are going to congressional investigations, newspaper exposes and special commissions all taking a look back at what happened to the trillions of dollars the federal government spent to keep the economy from collapsing. Indeed, if the Democrats sweep the White House and Congress, the reckoning could well begin even before the virus has been conquered. (Can you just imagine Elizabeth Warren as chair of the Senate Banking Committee?) For starters, they’ll want to know whether bankers siphoned off money to their friends, whether they threw people who should have been granted mortgage forbearance out of their homes and whether money meant for small businesses wound up helping any of the president’s businesses. Banks will be especially vulnerable because they were the villains during the last crisis. If significant bank misconduct is uncovered during a Covid-19 post-mortem, said Stephen Scott, the founder of Starling Trust Sciences, a risk-management company, “there will be pitchforks.” The country is much more polarized than it was in 2008, and much angrier, too. If it turns out that the billions of dollars intended to help out-of-work Americans was diverted by fraud, it will make the aftermath of the financial crisis look like a picnic. Tags: Truth in Accounting, Joe Nocera, Financial Accounting News,Pandemic, a Great Incubator, Financial Fraud To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks! |
||
Never Shoot Santa Claus: Jack Kemp, Jack Kennedy, Joe Biden and… Unemployment Benefits
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 06:18 PM PDT
by Ralph Benko, Contributing Author: Many prominent free-market thought leaders are loudly objecting to the proposed extension of federal unemployment benefits. They point out that some of the recipients receive more from a modest unemployment check than from working. My comrades-in-conservative-arms claim fear of a moral hazard that discourages people from working. They fear this could inhibit the recovery upon which they believe President Trump’s re-election depends. Yet for many workers, there is no work. Tweak the benefit? Perhaps. Balking, wholesale, at the extension of the benefit would be bad policy and bad politics. And, let it be said, “laissez-faire,” yes, Supply-Side, no. Being miserly tarnishes the conservative brand. It conjures up one of the tarter provisions of William F. Buckley’s mission statement for the National Review: “Radical conservatives in this country have an interesting time of it, for when they are not being suppressed or mutilated by the liberals, they are being ignored or humiliated by a great many of those of the well-fed Right whose ignorance and amorality have never been exaggerated for the same reason that one cannot exaggerate infinity.” My colleagues’ stance also brings to mind another classic, Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol.’ Per Matthew Caruchet writing for The Economic Opportunity Institute, “When he was 12 years old in 1824, Charles Dickens worked 10-hour days in a rat-infested shoe-polish factory for six shillings a week. That’s the equivalent of £30.68 or $41.06 in 2017 currency. It was all the money he had to get by. His father, mother, and five siblings aged 2-11 were in prison because the family was in debt. … Needless to say, Charles Dickens grew to hate the system and rail against it in his works.” ‘A Christmas Carol’ isn’t anti-capitalist. It is anti-miserliness, pro-benefactor. These are two entirely different states of affluence. The institutions “for” the poor Scrooge vaunted to his charitable solicitors were designed to punish and kill off paupers. That’s utterly contrary to capitalism. Adam Smith defined it as that “which occasions, in a well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people.” The original Supply-Side quarterback Representative Jack Kemp used to refer to himself as a “bleeding-heart conservative.” He designed his policy propositions for the general welfare, leaning toward workers and the poor. Kemp emulated Jack Kennedy, whose ethos was, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” Good solid working-class Democrats such as Dan Rostenkowski, Bill Bradley and Dick Gephardt embraced equitable economic growth policy (although not quite Supply-Side rhetoric). One United States Senator from Delaware who you may have heard of, Joe Biden, voted for the 1981 Reagan tax rate cut that cut the top rate from 70 percent to 50 percent. He voted to reduce the top marginal rate from 50 percent to 28 percent. Good Democrats, by reducing marginal tax rates further and faster than even Kemp proposed, out-Reaganed Reagan, paving the way to sizzling job creation and upward mobility for workers. For which, let it be noted, Biden has, rhetorically, repented of but has not been absolved by the hard-shell democratic socialists. That said, for the benefit of those then unborn, let us note that the original Supply-Side was never designed to privilege capital over labor, creditors over debtors. Let us note that voting for across-the-board reduction of tax rates is far more classic “Supply-Side” than the cutting of corporate tax rates, such as President Trump delivered. Back in Supply-Side’s heyday, Jude Wanniski, Kemp’s premier economic swami (and a self-described lifelong “Marxian”) famously proposed what he called the “Two Santa Claus Theory.” He urged Republicans to advocate policies (tax rate cuts and monetary stability) to create equitable prosperity. He weaned the GOP from its propensity to inflict, in the name of rectitude, gratuitous suffering on those struggling to subsist. Wanniski in National Observer, 1976: “Either way, of course, they (the Republicans) embrace the role of Scrooge, playing into the hands of the Democrats, who know the first rule of successful politics is Never Shoot Santa Claus. … They were not always so dumb. The GOP’s heyday was in the 1920s, when, acting on the advice of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon … the Republicans cut tax rates no less than five times. Mellon, the embodiment of the Republican Santa Claus, argued that a cut in tax rates would provide business an incentive to expand, increase prosperity, expand the tax base … .” The GOP, confronted by Wanniski, like Scrooge after encountering the three Christmas ghosts, transformed from skinflint to benefactor. America flourished, with real GDP more than tripling over time. The GOP flourished politically when it displayed the Kempian quintessence of true capitalism, generosity to workers. And then, it didn’t. The political and moral benefits of generosity appear lost in the mists of time. Regression to mean? Mean seems like the apt word here. Memo to my fellow free-market champions: Never shoot Santa Claus. Tags: Ralph Benko, The Capitalist League, Never Shoot Santa Claus, Jack Kemp, Jack Kennedy, Joe Biden, Unemployment Benefits To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks! |
||
Eat Me Last . . .
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 05:59 PM PDT . . . Black Lives Matter is a communist wolf in sheep’s clothing shaking down corporate America for big bucks.
