The Omicron version of COVID is so mild that it’s indistinguishable from a cold. Many people are asymptomatic. We also know now that early COVID counts were almost certainly wrong because the PCR test was unable to distinguish between COVID and the flu.
It’s no secret at this point that Omicron was O-versold. It’s so negligible that many people know they have it only because they’ve been tested. Even those who have symptoms feel only as if they’ve got a cold.
The CDC, after announcing that 73% of all COVID cases in America were now Omicron, backtracked and now says that only 23% are, with the remainder being the Delta variant.
The tests are a hypochondriac’s dream.
The tests do nothing but allow bureaucrats and the media to keep the panic going.
Democrats have figured out that the descendants of those Americans who fought a revolution during a smallpox epidemic, who battled through the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and both Gulf Wars; who survived journeys (voluntary or enslaved) across dangerous oceans; who lived through Depressions and recessions; who traveled thousands of miles in covered wagons; and who populated a dangerous wilderness can be controlled completely if they’re told they have a cold or the flu with a 1% mortality rate for people who are very old or have comorbidities.
Knowing that, if you wanted permanent political power, wouldn’t you also make sure that Americans are constantly told that they’re very, very sick?
American consumers are grappling with the fastest price increase in decades, with the cost of everything from cars to gasoline to food soaring nationwide. And the problem may get worse before it starts to improve.
Disruptions in the global supply chain – which have caused congestion in ports and warehouses nationwide – could last longer than expected as surging demand struggles to keep up.
Inflation, as measured by the Federal Reserve's preferred gauge, has climbed to the highest level since February 1982. In November, the personal consumption expenditures price index jumped to 5.7%, well above the Fed's preferred target of 2%. The data is further evidence of a spike in prices illustrated by a separate measure – the Consumer Price Index – which showed inflation rose by 6.8% in November from the previous year.
"It is now clear that this process will take longer than initially expected, and the inflation overshoot will likely get worse before it gets better."
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, declared in a new interview that the COVID-19 emergency is "over" and that he won’t be implementing another statewide mask mandate in response to the spread of the omicron variant, explaining that if people aren’t vaccinated at this point it’s their "own darn fault" if they get sick.
"The emergency is over," he said. "You know, public health [officials] don’t get to tell people what to wear; that's just not their job. Public health [officials] would say to always wear a mask because it decreases flu and decreases [other airborne illnesses]. But that's not something that you require; you don't tell people what to wear. You don't tell people to wear a jacket when they go out in winter and force them to [wear it]. If they get frostbite, it's their own darn fault."
Economists surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics are predicting that annual inflation will remain above 2% over the next three years as a result of rising wages and strong demand for goods and services.
The median forecast for the change in inflation-adjusted gross domestic product (real GDP) from the fourth quarter (Q4) 2020 to Q4 2021 is 4.9%, down from 5.6% year-over-year forecast in September and 6.7% forecast in May. The median real GDP growth estimate for 2022 is 3.6% year-over-year, up slightly from September's estimate.
The act creates new criminal offenses and increases penalties for those who target law enforcement and participate in violent or disorderly assemblies. “Our right to peacefully assemble is one of our most cherished as Americans, but throughout the country we’ve seen that right being taken advantage of by professional agitators, bent on sowing disorder and causing mayhem in our cities,” said Governor DeSantis. “I will not allow this kind of violence to occur here in Florida. The legislation announced today will not only combat rioting and looting, but also protect the men and women in law enforcement that wake up every day to keep us safe. I look forward to working with the Florida Legislature next session to sign this proposal into law.”
Prohibition on Violent or Disorderly Assemblies
Prohibition on Obstructing Roadways – Drivers are NOT liable for injury or death caused if fleeing for safety from a mob.
Prohibition on Destroying or Toppling Monuments
Prohibition on Harassment in Public Accommodations
RICO Liability – attaches to anyone who organizes or funds a violent or disorderly assembly.
The surgeon-turned-talk-show-host has name recognition and cash, but also hours of TV for his opposition to use against him.
With the Keystone State's GOP Senate primary uncertain, Senate Republicans suggested this week that they might embrace the celebrity doctor's nascent campaign to replace retiring Sen. Pat Toomey. GOP senators conceded in interviews that they didn’t know much about Oz. But if he’s the best prescription for reclaiming the Senate majority, they’ll take it.
His Republican candidacy comes after Trump-endorsed candidate Sean Parnell ended his Senate bid after losing custody of his children.
Mexico has agreed to cooperate on restarting the Migrant Protection Protocols policy as long as the U.S. takes key steps to address Mexico's human rights concerns.
The Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as the "Remain in Mexico" program, forces asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while they await U.S. immigration proceedings.
The revised program will expand eligibility for return to nationals "of any country in the Western Hemisphere other than Mexico."
The Biden administration will continue to enforce the Trump-era public health order known as "Title 42," which allows border agents to expel asylum-seekers to Mexico without due process to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
President Joe Biden suspended the policy, which was created in 2018 under the Trump administration, shortly after taking office in January and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas terminated the policy in June.
The administration was forced to restart the program after a federal judge ruled they had "failed to show a reasoned decision" for ending the program. The U.S. Supreme Court in August denied a request by the administration to stay a lower court order requiring it to restart the policy – essentially forcing the administration to resume the policy. The Supreme Court ruling did not address the policy’s legality.
The program is expected to resume Monday, December 6.
Reuters, CBS News, Washington Post among outlets who've corrected reporting
The persistent media falsehood that Kyle Rittenhouse was armed with an AR-15 style rifle when he "crossed state lines" before his deadly encounters in Kenosha, Wis., has led to multiple corrections and considerable mockery as the reckoning over misleading coverage of the trial continues.
CBS News correspondent Mark Strassman reported on Sunday's "Face The Nation" that "Rittenhouse drove in from Illinois armed for battle," leading the outlet to issue a correction and apology for its language.
Ana Kasparian of the far-left Young Turks blasted Rittenhouse for having "crossed state lines with an illegal gun" earlier this month before correcting herself on a later show, saying it was important to have the "facts."
Shouldn't a purported "news" reporting outlet give due diligence to reporting the facts in the first place?
"The 17-year-old vigilante, arguably a domestic terrorist, picked up a rifle, drove to a different state to shoot people," MSNBC's John Heilemann said last year.
"Not only was he not standing his ground, he wasn’t even standing in his own state," MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said on Nov. 1. "He crossed state lines with an AR-15, threw himself in the middle of all this and started shooting people."