Tags: Editorial Cartoon, AF Branco, Eat Me Last, Black Lives Matter is a communist wolf, in sheep’s clothing, shaking down corporate America, for big bucks To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks! |
||
These 18 Corporations Gave Money to Radical Black Lives Matter Group
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 05:44 PM PDT by Fred Lucas: Some of America’s largest corporations have pledged or donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the main Black Lives Matter organization, founded by “trained Marxists,” that calls for replacing the nuclear family with a “village.” Prominent brands giving money include Amazon, Microsoft, Nabisco, Gatorade, Airbnb, and the Atlantic and Warner record labels. Black Lives Matter as a movement or sentiment is not necessarily tied to the radical organization, called the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, but it has become the greatest beneficiary of corporate largesse. The Daily Signal previously reported that the website for the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation notes that replacing the nuclear family structure and promoting the LGBT political agenda are central to its mission. A co-founder also has said that she and other “trained Marxists” formed the network foundation. The BLM Global Network Foundation began in 2016 with the fiscal sponsorship of Thousand Currents, a liberal nonprofit group. Susan Rosenberg, convicted and imprisoned in 1984 for domestic terrorism, is vice chairwoman of Thousand Currents’ board of directors, The Daily Signal also reported. At least 18 companies have donated or pledged to donate money to the BLM Global Network Foundation, according to a list compiled by the Washington-based Capital Research Center, which monitors nonprofits and charities. Another seven companies have not been clear which Black Lives Matter entity they chose for contributions. Thousand Currents has said that all donations filtered through it, corporate and otherwise, “are received as restricted donations to support the activities of BLM.” The Daily Signal contacted spokespersons for all the companies mentioned in this report several times over the course of a week, seeking comment about their financial support for the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. The Daily Signal asked whether the companies supported that organization’s stated beliefs and goals, which extend well beyond advocating racial equality and opposing police brutality. >>> Related: A Deeper Look at Black Lives Matter and Its Impact Several companies state merely that they are giving to “Black Lives Matter,” without specifying which organization. The BLM Global Network Foundation likely is the recipient, given its prominence, but that isn’t always clear in an announcement. It also is possible that, similar to the tech giant Cisco, other companies gave to the Black Lives Matter cause through donations to traditional civil rights groups such as the NAACP and the Urban League. A growing roster of corporations has issued press releases, memos, and tweets vowing financial support for “Black Lives Matter,” linking directly to or using the Twitter handle of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. Here are 18 of them, plus some examples of ambiguous giving. 1. DoorDash 2. Deckers “Deckers as a company is standing together in solidarity to fight for equality,” Deckers Brands said in an email to The Daily Signal. “To show immediate support, we are donating a total of $500,000 to the following organizations,” the clothing company said, listing seven organizations, including “Black Lives Matter Foundation,” which it said “builds power to bring justice, healing, and freedom to Black people across the globe.” Although a smaller organization called the Black Lives Matter Foundation exists, as does another called Movement for Black Lives, a blog post from the Deckers brand Ugg links to the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. That post uses language similar to the email from Deckers to The Daily Signal. 3. Amazon 4. Gatorade Gatorade, the sports drink maker, identified the BLM Global Network Foundation as being among groups benefiting from a $500,000 donation.
5. Microsoft Microsoft also named five other civil rights organizations with whom it would “deepen our engagement” by donating $250,000 apiece. 6. Glossier 7. 23andMe 8. Airbnb
9. Unilever
10. Bungie
11. Nabisco
12. Dropbox
13. Fitbit
14. Devolver Digital
15. Skillshare Skillshare was among the few businesses to specifically name the network foundation. 16. Square Enix
17. Thatgamecompany
18. Tinder
Ambiguous Giving But a Cisco spokesperson says the company isn’t contributing to that main group. Cisco’s Robyn Blum told The Daily Signal in an email: • Color Of Change–America’s largest online racial justice organization. The tech company Intel, in a May 31 memo from CEO Bob Swan, announced that the business would donate “$1 million in support of efforts to address social injustice and anti-racism across various nonprofits and community organizations.” “I also encourage employees to consider donating to organizations focused on equity and social justice, including the Black Lives Matter Foundation, the Center for Policing Equity and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, all of which are eligible for Intel’s Donation Matching Program,” Swan said. However, the Intel CEO’s memo didn’t provide a link to a Black Lives Matter group. Nor did it specify which foundation—the larger and more prominent BLM Global Network Foundation or the smaller Black Lives Matter Foundation. The Daily Signal sought clarification from Intel, but it did not respond before publication of this report. The Pokemon Co. is another example of a company that didn’t specify which organization, but said it was donating $100,000 to Black Lives Matter. Atlantic Records announced that it “will be contributing to Black Lives Matter and other organizations that are doing crucial work to combat injustice.” But the legendary record company didn’t specify whether it was donating to the BLM Global Network Foundation and didn’t respond to multiple inquiries. Similarly, Warner Records announced that it would contribute “to Black Lives Matter and other organizations that are doing crucial work to combat racial injustice.” Discord, a communications company, announced that it is donating to the “Black Lives Matter movement.” It did not respond to inquiries from The Daily Signal about the specific organization. Pusheen, the company behind the cartoon cat of the same name, called on fans and followers to join it in donating to Black Lives Matter among other organizations, but didn’t specify which BLM entity. Ubisoft also said that it was contributing $100,000 to both the NAACP and Black Lives Matter, without specifying which organization or affiliate.
————————— Tags: Fred Lucas, The Daily Signal, 18 Corporations, Gave Money, to Radical, Black Lives Matter Group To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks! |
||
The Black Lives Matter Effect is Killing Black Children
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 05:40 PM PDT