"In Wisconsin you have Rittenhouse, a White teenager who crossed state lines with an AR-15-style rifle. Killed two men and wounded another and was told by police to go home," left-wing CNN anchor Don Lemon said on Nov. 16.
"Now if you recall, the teenager drove from his home in Illinois across state lines armed with a semiautomatic rifle to the site of the protests where he shot and killed two men and wounded another," MSNBC anchor Ayman Mohyeldin said last month.
ABC's Joy Behar made two false assertions on Nov. 11, saying Rittenhouse "goes across state lines with an AR-15, with his mother." His mother did not drive him to Wisconsin, an assertion also incorrectly made by CNN's Bakari Sellers. Behar corrected the remark about his mother a few minutes later but not about the rifle.
The day of the acquittal, left-wing "Peacock" comedian Amber Ruffin repeated the falsehood as well. The viral video has more than 8 million views on Twitter but hasn't been flagged as misinformation. "It's not OK for a man to grab a rifle, travel across state lines, and shoot three people, and then walk free," she said.
The examples are nearly endless. "The View" co-host Whoopi Goldberg, legal analyst Areva Martin, MSNBC's Dean Obeidallah, and MSNBC legal analyst Maya Wiley also made the false claim.
The day after the verdicts, the New York Times' Glenn Thrush quoted a gun control proponent fretting that Rittenhouse could "grab an assault weapon, travel across state lines" and kill people without consequences. "Only in America can a 17-year-old grab an assault weapon, travel across state lines, provoke a fight, kill two people and injure another and pay no consequences," he told Thrush, with no text indicating what he said was wrong. Thrush did not respond to a request for comment on whether he would update the piece.
That incorrect assessment was also spotted by Fox News Digital in Reuters and the Washington Post – which have both since issued corrections – as well as opinion pieces in Glamour, Esquire, Deadspin, and Gothamist. "This Nov 19 story corrects third paragraph to make clear Rittenhouse did not bring his weapon from Illinois to Wisconsin," a correction at the top of the Reuters piece now reads.
Who needs real news, when you can just make it up?
The United States is the only country in the world, where the government has no rights; where instead it has assigned and expressly limited responsibilities.
In every other country, the government has every right, and the people have none; only those permissions given to them by the government, which it can modify at any time. In every country, the people accept that. The proof is that, when a revolution occurs and a government is overthrown, those who take power act just the same: that government has every right, and the people none.
Even in the U.S., politicians who want greater power hate the Constitution, subverting it when they can. From the lowliest city councilman to the President of the country, they would like to replace the Constitution with a definition of their powers in keeping with their own desires.
That is the beauty of the U.S. Constitution: "We, the People," it begins, and that is where ultimate power lies – something nobody can grasp firmly enough to wrest a change of power.
Rittenhouse's attackers: Rosenbaum, Huber, and Grosskreutz
Drone footage of the encounter appears to show Rosenbaum chasing Rittenhouse before the teenager turned around and fired four shots at close range, fatally striking Rosenbaum.
Hours before the fatal encounter, Rosenbaum had been released from a local hospital in the wake of a suicide attempt. He had pending charges in Wisconsin for alleged domestic abuse and jumping bail at the time of his death. In December 2002, a court in Pima County, Arizona, sentenced him to a decade in prison on child molestation charges. He spent just over 14 years in prison and committed dozens of disciplinary infractions, state records show.
Moments after Rittenhouse fatally shot Rosenbaum, 26-year-old Anthony Huber chased after the teen and hit him with a skateboard. Rittenhouse then fatally shot Huber once in the chest.
Wisconsin court documents show that Huber was convicted of domestic abuse and disorderly conduct in 2018. He also served a prison stint in 2012 for choking his brother.
28-year-old Gaige Grosskreutz, was shot once in the arm after approaching Rittenhouse with a handgun. Grosskreutz testified at trial that he pointed his handgun at Rittenhouse before being shot.
Rittenhouse’s defense attorneys have said that he went to Kenosha to clean up graffiti, to protect small businesses from looters, and to provide medical aid after nights of protests. They maintain that he opened fire only in self-defense — after being attacked by a group of grown men.
Are Democrats and Socialists upset that their hired-thug paid mobs can be shot in self-defense?
From the KKK to Antifa, Democrats and their ilk have always relied on violent gangs to enforce their attempts at autocratic rule.
Many right-wing politicians and citizens have pushed back against Biden’s sweeping pandemic-related mandates. The President’s relief bill also features plenty of items related to federal funding. One of these features said that relief cash can’t be used to offset tax cuts or credits, “directly or indirectly.”
In response, 13 states argued in court that the rule “violates the Constitution’s spending clause of the 10th amendment.” Other states also filed suit, making the same argument.
U.S. District Judge L. Scott Coogler of the Northern District of Alabama issued an injunction against Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and in favor of more than a dozen states that enjoins her from enforcing the section of Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, enacted in March.
Many Republican leaders applauded the judge’s decision, especially Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds: "This is a major victory for the State of Iowa and Iowa taxpayers. The Biden Administration was trying to punish fiscally responsible states like Iowa, which has a record budget surplus, and that’s why we took legal action. With this ruling, Biden’s Administration can’t keep us from cutting taxes and I look forward to doing just that."
Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., is set to announce his retirement from the House in a move that will deal another blow to Democrats' chances of keeping control of the chamber in the midterm elections.
The planned announcement comes two weeks after North Carolina's Republican-controlled legislature passed a new congressional map that may put Butterfield's typically safe seat within reach of the GOP.
Butterfield's planned retirement comes the same week as Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., announced their retirements, adding to a flow of Democratic incumbents that have announced their departure from Congress. A total of 11 Democrats have announced that they will not be seeking reelection in 2022, compared to nine Republicans who plan to retire.
His retirement is another blow to Democrats as the party clings to an already thin majority ahead of next year's midterm elections. Some analysts believe that the GOP is set to flip at least five seats due to redistricting alone, the exact number of seats the party would need to flip in order to regain the majority in the chamber.
Rising gas prices increase cost-of-living for poor Americans. American consumers are grappling with the highest inflation rate in more than three decades, and the surge in the price of everyday goods is disproportionately hurting low-income workers.
Higher inflation – which erodes individual purchasing power – is especially harmful to low- and middle-income Americans.
Research from both the Federal Reserve Banks of Cleveland and New York found that inflation reduces poor individuals’ lifetime consumption opportunities more than their wealthier counterparts – largely due to rising gasoline prices.