by Daniel Greenfield: Mekhi James, a 3-year-old boy, cried, “It hurts”, after he was shot in Chicago. Then he died. Sincere Gaston, a 1-year-old boy, was also shot and killed in Chicago. A 3-year-old girl was shot in the chest while playing in the front yard with other children. She was among the four toddlers shot in Chicago in two weeks. Older children are also being shot. An 8-year-old girl was grazed in the head, and a 5-year-old boy in the buttocks. Natalia Wallace, a 7-year-old girl described as “quiet and sweet” was shot and killed on the sidewalk. “Where is the outrage? Our babies are being shot. These are our babies,” Chicago PD’s Chief of Operations Fred Waller, who is African-American, asked. The question ought to be directed to Black Lives Matter as the BLM Effect fuels shootings and deaths around the country. And the most vulnerable of the BLM Effect’s victims are black children. Eight children under the age of 10 have been shot in Chicago in the past few weeks. The cause of these shootings is an upsurge in crime from the Black Lives Matter riots that have devastated the country. The Black Lives Matter riots are killing black people, and particularly black children, in two ways. Chicago murders are up 83% in June, while arrests fell 55%, street stops 74%, and traffic stops 86%. If you want to see what defunding the police looks like, just stop by Chicago and bring a bulletproof vest. John Catanzara, the president of the Fraternal Order of Police, blames a new Ferguson Effect in the George Floyd era where officers, “pause and say: ‘I want to go home today safe. I want to make sure I keep my job. And I want to make sure I don’t go to jail.'” Mayor Lightfoot argues that it’s due to the police being tied up by the Black Lives Matter protests. And they’re both right. The BLM Effect has a dual function. The protests are tying up large numbers of cops, leaving gang members free to fight their battles, and the dismantling of proactive policing and the scapegoating of cops makes the police less proactive. Alderman Chris Taliaferro, the African-American chair of the Chicago City Council Committee on Public Safety, said, “Our police officers don’t want to be the next headline.” Even as Democrats around the country endorsed Black Lives Matter and championed defunding the police, Chicago’s black political leaders rushed 1,200 cops to the streets for the July 4th weekend. African-American Police Superintendent David Brown ordered sweeps of street corners for gang members and pleaded with the courts to keep them in jail for at least the weekend. “Our endgame is arrests,” he said, vowing to break, “the pipeline for shootings and murders in Chicago.” A white ACLU official warned that would, “drive a wedge between the CPD and communities of color.” While Democrats, their leftist leaders, and the media insist that the real threat to black people comes from police officers and white ‘Karens’ who try to defend themselves, the truth is in the hospitals. Not just black people, but black children are being shot across America because of the anti-police riots. In Detroit, a 9-year-old boy and 10-year-old girl were shot while shooting off fireworks. In Washington D.C., a world away from where Democrat and Republican politicos sell out children like him by conspiring on “police reform” and “criminal justice reform”, Davon McNeal, an 11-year-old boy, was shot and killed while grabbing a phone charger and earbuds before heading to a July 4th BBQ. Mayor Muriel Bowser offered her “thoughts and prayers”. But the little boy shot at the Frederick Douglass apartments didn’t need thoughts and prayers recited on Twitter, he needed the police. The boy’s mother was a community D.C. Violence Interrupter and his grandfather is a Guardian Angel. He was surrounded by alternatives to police, including a city initiative that spent $10 million on community activists that were supposed to somehow ‘interrupt’ violence, but don’t stop bullets. “We’re protesting for months, for weeks, saying, ‘Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter.’ Black lives matter it seems like, only when a police officer shoots a black person,” John Ayala, the boy’s grandfather, said. “What about all the black-on-black crime that’s happening in the community?” In St. Louis, a 4-year-old boy was shot in the head over the July 4th weekend. He was one of 4 children shot on the Fourth of July in the city and one of over 60 children that have been shot there this year. St. Louis Children’s Hospital’s ER has seen more children with gunshot wounds in May than any previous month in its history. An 8-year-old girl was shot and wounded on July 4th in Cleveland. A 15-year-old boy was among three people who were shot in Boston in 24 hours. In Delano, California, an 11-year-old and a 12-year-old girl were shot and killed at a party. The girls were Latino and their lives don’t matter at the moment. But in New York City, TreShawn, an 11-year-old boy was wounded while playing outside his home. There’s a 44% increase in shootings and a 23% rise in murders in New York City. Call it the BLM Effect. “More people not in jail,” NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan said, explaining the rising violence. “Rikers Island in New York is empty. Between Covid, between bail reform, the protests caused animosity towards the police, which took us out of neighborhoods that needed us the most.” In Rutherfordton, North Carolina, Aaliyah Norris, a 7-year-old girl, was shot and killed by Shaquille Francis. Her 9-year-old older sister won’t sleep and won’t eat after the murder. Royta Giles Jr., an 8-year-old boy, was shot and killed in a Birmingham mall. Another girl was wounded. A 5-year-old boy was also shot and wounded in Birmingham while riding in a car. Royta will receive a tiny fraction of the media attention and leftist outrage that Rayshard Brooks did. When a movement cares more about a violent thug than a little boy, that sums its moral compass. A 6-year-old girl was shot and killed in Palm Bay, Florida. Two children were shot in a drive-by attack in Baton Rouge. A 5-year-old and a 12-year-old were shot during a gun battle in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Clarity Coleman, the 5-year-old, was shot in the leg while being pulled on a wagon. “I didn’t even know that I got shot until I started feeling the pain,” Chyesha Smith, the 12-year-old, said. 70 children were shot in Philadelphia this year. A 43% rise. 96% of the child victims of violence are black. This is what Black Lives Matter looks like in the real world. In Minneapolis, where the city council has voted to defund the police, 50 kids from a youth football team, some as young as 5 years old, ran for cover as shots were fired by rival thugs in a park. Elsewhere, a 7-year-old boy was shot in the foot. 116 people were shot in June. That’s a 400% increase. Sasha Cotton, who heads the city’s office of violence prevention, blamed angst and trauma from Floyd’s death. Her office’s plan to prevent the violence is to urge the victims not to retaliate. Coach Thompson, who is black, said, “It was crazy to have 50 to 60 rounds fired and no police presence.” But he’s considering supporting the defunding of the police. The BLM Effect is taking black lives across America. In Milwaukee, shootings are up 95%, in Hartford, they’ve risen 36%, and in New York City, shootings are up 142%. In just one week, an extra 37 people were shot. That excess capacity can be credited to Black Lives Matter and all of its supporters. While Democrat leaders grappled with taking down statues of the great explorer and possibly even renaming the city, Columbus, Ohio is experiencing one of its deadliest years. Cincinnati is headed toward its deadliest year in over two generations. Murders are up 65%. The average murder victim is black. Only 4 were white. “Each of those lives matter and the majority of those who have lost their lives this year, last year and the year before that are African Americans. It’s unfortunate to say it is at the hands of other African Americans,” Christopher Smitherman, the black head of Cincinnati’s public safety committee, said. Smitherman is the former president of Cincinnati’s NAACP. Black Lives Matter falsely pretends that black people are mostly endangered by police, when in reality, in some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country, they’re protected by police officers. And those police officers are increasingly black. Black Lives Matter declared war on the police on behalf of criminals. The death toll in black lives is shocking. And the toll in the lives of black children is even more heartrending. When the police leave, the criminals take over, and the hospitals and morgues pile up with the black victims of gang violence. That’s the BLM Effect. Supporting Black Lives Matter means not only supporting criminals over the police, it means enabling the mass deaths of black people and black children that inevitably follow in the wake of the riots. If you support Black Lives Matter, you’re killing black children. Tags: Daniel Greenfield, Sultan Knish, Black Lives Matter Effect, Killing Black Children To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks! |
||
Who Believes the “Nobody is Going to Take Your Guns Away” Line Now?
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 02:42 PM PDT by Charles C.W. Cooke: The most accomplished of liars eventually come to believe their own lies. And so it is that the people who have been insisting for years that “nobody wants to take away your guns” cannot stop repeating that lie even when they are openly proposing the confiscation of the most commonly owned firearms in the United States. In March, Joe Biden threatened to slap a construction worker from Michigan after the worker told him he was worried that Biden wanted to “take away our guns.” “I’m not taking your gun away at all,” Biden said angrily, pointing his finger in the man’s face and cursing at him. “That’s bull—-.” For this outburst, Biden was widely praised in the press. But what the worker had said was not bull—- at all, and we can tell as much by looking at Biden’s own words. Asked last year by CNN’s Anderson Cooper whether “a Biden administration means they’re going to come for my guns,” Biden confirmed that it would. “Bingo!” Biden told Cooper, smiling. “You’re right if you have an assault weapon. The fact of the matter is, they should be illegal, period. Look, the Second Amendment doesn’t say you can’t restrict the kinds of weapons people can own.” This attitude was echoed a few days before the event in Michigan, when Biden publicly told Beto O’Rourke, “You’re going to take care of the gun problem with me. You’re going to be the one who leads this effort. I’m counting on ya.” Given that O’Rourke is primarily famous these days for having told Americans on live television, “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15,” and then for having sold t-shirts with those words emblazoned proudly across their fronts, one wonders what voters were supposed to assume Biden meant by this endorsement. As far as political statements go, “Bingo! You’re right” is about as straightforward as it gets. The episode demonstrated once again that, in 2020, “we’re not going to take away your guns” has become little more than a thoughtless throat-clearing exercise. Members of Virginia’s legislature repeatedly said “nobody is trying to take away your guns” while they endorsed a bill that would have done exactly that. Gun-control groups repeat “nobody is trying to take away your guns” at the same time as they funnel money and support to politicians who openly pledge confiscation drives. Even Beto O’Rourke said it—before he didn’t. The “nobody is trying to take away your guns” claim is merely another way of conveying “don’t get mad at me, but….” It is a tic indulged by politicians and activists who sense deep down that their position is extreme and unworkable but who don’t quite want to admit that to themselves. Reflecting on Beto’s failed presidential run, “The View’s” Joy Behar gave the game away when she advised gun-control advocates not to announce “everything they’re going to do” ahead of time. “If you are going to take people’s guns away,” Behar counseled, “wait until you get elected and then take them away. Don’t tell them.” Or, to put it another way: “Nobody wants to take away your guns.” And yet, they do. The idea has gained currency among the political commentariat, which cannot seem to decide whether it is “common sense” or fringe, and so has taken to arguing both positions simultaneously; it became mainstream within the Democratic primary, nearly half of whose aspirants backed some confiscation measures by the time the contest really got going; and, this November, the presidential election is guaranteed to feature a Democratic candidate who, by his own admission, supports the confiscation of America’s favorite rifle. Nobody? Well, apart from…. Tags: Charles C.W. Cooke, America’s 1st Freedom, Who Believes, Joe Biden, Nobody Wants Away, your Guns, Michigan, Beto O”Rourke To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks! |
||
The Press Is Already Trying To Whip Up A New Pandemic Panic
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 02:29 PM PDT by Michael Fumento: Oh, no! With the planet still unlocking and some parts still tightly buttoned down, and with the world economy plummeting, “China Researchers Discover New Swine Flu with ‘Pandemic Potential,’ ” blares CNN. “Scientists Say New Strain of Swine Flu Virus Is Spreading to Humans in China,” shrieks the New York Times. Say it ain’t so! Okay, it ain’t so. Not in any meaningful way. The media should go back to “murder hornets,” or find another asteroid with a chance in a zillion of hitting Earth. The virus in question, G4 EA H1N1, is genetically descended from the H1N1 swine flu that caused what the World Health Organization declared a pandemic in 2009. G4 shows “all the essential hallmarks of a candidate pandemic virus,” said a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). But … there are a few little caveats. First, while the Times says the virus “is spreading silently in workers on pig farms in China,” that means pigs-to-humans and that’s been going on for so time. “This is not a ‘new’ new virus; it’s been very common in pigs since 2016,” tweeted Carl Bergstrom, a professor of biology at the University of Washington. “There’s no evidence that G4 is circulating in humans, despite five years of extensive exposure. That’s the key context to keep in mind.” Okay, but it’s a swine flu !!! Um, yes, pigs appear to play a role in most strains of flu, along with birds. Specifically, the massive swine farms of China are “mixing bowls” to produce new flu strains. Also, the Times quoted a British scientist to tie it to you-know-what. “It may be that with further change in the virus it could become more aggressive in people much as SARS-CoV-2 has done,” he told them in an email. (They probably had to email 100 people to get that scary quote.) Except there’s no evidence of any such change in SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Early on two strains were identified, one of which happens to be more aggressive in humans. How about being related to the H1N1 flu that became pandemic? Pandemics are always bad, right? That’s where this gets really interesting. You see it was that very flu that caused the WHO – always on the lookout for a new germ with which to terrify the world, expand its power, and fill its coffers – to redefine its definition of “flu pandemic.” Heretofore it meant exactly what one would expect, a very severe flu that was killing or in any case had the serious potential of killing lots of people. Problem is, as I noted in a long series of articles at the time (in other words, with foresight not hindsight), H1N1 wasn’t playing along. Even though it was new, previous vaccinations and exposure to previous strains provided little protection, from the very beginning indications were that it was vastly milder than garden-variety seasonal flu. Also, it appeared H1N1 was more contagious than seasonal flu. Normally, it’s bad when a disease-causing bug is more contagious. But this proved to be the opposite. That’s because different strains of flu compete with each other to see which can infect you first. That means H1N1 was essentially inoculating people against more serious strains and thereby saving lives. (In a historical context, Edward Jenner observed that cowpox infection prevented the far deadlier smallpox and used cowpox virus in the first vaccines.) The final toll for that first H1N1 season, according to WHO’s own figures, was a paltry “over 18,449” worldwide. By comparison, common seasonal flu normally kills 290,000 – 650,000 annually worldwide says the WHO. The U.S. had about 12,500 flu deaths, the CDC reported, whereas in 2017-18 its estimate for seasonal flu was 61,000. In something of an understatement, the CDC said “the impact of the (H1N1) virus on the global population during the first year was less severe than that of previous pandemics.” As it saw this unfolding, that its huge feral boar with tusks was proving to be a piglet, the WHO was in a nightmare position. In April 2009, WHO flu czar Keiji Fukuda declared that we could be facing a contagion on the order of the Spanish flu of 1918-19, and the United Nations soon concurred. Spanish flu killed about 50 million worldwide (140 million adjusted for today’s population) and 675,000 in the United States (2 million today). The two subsequent flu pandemics, the Asian Flu of 1957-58 and the Hong Kong Flu of 1968-69 also killed huge numbers of people. This was all the more embarrassing considering WHO was still wiping egg off its face for sounding the alarm for five years about H5N1 avian flu, described as a “when, not if” pandemic that could kill “hundreds of millions.” Official WHO total: 440. Moreover, other public health organizations, the usual doomsaying “experts,” and mainstream media had all gone along. The President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology forecast that “as many as 90,000 people – mostly children and young adults – could die from the H1N1 flu virus.” WHO hadn’t yet learned how to pump up the numbers, as it and the CDC would later learn to do with coronavirus, mostly by declaring a death with Covid-19 as a death from Covid-19, and also by saying no test is even necessary. But somehow it had to make H1N1 possibly qualify as a pandemic. There was only one way. Change the definition of “pandemic.” And so it did. The original definition of influenza pandemic required “several, simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness.” The rewrite said pandemics “can be either mild or severe.” That renders the term meaningless, because seasonal flu always causes “simultaneous epidemics worldwide.” Now it just needs to be a sufficiently different strain. So theoretically G4 could start spreading from human-to-human, ultimately kill nobody, and still qualify as a pandemic. Indeed, even the Times admits that humans infected with G4 are showing no illness. We know they have it only from blood tests. G4 could potentially save vast numbers of lives if it acts like H1N1 or Jenner’s cowpox vaccination. Then, with incredible chutzpah, the WHO even denied that it rewrote the definition of pandemic. “Having severe deaths has never been part of the WHO definition,” Fukuda said. Never mind that it’s still right there on the WHO Website. That means that if G4 followed in the footsteps of its “ancestor,” H1N1 (and the Times even admits that humans infected with G4 are showing no illness), and ended up actually saving a lot of lives, the WHO could (and of course would) declare it a pandemic. And given that the world seems to have decided that quarantining healthy people and destroying economies is a proper way of trying to reduce pandemic viral deaths, we could see a repeat of the horrors we’re still experiencing. But that word “pandemic” will set off alarms everywhere, as indeed G4 is already doing. At a Tuesday Senate hearing the ever-reliable National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci said G4 was not an “immediate threat” but “something we need to keep our eye on just the way that we did in 2009 with the emergence of the swine flu.” Inevitably some flu virus will be antigenically different enough and widespread enough to qualify as a “pandemic.” If we allow ourselves to forget how much damage we let the coronavirus cause, prepare for a sequel of what we’re going through now. And gosh, like “The Godfather II,” it may be even more powerful than the original. Tags: Issues & Insights, Michael Fumento, Press, Already Trying To Whip Up, A New Pandemic Panic To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks! |