The report comes less than one week after the Labor Department released new data revealing that prices for U.S. consumers surged 6.2% in October compared with a year earlier.
The resulting price squeeze has been bad news for both Biden administration officials as well as Federal Reserve policymakers, many of whom have been downplaying the recent spike in consumer prices as "transitory" and likely to abate as pandemic-induced disruptions in the supply chain faded. It's unclear when consumers can expect to see inflation begin to slow, with prices for an array of goods continuously climbing higher: Gasoline skyrocketed by nearly 50% in the year to October, meat was up 14.5% and rent increased by 3.5%.
As long as Biden and the Democrats continue with deficit-spending, inflation will continue and even worsen.
The latest Consumer Price Index shows that consumer prices rose 6.2 percent from October 2020 to October 2021 — the highest price inflation level in more than 30 years.
In particular, necessities such as food, fuel, and used vehicles saw stark price increases.
As this week's ugly inflation numbers show, real wages are falling—thanks to the government’s poor policymaking.
What matters is not the number on your paycheck but what you can buy with it.
To honor America’s vision along with those who served to protect it, we should remember how that vision was put into words as well as actions by perhaps our most indispensable veteran — George Washington.
Washington was essential to our revolution’s success, the creation of our Constitution and the precedent of how to govern under it. Perhaps most telling of the latter is the fact that he voluntarily stepped down from power out of principle, which King George III said made him the man of the age.
Washington knew his efforts were a means to an end—maintaining liberty.
Without George Washington, America, which he called “this land of equal liberty,” with “the fairest prospect of happiness and prosperity that ever was presented to man,” would probably not exist.
The leaders of the Chinese Communist Party gather this week to ratify a resolution on the ruling party’s “great achievements”, a move that will likely allow President Xi Jinping to secure an unprecedented third term and overturn the party’s last historical resolution, passed during the Deng Xiaoping era.
In the footsteps of Mao and Deng – Xi Jinping is looking to rewrite history. At a four-day conference of the Communist Party’s powerful Central Committee that began on Monday, delegates are set to cement Xi’s status as one of China’s greats.
Before Xi, only two Chinese leaders – Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping – dared venture into rewriting the historical record. Mao, the founder of Communist China, used resolutions as a political weapon in 1945 to criticise the past actions of his opponents – who were already under arrest. The resolution solidified Mao’s absolute authority over the party.
Almost four decades later, in 1981, Deng Xiaoping dared to criticise the Cultural Revolution Mao unleashed between 1966 and 1976. In coming to terms with a ruinous chapter – which crippled the economy, led to millions of deaths and destroyed thousands more lives – Deng laid the foundations for his political and economic reforms. The revisions of the party’s traditional orthodoxy profoundly marked the Chinese political and social landscape over the next few decades.
This week’s resolution is likely to have similar significance. Xi’s political – and historical – ambitions were already made clear at a 2017 party congress, when Xi had his "ideas" inscribed in the party statutes alongside those of Mao and Deng, and again at the Communist Party’s centennial celebrations in July.
But the resolution is not solely aimed at cementing Xi’s place in the political history of the country. It would also serve the Chinese president’s future plans "by giving legitimacy to his ambition to have a third mandate". One of the key points of the 1981 resolution, dubbed the “de-Maofication” resolution, was to limit presidential terms to prevent the development of a personality cult similar to the one established by Mao.
China’s recent economic history revolves around growth at all costs, even if it means increasing inequality. In some ways it is the opposite of the concept of "common prosperity", which is based on more controlled growth accompanied by a more equitable sharing of wealth. The party’s third historical resolution "will try to show that the party has always had common prosperity as a priority, to give the impression that Xi Jinping is part of the continuity of Chinese political history and not a break with it"
Early in his first term, Xi declared war on “historical nihilism”, which he defined as any attempt to challenge the official narrative of significant past events. Since its inception, the Communist Party has censored "incorrect" versions of history, but neither Mao nor Deng used the term as frequently or ardently as China's current leader.
"Xi Jinping believes that 'historical nihilism' – that is, questioning the official narrative – is what accelerated the fall of the Soviet regime.”
America or China or anywhere else – The power-mad are always certain they need more power and that nobody can do the job as well as them, and in the end, damaging or even causing the destruction of what they claimed to want to preserve.
Prices for meat, gasoline skyrocketing as Americans cope with rising inflation. American households are coping with the fastest price increases in more than three decades, with the cost of everything from cars to gasoline to food surging in October.
The consumer price index, which measures a bevy of goods ranging from gasoline and health care to groceries and rents, jumped 6.2% from the year-ago period – the highest since December 1990. It toppled the previous month's high of 5.4%. From September to October, prices climbed 0.9%.
Energy – Energy costs surged 4.8% from September to October in the span of just one month, with cost increases widespread across the sector. Prices for gasoline (6.1%), heating oil (12.3%) and natural gas (6.2%) jumped last month from September
Food – It's no wonder that Americans have reported substantially higher grocery bills in recent months: Prices rose 1% in October from the previous month, and 5.3% from the year-ago period. The increases were most pronounced for different meats, with staggering year-over-year increases for steak (24%), bacon (20%), pork chops (16%), fish (11%) and chicken (9%). Egg prices climbed 12% compared to last year, while milk and coffee were both up 6%.
Cars – Used car prices increased again in October after cooling slightly in August and September. The cost of a used vehicle climbed 2.5% between September and October, and in the past year has jumped by over 25%.
Appliances and household goods – The price of everyday goods that Americans have in their homes is also on the rise: Television prices were up 10.4% from the year-ago period, while the cost of washing machines (15%) and furniture (12%) had also climbed dramatically since last October.
The President loves inflation. He wants inflation. Inflation means more taxes collected, for him to spend.
Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, has suggested that Congress needs to put the approval of President Biden’s social spending plan on hold until inflation slows.
"By all accounts, the threat posed by record inflation to the American people is not "transitory" and is instead getting worse," Manchin tweeted Wednesday. "From the grocery store to the gas pump, Americans know the inflation tax is real and DC can no longer ignore the economic pain Americans feel every day."
Wednesday’s CPI report supports Machin’s previous concern that another round of massive government spending would add to the country’s nearly $29 trillion debt load while also potentially fanning the flames of future inflation.
"Ignoring the fiscal consequences of our policy choices will create a disastrous future for the next generation of Americans," Manchin wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in September that explained why he wouldn’t support another $3.5 trillion in spending.
McAuliffe was once expected to win Virginia's gubernatorial race in a state that President Biden carried by 10 points last year. Youngkin erased the former governor's advantage in the closing stretch of the campaign, to win the gubernatorial race in Virginia, in a statewide election with national implications.
Youngkin ran a disciplined campaign, focusing on taxes, crime, and holding public schools accountable to parents, while McAuliffe spent much of his fire power the past couple of months linking Youngkin to former President Donald Trump.
"Alrighty Virginia, we won this thing. Together, we will change the trajectory of this commonwealth."
Youngkin, a first-time candidate and former private equity CEO, won thanks to a wave of Republican voter enthusiasm, tapping into the anger of parents over decisions by their local school boards. "We’re going to embrace our parents,
not ignore them," he emphasized in his victory speech, also saying, "a campaign that came from nowhere ... turned into a movement."
With Virginia’s gubernatorial race considered a key bellwether ahead of next year’s midterm elections, Youngkin’s victory in a state where Republicans hadn’t won statewide in a dozen years will only increase Democratic anxieties as they try to defend their razor-thin House and Senate majorities in 2022.
The small-cap-focused Russell 2000 rose nearly 3% on Monday, far better than the S&P 500 which ended the session only slightly higher. The corner of the market for small caps has lagged the large caps this year, gaining 19% compared with the S&P's 23% increase.
The rally in small caps will continue and it should fuel even more gains for their large-cap counterparts. "A bet on small is a bet on all. Every rolling three-month period since 1979 when the Russell is up the S&P 500 has also been up 92% of the time. Hence, it's not one or another. This isn't a rotation call."
Small caps, generally more cyclical stocks, tend to outperform when the economy is healthy and growing. The IWM Russell 2000 ETF has climbed 7% this quarter.
"This breakout in small caps, that have really been flat for nine months, bodes well for the bull market overall. It's making the case for an all-cap rally."
"If you look at the small-cap momentum ETF, ticker DWAS, it's outperforming relative to its benchmark, relative to the Russell 2000."
Data released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that between Dec. 14, 2020, and Oct. 15, 2021, a total of 818,044 adverse events following COVID vaccines were reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
The data included a total of 17,128 reports of deaths.
Of the 7,848 U.S. deaths reported as of Oct. 15, 11% occurred within 24 hours of vaccination, 15% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination and 28% occurred in people who experienced an onset of symptoms within 48 hours of being vaccinated.
Every Friday, VAERS makes public all vaccine injury reports received as of a specified date, usually about a week prior to the release date. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed. Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.
Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe's campaign raised eyebrows by spending nearly $60,000 to hire a high-profile attorney known for masterminding election-related legal challenges. When Fox News sent the campaign a request for comment, the McAuliffe campaign scrambled to "kill" the story, according to emails mistakenly sent to Fox News.
"To dispute the challenges of the election," she clarified, ostensibly responding to an email that did not go through to Fox News.
Recent events suggest the McAuliffe campaign is struggling. The Democrat drew tiny crowds to recent campaign events despite bringing in the big guns of the Democratic Party to help, including President Biden, former President Barack Obama, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Stacey Abrams. A Fox News poll released Thursday found Youngkin ahead by 8 points among likely voters, with 53% to McAuliffe's 45%.
Millennials often do things that make me wonder what kind of parents they had? If you are brought up by parents who stress manners and politeness, it just seems natural. That is how you act, and it makes a good first impression. If your parents neglected to teach it, it is very difficult to tack those things onto your character yourself later on, or to even reach the point where you realize you are lacking in something in the way you act which would help tremendously if you had it.
When I see people who dress like slobs out in public, or guys who do not take off their caps indoors especially in restaurants! same thing. You only get one chance to make a first impression, and you just blew it. Didn't your parents teach you that it matters? You will never know the missed opportunities to a better, more enjoyable life (financial, recreation, friendships, helpful assistance or ideas, friendly greeting or smile, etc.) that passed you by because you are not showing you care.
At right: Piles of unused border fence at one of the border wall construction staging areas near Columbus, N.M.
"Joe Biden and his radical advisors do not care about safety and security, they only care about politics – just look at the border." Biden sought to "appease the radical left" by ending President Trump's border wall project, cancelling contracts and allowing largely unfettered egress by illegal aliens into the United States.
"Ironically, at the same time Biden started construction on a giant wall around his beach house – at your expense of course." Earlier Friday, in an allocation first discovered by the Lewes Cape Gazette, the Department of Homeland Security awarded nearly $457,000 to a Sussex County, Del., company to construct a security fence around the address of Biden's $2.7 million summer home near Cape Henlopen.
"Biden’s policies are "dramatically" impacting the supply chain crisis and inflation." – Former McDonald's USA CEO Ed Rensi.
"I first experienced this back during the 70s, up into the 80s when we had stagflation, where prices of fuel [were] going up like crazy. Transportation was limited. Distribution was limited. We had to raise prices. We had to address our opening and closing schedules in restaurants modified to menus, and we're going through it again."
Saving the world if it kills us: "It's been exacerbated clearly by COVID. But it's also been impacted dramatically by the policy changes that President Biden made even before he was inaugurated. When he said he's going to shut down oil, shut down the pipelines, move away from fossil fuel."
People's Rights, a far-right group launched by anti-government activist Ammon Bundy, is rapidly expanding nationwide and making inroads into Canada, according to a new report from the pro-Marxist, pro-Black Lives Matter, anti-Rights Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights. People's Rights now includes 50,000 activists in 38 states.
The photo on the People's Rights main webpage belies the Institute's claim that the organization is racist (their designation for anyone they oppose):
What is Gain-of-Function Research & Who is at High Risk?
“Gain-of-function” is the euphemism for biological research aimed at increasing the virulence and lethality of pathogens and viruses. GoF research is government funded.
In 1992, Meryl Nass, MD, analyzed the characteristics of an anthrax epidemic in Zimbabwe, Rhodesia in 1978-1980, that was claimed to be a natural occurrence. Dr. Nass demonstrated that the pattern of the epidemic, the spread, and weather conditions, could not have occurred due to a natural event; it must, therefore, have been triggered as a bioweapon.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984, has played a major role in promoting and funding gain-of-function research, both in the US and China. Newsweek reported: “He argued that the research was worth the risk it entailed because it enables scientists to make preparations [ ] that could be useful if and when a pandemic occurred.”
Those claims are belied by the empirical evidence. GoF experiments have neither prevented a pandemic, nor provided useful information about safe and effective pandemic countermeasures. Numerous prominent scientists argue that these experiments deviate from morally justifiable research, and the experimentally altered pathogens have put the entire human species at risk.