||
Know Your Enemy: Undeniable Truths About the Left
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 01:43 PM PDT you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” — Sun Tzu First, we must begin by properly labeling the truth as it is. For example, everything that is happening now is because the left’s plans to remake the United States from a Constitutional republic into borderless global state were thwarted by the people electing Donald J. Trump for president. As a result, the left not only hates Trump for beating their savior Hillary Clinton, it also loathes the citizens who voted for him. Once you honestly grasp the level of hatred the left has for us, you begin to understand that the Wuhan virus extended lockdowns and the Black Lives Matter/Antifa led riots are for express purpose of bringing misery and terror to those who dared to vote for Donald Trump in 2016 and those who are planning to vote for him in November. The left has turned up their intensity to eleven in their ongoing effort to isolate Trump from his base. Democrat governors and mayors are holding your Constitutional freedoms hostage and the unspoken ransom for you to make all this desolation go away is to vote Democrat. “Abandon this ogre, Trump, and things will go back to how they were before you made the mistake of voting for him.” Let’s play along with that scenario for the moment and say you were to desert Trump and opt for your life of comfort again. Do you honestly think the Democrats will forgive and forget? Hardly! If past behavior is an indication of future behavior,, then the Democrats will continue to scapegoat you for all that is wrong with the country. This is exactly what they are doing now when they speak of white privilege and systemic racism. What makes you think the left would cease from this malice, especially if it were to win an election for them? And that brings us to this truth: the left hates any American who disagrees with them. Liberty-minded Americans understand that people are going to have strong disagreements on issues, but they appreciate that this is a consequence of free speech under the First Amendment. Leftists hate free speech, especially if it criticizes their agenda. Since they dismiss debate, they have come up with ways to control speech and thought under the rubric of social justice and multiculturalism. Authoritarianism is the source of such a mindset, not liberty. An authoritarian wants to take away your freedom, not protect it. This takes us to another truth about the left and their proxies, the Democrat Party. Leftists love Marxism and therefore hate liberty. The Democrat Party reflects this because they have been hijacked by the Marxist left. Marxism is the theory behind socialism and communism, although they all lead to the same result of despair and slaughter. Both are the antithesis to capitalism, yet our federal government and many of our state governments continue to fornicate with socialism. Obamacare, anyone? Socialism is the foot in the door under the guise of equality and communism is the thug who breaks down the door, holds you prisoner and forces you to work for his benefit. Leftist governors and mayors have gone full communist under the guise of safety in their removal of freedoms during the Wuhan virus lockdowns. Think about the three areas the left focused upon. They went after our right to peaceably assemble, our free exercise of religion, and our right to free speech. The left went after our right to peaceably gather by limiting the number of people we could congregate with and initiating social distancing. Next, they impeded our free exercise of religion by deeming churches as non-essential and forbidding us from gathering for church services; even if they were drive-thru services. Finally, free speech was attacked when leftist social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter censored any posts or tweets that went against the COVID-19 media narrative. Google even controls what information you have access to with a search and now is even manipulating stories regarding the uptick on positive cases of COVID-19. Think I am kidding? Just enter any random number and “new COVID cases” and you will get a series of stories with the numbers you entered. Just for absurdity sake I entered the random numbers 293 and 671 and, surprisingly, I got hits featuring those figures. Coincidence? Remember there is no such thing as coincidence on the left. Manipulation is more like it, which takes us to another truth about the left. Feel drained and frustrated? Thinking that this is the end of the American experiment? That is because the left has been manipulating your emotions; case in point, polling data. All we have been hearing lately is Trump is toast. Biden has a double-digit lead. That’s it, turn out the lights. This is all to dispirit you. Since March, there has been a non-stop pile-on of your emotions. This, in an all-out, no holds barred effort to convince you to give up all hope and reject President Trump. We are in the midst of a cultural revolution brought to you courtesy of the left. They want you to believe that rioting and looting has been a genuinely organic occurrence. However, when you look at the timing and precision of recent events it has become more obvious that this battle plan had been in the works for some time and just needed the right fuse to set off a powder keg. And this leads us to another sobering truth about the left. The left is willing to destroy race relations, shred the Constitution, call for the defunding of police, and validate lawlessness, all for the express purpose of achieving an election victory in November. All this violence and fear has been unleashed in the hopes of sweeping the Democrats, led by a cognitively challenged presidential nominee, into power. Let that sink in. When you have no positive agenda to offer and nothing inspirational to run on then I guess encouraging anarchy is next logical step? Since they cannot run a campaign on building anything, why not campaign on tearing down the works and achievements of others? They claim to offer new enlightenment on the sins of our forefathers, but all they can offer is condemnation as if they are judge, jury and god. This is not hyperbole but a fact. In the absence of worshiping a Creator, the left blasphemes by making themselves little gods where everything they demand should be a dictate for all and nothing they say is worthy of criticism. Arrogance and hubris are two other truths about the left that we need to understand. And right now the Democrats are smug and they are thumping their chests in victory. They believe they have come up with the winning strategy to defeat Trump and to radically change the culture. They are convinced of the validity of their polls and are gleefully savoring the fear of average Americans. I am convinced this will be their undoing. More and more people are becoming wise to all that is going on and that includes the average Democrat voter. They see what their party is doing to this country and they are taking note. These average working-class Democrats are just like the average working-class conservatives who only want to have a good job, savings, good schools for their kids, a nice house, and to live in a safe community. They see their party becoming dangerously radicalized and I do not doubt that they are just as troubled about the direction of the country as we conservatives are. These men and women may not voice their disgust , but do not be surprised to read a post mortem to the election that will show many Democrats casting a vote for Trump. And I believe that will also be true of the Black community. You may not see them interviewed, but a great many blacks appreciate that President Trump has done more for them than all the presidents of the past 30 years. This is a powerful truth that black and Hispanic unemployment have been at all-time lows under the Trump Administration. Democrats know this and it scares them. Prior to the Wuhan virus pandemic, at least of 20 percent of blacks indicated they would be voting to re-elect President Trump. If that holds true, that would be a death knell to the Democrat Party. This is a huge reason for the left fanning the flames of racial unrest under the lie of systemic racism and white privilege. A final truth is that the left is aided by sycophantic media. The left seems powerful only because the media portrays them that way. The media never challenges Democrats and rarely publish any negative stories about them unless there is some sort of political calculation in doing so. This is a double-edged sword. Such reporting is inherently dishonest at its core and spares the left from hearing honest and un-filtered truths about the failures of their policies and actions. The truth is sometimes uncomfortable to face, but it is liberating. In the days that follow this Independence Day weekend, make it your goal to know the enemy. For in these truths are the means of defeating the Democrats and taking the country back. Take note of these truths and formulate a personal or group plan to push back against the left. We need to begin offenses on multiple fronts against the enemy, using their tactics against them. Make it a point to illustrate these truths to your friends who see the Democrats as some unstoppable force. Never give up, never lose hope, never lose faith and stand in the strength of Almighty God. With God’s help, prayer and determination on our part, we can and will turn the tide. Tags: Dex Bahr, Know Your Enemy, Undeniable Truths About the Left To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks! |