Critics cite the Nuremberg Code prohibition against conducting experiments that pose a risk to human life.
Dr. Marc Lipsitch, director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard School of Public Health stated that recent disease-enhancing experiments “have given us modest scientific knowledge and done almost nothing to improve our preparedness for pandemics, and yet [these experiments] risked creating an accidental pandemic.”
Investigative reporter Sam Husseini, the communications director of the non-profit, Institute for Public Accuracy, who has closely followed this line of research, states there are probably hundreds of high containment biosafety (BSL-3 and BSL-4) laboratories. As of 2017, at least 263 laboratories were registered in the US as level BSL-3 and level BSL-4.
The journal SCIENCE reported that multiple laboratory accidents at CDC’s highest security laboratories released smallpox vials, anthrax samples, H5N1 influenza samples, and H9N2 avian influenza pathogen. The lapses, Science reported, “at the world-renowned infectious disease research agency, are sure to raise questions about safety at other labs studying highly pathogenic agents, including university labs that are modifying influenza strains to make them more virulent."
A New York Times editorial in 2012, dubbed an experiment to develop a more-contagious flu “An Engineered Doomsday.”
Remember when Doctors' moral code was, "Do no harm." ??
The cause of America is, in a great measure, the cause of all mankind ... O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth!
– Thomas Paine author of Common Sense, The Ameican Crisis, and Rights of Man.
The September jobs report showed the economy adding 194,000 jobs – well short of the 500,000 new jobs expected. Republicans have largely targeted the double track of benefits for the unemployed and various mandates that restrict eligibility for some jobs.
"This jobs report shows what employers all over the country have been saying for months: the labor shortage is getting worse," said Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.
"The months of disappointing jobs reports are a direct result of President Biden’s failed policies," said Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C. "This administration’s plan of paying people not to work and burdensome mandates has crippled our economy at a time when middle-class Americans are already struggling to afford basic necessities due to inflation."
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the administration "has been throwing a wet blanket over job creators."
Sen. Rick Scott, R-FL, proclaimed that "Joe Biden and Democrats in Washington are pushing America off a cliff."
Social media users shamed and mocked President Biden Wednesday after he spoke, once again, from a fake White House set that featured a digital monitor showing the Rose Garden in full bloom.
"The reason Biden uses this bizarre virtual set for televised meetings — and not an actual room like East Room, Cabinet, Oval, Roosevelt, Sit Room, etc. — is because it allows him to read a script directly from a face-on monitor (& w/out teleprompter glass that can be seen on camera)."
The video set, which was constructed across from the White House in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, is used by Biden for video conferences and events broadcast online.
Featuring professional monitors and lighting, it is the same set Biden used to show himself receiving a third dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.
"Truman Show Presidency," remarked Human Events Senior Editor Jack Posobiec.
"Do they not allow him in the actual White House," New Hampshire journalist Kimberly Morin wondered.
“We are not actually doing what we say we do publicly.”
“Facebook routinely makes exceptions for powerful actors.”
“This problem is pervasive, touching almost every area of the company.”
Facebook Says Its Rules Apply to All. Company Documents Reveal a Secret Elite That’s Exempt.
Facebook Tried to Make Its Platform a Healthier Place. It Got Angrier Instead. Internal memos show how a big 2018 change rewarded outrage and that CEO Mark Zuckerberg resisted proposed fixes.
In January, a former cop turned Facebook Inc. investigator posted an all-staff memo on the company’s internal message board. It began “Happy 2021 to everyone!!” and then proceeded to detail a new set of what he called “learnings.” The biggest one: a Mexican drug cartel was using Facebook to recruit, train, and pay hit men.
Scores of Facebook documents show employees raising alarms about how its platforms are used in developing countries, where its user base is huge and expanding. Employees flagged that human traffickers in the Middle East used the site to lure women into abusive employment situations. They warned that armed groups in Ethiopia used the site to incite violence against ethnic minorities. They sent alerts to their bosses about organ selling, pornography and government action against political dissent. They also show the company’s response, which in many instances is inadequate or nothing at all.
Facebook Hobbled Mark Zuckerberg’s Bid to Get America Vaccinated. Company documents show antivaccine activists undermined the CEO’s ambition to support the rollout by flooding the site and using Facebook’s own tools to sow doubt about the Covid-19 vaccine .
Inside the company, teams of employees have for years been laying plans to attract preteens that go beyond what is publicly known, spurred by fear that it could lose a wave of users critical to its future.
A Senate Commerce Committee hearing about Facebook, teens and mental health was prompted by a mid-September article in The Wall Street Journal. Based on internal company documents, it detailed Facebook’s internal research on the negative impact of its Instagram app on teen girls and others.
10 years of Facebook annual employee lists showed names, titles and managers for Facebook’s staffers and contract workers. The data show which teams under which executives have expanded the fastest, providing an unusually detailed public view of the company’s shifting power centers and priorities.
Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager who gathered documents that formed the basis for the Journal’s series, said she had grown frustrated by what she saw as the company’s lack of openness about its platforms’ potential for harm and unwillingness to address its flaws. A Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said the company strives to balance free expression with safety. “To suggest we encourage bad content and do nothing is just not true,” he said.
If Facebook has these problems, imagine what is going on in Tik-Tok and the other Chinese parallel websites.
This graph just shows the number of journalists killed per year, but that fact is a reflection on the controls imposed on the general population in that country.
Freedom is a distant dream – something never to be experienced – for most people.
Today it is not so much North versus South or free states versus slave states; rather, it is red states versus blue states, the heartland versus the coastal states, elites versus middle class, leftists versus conservatives.
Joe Biden's candidacy was based on the promise that he would bring us together. Look at what we got instead: more divisiveness, stoked by the Biden administration itself.
California recently banned any state-sponsored trips by its employees to Ohio. This is based on a 2016 California law that imposes penalties on states that California officials deem to be discriminating against lesbians, homosexuals, bisexuals, or transgender residents. At issue is Ohio's new "conscience law," which allows medical providers to refuse to perform certain procedures, such as gender mutilation surgeries, if they violate a doctor's religious or moral beliefs. The Land of Gavin Newsom now restricts state-financed travel to 18 other states which have a combined population of 116 million people. And recently California slapped its travel restriction on states that require transgender athletes to participate in high school sports based on their sex. Los Angeles has been restricting travel by city employees to Arizona because of its immigration policies. City departments have also been told not to do business with Arizona firms. Later, L.A. added restrictions on trips to North Carolina and Mississippi over their transgender bathroom laws. During the height of the Wuhan epidemic, some 27 states imposed travel bans or strict quarantine restrictions on residents of other states. Note that All the bans and boycotts are essentially initiated by liberal states and cities.
Secession does not necessarily need to be hard and formal as the South tried in 1861. It can be a United States evolving back to a true republic as it was initially meant to be. In that scenario, states would have more autonomy to enact laws that suit their citizens and not be ruled from the imperial capital on the Potomac. This would begin with states refusing to obey objectionable federal laws or decrees of the Supreme Court. This is not anti-democratic. It's naïve to think Washington is beholden to the people of the country. That's a façade put forth for public consumption.
Even a soft secession could lead to conflict. But that is better than being dictated to by a distant elite, which does not come close to sharing my values and is bound and possessed to dictate how I live my life. More and more people share that view. Once a critical mass is reached, secession in one form or another can take on a life of its own.
A new Department of Justice policy is intended to crack down on alleged "threats of violence" against school officials. In actuality it is part of an effort by Democrats to muzzle parents as leftists try to take control of school curriculums.
Many parents have been attending meetings across the country to voice their displeasure with COVID-19 restrictions and the use of critical race theory in curricula.
"We saw it last week when Virginia Democrat gubernatorial candidate, Terry McAuliffe, said parents shouldn’t have a say in what their own children are taught and it continues this week with the Biden administration labeling parents with concerns and dissenting opinions as domestic terrorists," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said.
"Parents have a fundamental right to be lawfully involved in their children’s education," McCarthy said. "We should encourage family participation in our school systems, not baselessly attack opposing views because some liberal education officials and special interest groups see it as a threat to the power they want to have over what children learn in America’s classrooms."
The GOP has never learned what the Marxists have known all along: whoever controls education controls the future.
The Facebook employee who stepped forward as the source in a Wall Street Journal investigation into the social media giant will testify in front of U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday, just a day after accusing her former employer of "tearing our societies apart."
She is expected to inform lawmakers that the social media giant faces little oversight. The Guardian, citing her written testimony, reported that she will say, "As long as Facebook is operating in the dark, it is accountable to no one. And it will continue to make choices that go against the common good."
The report also said that she will compare the company to big tobacco. "When we realized tobacco companies were hiding the harms it caused, the government took action. When we figured out cars were safer with seatbelts, the government took action. I implore you to do the same here."
Haugen accused the company of placing profit above the good for the public.
The interview comes after she collected documents and blew the whistle on Facebook to the Wall Street Journal, which then published a series of reports on the files that revealed previously unknown details about the inner workings of the social media company.
Venezuela’s year-on-year inflation is 1,743%, according to the Venezuelan Finance Observatory. The country's minimum wage is barely USD$2.50 per month. How much for that pack of cigarettes? Forty-seven billion bolivars.
President Nicolas Maduro’s government in 2018 removed five zeros from the currency due to high prices. That came a decade after the late President Hugo Chavez subtracted three zeros from the bolivar with the promise of single-digit inflation, which was not achieved.
The widespread adoption of the U.S. dollar for commercial transactions in Venezuela will further dilute the relevance of the new scheme. Bolivars in cash in Venezuela are rarely used for routine purchases.
“The economic imbalances in the country are very acute and the zeros that are being removed today will soon return,” said economist Jose Manuel Puente.
The Democrats’ current multi-trillion dollar spending binge will not, by itself, produce hyperinflation like that which has devastated Venezuela and other countries through history. But it is certainly a step in that direction. It is shocking that much of the Democratic Party wants to bring poverty, chaos and ultimately Chavez/Maduro style dictatorship to the United States.
Party locked in a bitter struggle over two massive legislative bills.
Two flanks of the Democratic party find themselves at loggerheads. They are lined up over the fate of Biden’s two key legislative measures: the $1tn infrastructure bill and the $3.5tn social and environmental plan.
Key moderates including Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in the US Senate and Josh Gottheimer in the House complain that the $3.5tn so-called reconciliation bill is too large and argue for the smaller infrastructure bill.
Sanders and Biden have described the reconciliation measure as the “most consequential piece of legislation since the Great Depression”.
The massive social overhaul package, if passed in its present form, would stand as the largest expansion of social welfare in the US since the 1960s.
An investigation based on one of the biggest ever leaks of financial documents on Sunday (Oct 3) exposed a hidden world of shielded wealth belonging to hundreds of politicians and billionaires. One of the largest ever global media investigations, the Pandora Papers involved more than 600 journalists who together analysed some 11.9 million documents from financial services companies around the world. They found links between almost 1,000 companies in offshore havens and 336 high-level politicians and public officials, including more than a dozen serving heads of state and government.
The documents behind the latest investigation are drawn from financial services companies in countries including the British Virgin Islands, Panama, Belize, Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Switzerland.
Biden’s Afghanistan decisions caused aircraft to depart with empty seats while abandoning over 100,000 Afghans.
The chaos "points directly back to the commander in chief, the lack of leadership, the lack of a game plan."
Rep. Peter Meijer, who traveled to Kabul during the airlift, said Biden repeatedly ignored veterans groups urging the administration to establish a plan to evacuate Afghan interpreters, who put their lives at risk helping the U.S. military fight the Taliban.
American officials stopped many prescreened Afghans with credible documents, including some U.S. residents, from boarding aircraft.
Many abandoned Afghan allies are in hiding from the Taliban.
The administration believed a Taliban takeover wouldn’t be immediate.
How could they not?!? The ineptitude and lack of ability of the Afghan government was apparent to everyone, and should have been even more exposed for its survival being completely dependent on the American presence by U.S. intelligence and assessment reports.
"There was also an assumption that … we could take our sweet time. There was also some ambivalence in the Biden administration."
The Biden administration's incompetence and lack of simple concern are laid bare.
The administration saw a need to keep experienced Afghans in governance of the country. "If everybody left Afghanistan, who was going to run the country? We need people to run the government, deliver services and fight the war."
In other words, keep things running until you are killed by the Taliban?!?
People were suddenly desperate to leave Afghanistan once it became apparent
that the Taliban would take Kabul. "While many people predicted the collapse, imminent collapse, I think the speed took almost everybody, perhaps even the Taliban, by surprise."
"People at checkpoints hadn't slept well in days, couldn't read the names properly."
It is unmistakeable to everyone: Biden and "the U.S. government did not have a plan going into this."
Propane inventories are 21% below the five-year average.