||
Barack Hussein Obama Is Running for a Third Term
Posted: 08 Jul 2020 01:07 PM PDT
by Cliff Kincaid: President Trump’s Independence Day speech at Mount Rushmore was a good first step, but he must now identify the enemy by name – Communist China. We are at war. The China virus has been followed by riots instigated by pro-Chinese groups in our major cities. Meanwhile, China has taken Hong Kong, and its sights are set on the United States. We could drop into their hands like overripe fruit. Those are the stakes. Let’s not be confused by disinformation in the New York Times and the Washington Post about Trump’s “dark” and “divisive” speech. He didn’t start this war. He is playing defense. The media want him to surrender to the revolutionary mob. Candidate Joe Biden, a shell of a man with no coherent ideas of his own, is the vessel for our domestic enemies with foreign ties to take control of the federal government and reduce the once-great United States to warring factions unable to stop Red China’s worldwide advance. Biden is promising peace and harmony, but he is only a front man for the same forces behind Barack Hussein Obama’s movement for the “fundamental transformation” of America. Obama visited with Chinese President Xi after Obama left office, in a meeting of “veteran cadres,” or communist officials, discussing current events. “Xi made a positive appraisal of Obama’s efforts in promoting China-U.S. relations during his presidency,” said the Chinese press. That was ominous, but our media showed no interest. Yet this helps explain why Trump’s anti-China policies were a trigger, not only for the Russia-gate hoax, but for coronavirus and the most recent protests and riots. One thing is clear: Obama and his people are calling the shots, literally, behind the Biden for President campaign. Obama wants a third term in office, and he may get it, using Biden as his front man. He will then reinstate his China-friendly policies. Why, President Trump has to ask, did U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers seize a shipment from China that contained over 10,000 assault weapons parts being smuggled into the country? The parts were seized at Express Consignment Operations hub in Louisville, Kentucky, in a parcel described as containing 100 Steel Pin Samples. On a separate occasion, more than 5,000 counterfeit driver’s licenses and 2,909 counterfeit IDs were seized there. They also came from China and were headed to New York. All of this looks like China is outfitting a communist insurgency on American soil. The Red Chinese are already killing our people through exports of fentanyl. Looking at their political operations, Trump said, “One of their political weapons is ‘cancel culture’ – driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and to our values and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America.” Strangely, some Senate Republicans have joined the ranks of the opposition, with Senator Mike Braun endorsing handcuffing the police through frivolous left-wing lawsuits. As Trump said, we must support the police, not weaken them in the face of the communist advance. Trump said, “The radical ideology attacking our country advances under the banner of social justice, but in truth, it would demolish both justice and society. It would transform justice into an instrument of division and vengeance, and it would turn our free and inclusive society into a place of a repression, domination, and exclusion. They want to silence us, but we will not be silenced.” That “radical ideology” is communism. “In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms,” Trump said, “there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished. It’s not going to happen to us.” But it is happening, as the election quickly approaches. Using the term “far-left fascism” to refer to the self-proclaimed anti-fascists is a smart technique rhetorically on Trump’s part. It’s irrefutable that fascism lies on the same side of the political spectrum as communism, and we saw how a fascist-communist alliance sparked World War II, before these two totalitarian ideologies turned on each other, and America went to war to save Europe. The “Refuse Fascism” group, active in a dozen American cities, is actually a front of the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party. Political censorship and communist-style mind control are being exercised through academia and the media, and much of it is financed by corporate America. This trend is commonly called political correctness and “cancel culture.” In truth, this is Cultural Marxism, an actual movement determined to “make America stink,” with roots in communist thinking. On an important level, America’s cities are threatened by these communists in the streets who can’t be stopped with ten-year jail terms for toppling statues. They will probably be sprung from jail by left-wing lawyers anyway and given reduced sentences by liberal judges. But our FBI and CIA can expose their ties to Beijing. That would give our law enforcement authorities more legal weapons in order to close these demonstrations down. These are foreign agents, at the very least, and some may be operating at the direction of the Chinese Communist Party. Analyst Trevor Loudon has done a very good job of analyzing this problem in his latest piece, “People’s War:’ Pro-China Communists Claim Credit For ‘Sparking’ U.S. Riots.” He names the names and identifies their foreign connections. He explains, “Developed by Chairman Mao, the ‘people’s war’ was a strategy whereby Maoist insurgents could use attrition and unconventional warfare to defeat much more powerful conventional armies.” FBI Director Christopher Wray recently said, “…[W]e are looking carefully at the prospect of foreign influence or foreign interference in all the protest activities [that have] occurred over the last few weeks.” If they really don’t have that data, let them call Trevor Loudon and consult his KeyWiki online encyclopedia on the left. If the CIA can’t document the connections of these groups to China, fire the CIA bureaucrat running the agency, Gina Haspel. Trump’s new Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, must clean house at the CIA and come clean on what China is doing, politically and through the provision of weapons. On Independence Day, we are being greeted with cries of “Happy 4th of July.” But despite the fireworks, it’s not a happy day. Republican Senators James Lankford and Ron Johnson proposed that Columbus Day be replaced by a new federal holiday of “Juneteenth.” (They have since backed away from this proposal.) Such a move promises more division, with blacks having their own Independence Day and whites keeping the traditional July 4th. The revolutionary mobs, of course, will not be satisfied, as demands for trillions of dollars in “reparations” will be advanced. A white backlash seems inevitable. That’s why responsible leaders must step forward now, before more damage is done and the situation is irreversible. Is it too much to ask that “conservative” senators act to conserve the nation? Trump stands virtually alone, it would seem, as he determines how to proceed, as the enemies of America assemble an arsenal, as we saw in the confiscation of weapons parts in Louisville, that actually includes armaments. These are dangerous times. Attorney General William Barr, in an interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox, discussed in detail how the Chinese are targeting our high-tech industries and stealing technology. He talks about restoring law and order, but is he truly unaware of Chinese political connections to subversive groups behind the riots? Trump needs our backing, but he must get the people in place who understand and want to defeat the enemy. For his part, Trump has to refocus his campaign and start identifying the enemy by name. We deserve the truth. Tags: Cliff Kincaid,America’s Survival, Barack Hussein Obama, Is Running for a Third Term To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks! |
You are subscribed to email updates from ARRA News Service. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. |
Email delivery powered by Google |
Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States |
REDSTATE
Biden and His Campaign Go After Tucker Carlson, Don’t Realize They’re Handing Him a Gift
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This newsletter is never sent unsolicited. It was sent to you because you signed up to receive this newsletter on the RedState.com network OR a friend forwarded it to you. We respect and value your time and privacy. If this newsletter no longer meets your needs we will be happy to remove your address immediately.
Visit the Townhall Media Preference Center to manage your subscriptions You can unsubscribe by clicking here. Or Send postal mail to: * Copyright RedState and its Content Providers. |
AMERICAN SPECTATOR
- Subscribe
- Past Issues
- RSS
- Translate
|
ABC
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
NBC MORNING RUNDOWN
Thursday, July 9, 2020
|
Good morning, NBC News readers.