A real energy crisis exists in Europe that was created by a combination of political missteps, climate change fear-mongering, and a woke energy policy that could leave much of Europe and Asia undersupplied as they head into winter. It is also a foreshadowing of what may happen in the U.S.
This could be one of the most expensive winters that we've seen in years, with the risk of destroying the U.S. economy and leaving poor people out in the cold.
The sharp rise in energy prices is already feeding into red hot inflation pressures.
Europe made very bad decisions in its rush to get more carbon-neutral without thinking of the longer-term consequences. Its leaders also made a huge mistake relying more on Russia and their state-owned oil company Gazprom to supply Europe with natural gas. They didn't remember Russia's track record of withholding supplies from places like the Ukraine and Yugoslavia and its tendency to use energy as a political weapon. Now Europe and the United States are accusing Russia of manipulating natural gas supplies for their own benefit. Russia is rebuilding its inventories while allowing the rest of Europe’s inventories to fall, putting them at a distinct economic and geopolitical disadvantage going into winter.
These shortsighted decisions by Europe caused the price of natural gas to go to record highs, and that is now the equivalent of $150.00 for a barrel oil. This is hurting their economy and is causing factories and fertilizer plants to shut down, which is therefore causing shortages of goods that would normally be made with oil and natural gas in those shutdown factories. They have shortages of CO2 that puts the fizz in your soda and is used in agriculture for meat production and used to cool nuclear plants.
Imports of oil from Russia to the United States have hit all-time highs. We are more reliant on Russia because we cannot get as much supply from our oil producers here in the U.S. Biden’s drilling moratoriums, discouragement of investment in the U.S. oil and gas sector, as well as the demonization of the oil and gas industry, are putting the U.S. on the verge of an energy crisis.
Top Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, facing an indictment from the Eastern District of New York, will be allowed to return to China under a deferred prosecution agreement struck by the Department of Justice.
"There’s no question those conflicts exist. Joe Biden himself, two of his family members, his son, Hunter Biden — of course — and his brother, James Biden, have received millions of dollars from politically connected Chinese interests."
"It’s another example, of basically a strategic retreat by the Biden administration."
Biden's other potential conflicts include the possibility that Hunter Biden paid his father's bills while his dad was vice president, which is potentially illegal. There is plenty of evidence to support that Hunter Biden was paying Joe Biden's bills. "We know that there were contractors that were working on Joe's private residence in Delaware while he was vice president, and Hunter and his business associates were handling the payment of those bills. We know there were things like a private phone or several phones that Joe Biden had while he was vice president. The bill was three hundred plus dollars a month that was being paid by Hunter's business. So we know at least tens of thousands of dollars of bills. And this is illegal. You cannot subsidize a family member in politics by paying their bills."
On Hunter Biden's "art shows": "We know that these aren't deals, these art shows. Hunter Biden is going to be there schmoozing with people. We know that the man holding these art deals and showing Hunter's art has said China is a growth market where he really wants to go. And we know that this is what the Bidens have done for decades," Schweizer said. "It's really not in dispute. So this is a new avenue for corruption. The money is going to give an opportunity for foreign corrupt intermediaries who want to curry favor with this administration. And Joe Biden is displaying this artwork in the White House, which is a really nice gallery for foreign dignitaries to see the work."
Stock and Cash Transaction Represents an Enterprise Value of Approximately $31 Billion. Canadian Pacific Railway Limited (CP) and Kansas City Southern (KSU) announced they have entered into a merger agreement, under which CP has agreed to acquire KCS in a stock and cash transaction representing an enterprise value of approximately USD$31 billion. The transaction values KCS at $300 per share.
Current market values of North American Class I railroads, high to low:
Union Pacific (UNP)
$129.2B
Burlington Northern & Santa Fe (BNSF)
est. second after UNP
owned by Bekshire-Hathaway (BRK-A)
Canadian National (CNI)
$82.3B
CSX (CSX)
$67.5B
Norfolk Southern (NSC)
$59.4B
Canadian Pacific (CP)
$43.2B
Kansas City Southern (KSU)
$24.5B
The merger "creates the first U.S.-Mexico-Canada rail network with new single-line offerings." It "will deliver dramatically expanded market reach for CP and KCS customers, provide new competitive transportation options, and support North American economic growth."
While remaining the smallest of six U.S. Class 1 railroads by revenue, the combined company would have a much larger and more competitive network, operating approximately 20,000 miles of rail, employing close to 20,000 people, and generating total revenues of approximately $8.7 billion based on 2020 actual revenues. The CP-KCS combination is expected to create jobs across the joined network.
Those who reshape and pervert the economy - of any country - in their own image, disrupt and even destroy the economy – and with it, disrupt and even destroy peoples’ lives. For after all, what is “the economy”? It is not some amorphous detached cloud, with its own separate existence. "The economy" is simply the composite actions and combined activities of each individual person, in pursuit of his own livelihood, and living his own life. Forcibly “changing the economy” is only a euphemism for forcibly changing peoples’ lives, and is therefore very, very wrong.
The deal is designed to counter the Chinese threat. By all accounts I’ve seen, U.S. submarine technology is clearly superior to France’s.
The deal is part of a trilateral arrangement, with Great Britain the third party. Under this new partnership, Australia will build at least eight nuclear-powered submarines with U.S. and British technology. The scrapped deal with France was for a fleet of conventional submarines.
Perhaps the best evidence of the desirability of the new arrangement is that China hates it. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson complained that the trilateral arrangement “seriously undermined regional peace and stability, aggravated the arms race, and hurt international nonproliferation efforts.” That’s rich coming from China.
Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison has stated:
"We had deep and grave concerns that the capability being delivered by the Attack-class submarine was not going to meet our strategic interests and we had made very clear that we would be making a decision based on our strategic national interest."
The Democratic tax plan would seize $2.1 trillion from the private economy and use it to micromanage industries and buy votes with handouts to favored interests. The actions of seizing, micromanaging, and handing out benefits would each distort the economy and reduce overall national income.
Projected taxes by income level under present law and under the Democratic proposal in 2023:
"It's going bad pretty quick." The climate of anxiety and fear in Hong Kong is growing since last year's enactment of a national security law tailored specifically for the special administrative region in China.
The legislation makes any act or spoken word in Hong Kong that Beijing regards as subversion, secession, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces punishable by up to life in prison.
Migration out of Hong Kong has sharply increased since the pro-democracy protests of 2019 and 2020 and subsequent government crackdowns on civil liberties. Nearly 90,000 residents have left the territory.