NBC News has obtained revealing new audio of police interviews after Breonna Taylor’s death, the great school reopening debate is leaving parents wary and confused, and authorities are searching for “Glee” actress Naya Rivera.
Here’s what we’re watching this Thursday morning.
|
New audio of police interviews sheds light on police probe of fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor
Previously unheard audio of interviews from the investigation of the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor reveals new details about the events leading to her death, as well as the sympathetic approach investigators took while scrutinizing one of their own.
In the interview with Louisville police Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, who led the late-night raid in March, the investigator questioning him describes a raid involving at least seven officers and a battering ram as “the most passive way in” and says Mattingly “rightfully” returned fire after Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker fired a shot.
In his interview, Mattingly insists officers knocked and announced themselves when they arrived after midnight on March 13.
In Walker’s interview with investigators, however, he says there was banging on the door but the couple never heard anyone say “police.” Walker says that after he and Taylor asked who it was and got no response he reached for his licensed firearm.
Taylor, a 26-year-old Black emergency room technician, died after she was hit at least eight times during the ensuing shootout.
Listen to the police interviews NBC News obtained. Click to listen to Mattingly and Walker’s recording.
Breonna Taylor’s name became a rallying cry during recent national protests against the police killings of Blacks. (Jason Connolly / AFP via Getty Images file)
|
U.S. officials say intelligence on Russian bounties was less than conclusive. That misses the big picture.
A growing chorus of American officials have said in recent days that the intelligence suggesting Russians paid “bounties” to induce the Taliban to kill American service members in Afghanistan is less than conclusive.
But the debate about that narrow and contested issue distracts from a larger, often-overlooked consensus, current and former military and intelligence officials say.
U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed for years that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is supporting America’s enemies in Afghanistan with cash and weapons.
Yet President Donald Trump has said nothing publicly about it, even as he has pursued warmer relations with Putin and Russia, including ordering his intelligence agencies to cooperate with Russia in the Middle East.
The issue of Russia’s alleged support for killing Americans is expected to come up Thursday when Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley appear before the House Armed Services Committee for a hearing on the military’s role in civilian law enforcement.
“We should always remember, the Russians are not our friends,” Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, told reporters this week. “And they are not our friends in Afghanistan.” (Photo: Andrew Harnik / AP)
|
White House preps school reopening guidelines as Trump threatens funding
Whether schools reopen in the fall is one of the most consequential decisions facing Americans in the response to the pandemic.
But there is still no consensus on whether and how they will open.
President Trump has rebuffed the advice of his own health experts and threatened Wednesday to “cut off” funding for schools that do not reopen this fall.
Trump attacked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools.” Now the White House is preparing to release its own reopening guidelines for schools.
And in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled a plan to bring students back part-time on Wednesday, only to have Gov. Andrew Cuomo say it was too soon to announce a plan and that a decision isn’t likely until August.
All the mixed messaging is leaving parents across the country wary and confused.
Here are some other developments:
- Israel looked like a model for halting coronavirus. Now infections are spiking.
- As coronavirus surges, more Houston residents are dying suddenly at home.
- Track U.S. hot spots where COVID-19 infection rates are rising.
- The U.S. death toll from coronavirus has surpassed 132,000 according to NBC News tally.
- Listen to our Into America podcast. The latest episode gets into the WNBA’s plans for play in 2020.
|
Supreme Court decisions expected in fight over Trump’s tax returns, financial records
The Supreme Court said it will announce the last of the decisions from its current term on Thursday, which almost certainly means the court will reveal its rulings on whether Congress and a New York state prosecutor can get access to President Trump’s business records, including his tax returns.
The Trump rulings will be announced beginning at 10 a.m. ET. That is unless the court is unable to reach a decision and wants them held over to be reargued next term, which seems unlikely, NBC News’ Justice Correspondent Pete Williams writes.
In a major decision announced Wednesday, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to give the nation’s employers more leeway in refusing to provide free birth control for their workers under the Affordable Care Act.
The ruling is a victory for the administration’s plan to greatly expand the kinds of employers who can cite religious or moral objections in declining to include contraceptives in their health care plans.
The ruling has some reproductive rights advocates “terrified” about the potential harm to women.
Anti-abortion demonstrators pray in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
|
‘Glee’ actress Naya Rivera missing after boating on California lake
Authorities are searching a Southern California lake for “Glee” actress Naya Rivera, who officials believe went missing while swimming Wednesday.
The 33-year-old had been boating with her son on Lake Piru, Ventura County Sheriff’s Department Capt. Eric Buschow said.
The actress rented a boat about 1 p.m, he said, and three hours, later authorities found her son napping alone on the vessel.
The police department searched for Rivera on Wednesday until it became too dark and said the search would continue at “first light.”
Rivera is best known for playing Santana Lopez on the TV show “Glee.”
|
Want to receive the Morning Rundown in your inbox? Sign up here.
|
Plus
- The Trump administration plans to block asylum seekers from the U.S. by citing COVID-19 risk.
- Shepard Smith, the former Fox News anchor, is joining CNBC as a prime-time anchor.
- “The Capture” star Ron Perlman discusses his feud with Ted Cruz and “political junkyism.”
|
THINK about it
Republicans used to care about policy — but Trump’s GOP set fire to that tradition, Steve Benen, a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” writes in an opinion piece.
|
Live BETTER
Ready to ease back into exercise, but not sure where to begin? This 30-minute workout is perfect for beginners.
|
Shopping
OK, if you are going to start working out again, you’re going to need a good sports bra. Here are some of the best sports bras out there.
|
One amazing rescue
At the scene of a devastating apartment fire, a retired Marine saved the life of a 3-year-old boy by catching him after he was thrown from the burning building.
Meanwhile another man rushed into the blaze to rescue the boy’s sister.
The man who caught the boy called the catch “a miracle.”
|
Thanks to several readers who pointed out the broken link on yesterday’s BETTER story. Here it is: Overindulging in quarantine? Hit the reset button with these 5 tips.
Good luck with the cleanse to those who go for it!
If you have any comments — likes, dislikes, broken links — drop me an email at: petra@nbcuni.com
If you’re a fan, please forward it to your family and friends. They can sign-up here.
Thanks, Petra Cahill
NBC FIRST READ
|
From NBC’s Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Carrie Dann and Melissa Holzberg
FIRST READ: Five months in, the U.S. hasn’t succeeded in combating the pandemic
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: The United States has failed at combating the coronavirus.
And it keeps on failing.
AP Photo/David J. Phillip
First, President Trump downplayed the seriousness of the virus and later sent mixed messages about it.
Then came the Trump travel restrictions from China and Europe, which didn’t keep the virus away and may have further contributed to its spread.
Then there was the big testing failure, which resulted in a lost month to combat the coronavirus.
Next came the economic re-openings in the South and West, and the results are in – with Arizona, California, Florida and Texas all seeing their cases and hospitalizations increase.
Yesterday, Tulsa’s health director said the president’s 6,000-person indoor rally late last month “likely contributed” to a surge of cases in the city.
And now the president is calling for America’s schools to fully reopen?
Sure, there have been individual successes along the way – more testing, more protective equipment and more federal money to keep businesses afloat.
But consider this comparison that NBC’s Peter Alexander made on “Today” this morning.
Germany, Denmark, Norway and Sweden – the four countries Trump cited yesterday that have reopened their schools – had a combined 1,000 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday.
The United States had nearly 60,000.
Sean Doolittle, the closer for the World Series Champion Washington Nationals, might have said it best: Sports (and other trappings) are the reward of a functioning society.
But the U.S. isn’t functioning when it comes to combating the coronavirus – as fatalities are once again on the rise.
|
DATA DOWNLOAD: The numbers that you need to know today
3,073,999: The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the United States, per the most recent data from NBC News and health officials. (That’s 61,603 more cases than yesterday morning.)
133,282: The number of deaths in the United States from the virus so far. (That’s 956 more than yesterday morning.)
37.43 million: The number of coronavirus TESTS that have been administered in the United States so far, according to researchers at The COVID Tracking Project.
500: The number of new cases in Tulsa County in the last two days, a surge which the city’s top medical official says may be linked to the president’s rally there.
Nearly 14 percent: The number of new coronavirus cases in the U.S. recorded just in Texas.
77 percent: The share of Americans who say that “defund the police” is a call to change the way police departments operate, not eliminate them entirely, according to a new Monmouth poll.
35 percent: The share of Republicans in the same poll who said that racial discrimination in the U.S. is “not a problem,” up from 15 percent who said the same in early June.
$700 billion: The price tag on Joe Biden’s newly-unveiled plan for American manufacturing and innovation.
|
Talking policy with Benjy: Biden-Sanders Unity Edition
The unity committee organized by the Biden campaign to find common ground with Bernie Sanders supporters released its draft proposal on Wednesday, and the process may have been the bigger story than the policy, NBC’s Benjy Sarlin says.
During the primaries, Biden sidestepped a number of activist demands from the left, including abolishing ICE, decriminalizing border crossings, legalizing marijuana, banning fracking, and the biggest one, Medicare for All. More recently, he’s avoided calls for defunding the police.
None of those positions changed in the draft proposal, which gives Biden more running room to dodge President Trump’s regular accusations that he’d be a stalking horse for the party’s more radical wing.
But Biden’s platform was already relatively progressive on each of these issues compared to previous nominees as he followed the party’s broader move to the left. Some of the objections to his candidacy in further left circles were as much about trusting him to follow through on his stated plans given his more centrist history as they were about the details.
In that sense, the unity committee seems to be a success so far. Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ campaign manager and a participant in the unity effort, told NBC News the results were “consistent with the Joe Biden who is evolving with the times.”
Sanders himself and allies praised Biden on Wednesday for engaging with their side in good faith and accepting a few new policy goals on issues like climate, health care and education. If they feel they have buy-in on his agenda, it could help smooth his path both in the election and if he gets a chance to govern.
|
TWEET OF THE DAY: Bernie’s all in
|
2020 VISION: The Dem small-dollar machine keeps rolling
On Tuesday, Democrat Amy McGrath, who narrowly won her Senate primary in Kentucky last month, announced raising a whopping $17.4 million for the second quarter.
Democrat Jaime Harrison, who’s taking on Sen. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, raked in nearly $14 million for the quarter, per NBC’s Ben Kamisar and one of us.
In Maine, Dem Sara Gideon raised $9 million.
In Montana, Dem Steve Bullock said he raised $7.7 million.
In North Carolina, Democrat Cal Cunningham brought in $7.4 million for the quarter.
And in Kansas, Dem Barbara Bollier raised $3.7 million, NBC’s Liz Brown-Kaiser writes.
Those are all presidential-level totals – during a time when the economy nosedived into recession/depression territory.
And by comparison, Beto O’Rourke Senate fundraising juggernaut brought in $10.4 million during his second quarter in 2018.
|
AD WATCH from Ben Kamisar
In case you missed it, the cavalry is coming to help Republicans in Georgia.
Yesterday, One Nation and Senate Leadership Fund announced plans to book about $22 million in new TV ads for the state, which will have two GOP-held Senate seats up for grabs in the fall (Fox News first reported the buys). One Nation is also putting about $4.3 million into Kentucky for an August TV buy.
A recent Fox News poll found Joe Biden up 2 points on Trump in Georgia, with Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., leading Dem nominee Jon Ossoff by just 3 points. And while Mitch McConnell still appears to be in the driver’s seat in Kentucky, Amy McGrath has an unprecedented amount of money for a challenger (see above).
These new buys in typically safe Republican states highlight how the expanding map is diverting resources towards states the GOP had hoped would be home to easy victories, money that won’t be spent on top-tier races in states like Colorado, Arizona, Maine and North Carolina.
|
McConnell wants to limit stimulus payments
While Senate Republicans haven’t rolled out a full plan on what they want in the next round of coronavirus relief, it seems Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is certain that direct payments would only go to those making $40,000 per year or less.
Here’s what he said yesterday: “Now, the people that I think have been hit the hardest during this whole episode have been people making $40,000 or less, many of them work in the hospitality business, hotels, restaurants. We’re going to be acutely aware of that particular segment of our population going into this next package that we’ll be putting together in the next few weeks.”
House Democrats DID pass another relief package that totaled $3 trillion back in May, which included direct payments to the same income thresholds as the CARES Act – which nearly unanimously passed the Senate. But according to McConnell, that is a nonstarter.
McConnell said the House “did come [back to session] a couple of days and throw together a $3 trillion unserious package that would have doubled what we already have done. I can tell you confidently it won’t be $3 trillion, that bill is not going anywhere.”
|
THE LID: Police blotter
Don’t miss the pod from yesterday, when we looked at recent polling about what Americans really thinking of the “defund the police’ movement.
|
ICYMI: What ELSE is happening in the world?
Joy Reid is MSNBC’s newest primetime host, with a new hour called “The ReidOut” airing at 7pm ET weeknights starting July 20.
Russia has been working to build its power in Afghanistan, even as the U.S. looks for the exits.
If Trump does strip international students of their ability to stay in the U.S. if their schools don’t have in-person classes, these six states would bear the brunt. (But some top universities are suing the administration over the move.)
Joe Biden is slamming Trump as the “commander in chief who doesn’t command anything.”
Amazon is the latest company to put pressure on the Washington football team to change its name.
|
CBS
|
|
|
|
IJR
MANHATTAN INSTITUTE
|
LOUDER WITH CROWDER
TOWNHALL
FACEBOOK TWITTER |
ADVERTISEMENT | ||||||||
|
|
|
Visit the Townhall Media Preference Center to manage your subscriptions You can unsubscribe by clicking here. Or Send postal mail to: * Copyright Townhall and its Content Providers. |
REALCLEARPOLITICS MORNING NOTE
|
|||||||||||
|
REALCLEARPOLITICS TODAY
|
CENTER FOR SECURITY POLICY
|
TWITCHY
|
|
HOT AIR
ADVERTISEMENT | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL REVIEW
|
|
NATIONAL JOURNAL
|
This email was sent to rickbulow74@live.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails you may unsubscribe at any time.
GATEWAY PUNDIT
|
FRONTPAGE MAG
|
THE HOOVER INSTITUTE
A daily digest of analysis and commentary by Hoover fellows. Problems viewing this email? View this email in your browser | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|