Migrants have primarily relocated to the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States.
Hong Kong emigres are the territoy's best and brightest – young professionals who can quickly secure employment, or families whose parents want to provide education that prioritizes independent critical thinking.
The money leaving Hong Kong also signals the urgency with which people are fleeing. More than $1.9 billion has been pulled out of pension funds from the first quarter of 2019 to the second quarter of 2021.
"The government isn't really listening to the people."
Mark Zuckerberg has publicly said that Facebook allows its more than three billion users to speak on equal footing with the elites of politics, culture, and journalism, and that its standards of behavior apply to everyone, no matter their status or fame.
However, the company has built a system that has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules, according to company documents. The program, known as "cross check" or "XCheck," shields millions of VIP users from the company’s normal enforcement process.
At times, XCheck has protected public figures whose posts contain harassment or incitement to violence, violations that would typically lead to sanctions for regular users. In 2019, it allowed international soccer star Neymar to show nude photos of a woman who had accused him of rape to tens of millions of his fans.
XCheck grew to include at least 5.8 million users in 2020. If Facebook’s systems conclude that one of those accounts might have broken its rules, they don’t remove the content—at least not right away.
Whitelisted accounts shared inflammatory claims that Facebook’s fact checkers deemed false, including that vaccines are deadly, that Hillary Clinton had covered up "pedophile rings," and that then-President Donald Trump had called all refugees seeking asylum "animals".
A 2019 internal review of Facebook’s whitelisting practices, marked attorney-client privileged, found favoritism to those users to be both widespread and "not publicly defensible."
"We are not actually doing what we say we do publicly," said the confidential review. It called the company’s actions "a breach of trust" and added: "Unlike the rest of our community, these people can violate our standards without any consequences."
Facebook knows, in acute detail, that its platforms are riddled with flaws that cause harm, often in ways only the company fully understands. Facebook often lacks the will or the ability to address them.
Time and again, the documents show, in the U.S. and overseas, Facebook’s own researchers have identified the platform’s ill effects, in areas including teen mental health, political discourse, and human trafficking. Time and again, despite Congressional hearings, its own pledges, and numerous media exposés, the company didn’t fix them.
Documents include research reports, online employee discussions, and drafts of presentations to senior management, including Mr. Zuckerberg. They aren’t the result of idle grumbling, but rather the formal work of teams whose job was to examine the social network and figure out how it could improve. They offer perhaps the clearest picture thus far of how broadly Facebook’s problems are known inside the company, up to the CEO himself. And when Facebook speaks publicly about many of these issues, to lawmakers, regulators and in the case of XCheck, its own Oversight Board, it often provides misleading or partial answers, masking how much it knows.
Facebook appeared more concerned with avoiding gaffes than mitigating high-profile abuse. One Facebook review in 2019 of major XCheck errors showed that of 18 incidents investigated, 16 involved instances where the company erred in actions taken against prominent users. Four of the 18 touched on inadvertent enforcement actions against content from Mr. Trump and his son, Donald Trump Jr.
At least some of the documents have been turned over to the Securities and Exchange Commission and to Congress.
Facebook has misled the public and its own Oversight Board.
"Bombshell reporting exposes is that the so-called self-regulation efforts by social media companies have been little more than a smokescreen."
"What’s interesting here is at the very same time that Facebook, Instagram had studies in front of it showing the harms that come from the decisions that it makes. Zuckerberg went before Congress and said the research that we’ve seen shows the positive mental health effects of social media applications."
"We’ve never had an entity like social media where there’s this big of a gap between the power that they have, the control that they have, and accountability."
"We need to come forward with a comprehensive framework that gets more transparency, more accountability, some basic antidiscrimination rules, more user empowerment. So you're in control of what you see, not the social media companies themselves."
Billboards to stay up for 2 months, former state senator Scott Wagner says.
A former Pennsylvania state senator is saying that he has put up around 15 billboards locally with a photo of President Biden in military gear alongside the message "Making the Taliban Great Again."
"The pull out rushed through by President Biden had made us the laughing stock of the world," he wrote. "The Taliban are openly stating that they ran the United States out of Afghanistan – they are now very emboldened."
Milley demanding that key Pentagon officials ignore any nuclear orders by the President unless Milley himself was involved.
Milley also went behind the President’s back to promise China that he would preemptively warn them if Trump were to make any military move against them.
Milley made two secret phone calls, both to his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army. "If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time,” Milley said.
Milley, the Chinese SPY; Milley, the Chinese OPERATIVE; Milley, the Chinese UNDERCOVER AGENT; Milley, the Chinese MOLE; Milley, the Chinese INFORMANT . . .
Biden's White House has history of preventing public from hearing him off the cuff.
This isn't the first time the White House intervened in blocking Biden from being heard by the general public. Last month, the president's audio feed was cut as he was about to respond to a reporter's question on his administration's military withdrawal deadline from Afghanistan.
In March, the White House cut the feed as Biden said he was "happy to take questions" while speaking to Democratic lawmakers at a virtual event.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki previously admitted during an interview that Biden is often advised by her staff not to take questions.
Biden raised eyebrows last week when he told a crowd, "I‘m supposed to stop and walk out of the room" at a White House event following his prepared remarks.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been pointing to Texas as an example of where the Golden State is headed if Republicans take over.
While Newsom and other Democrats portray Texas as a nightmare, Texans note that more Californians and California businesses have been relocating to the Lone Star State, seeking relief from California’s taxes and regulations.
California has lost 265 business headquarters since 2018, with the pace of relocations appearing to be accelerating.
In 2020 California’s population declined for the first time in history, costing it a seat in Congress.
The state’s population was becoming increasingly "two-tiered," with wealthy elites living in coastal cities and lower-income residents banished to interior areas or forced to move.
The Tax Foundation ranked California 49th in the U.S. for its anti-business tax climate, surpassed only by New Jersey.
"We were looking at it, at the North Tower and guys were saying, ‘You know, a small plane? That's a huge building, that's a really big hole and that's a clear day. This is weird.’ And we were all talking about it with some other SEALS and some intelligence people. And then the second plane hit the south tower and that's when we all knew immediately – this is an attack."
Former SEAL Robert O'Neill said one of his chief concerns is how quickly the U.S. has seemed to forget what the struggle against Islamic terrorism means.
"People do need to realize that, as opposed to yelling at each other on social media – there's an enemy out there that wants to kill all of us. And it doesn't matter, really doesn't matter, what you look like – it's your ideology. You don't believe what they think you should believe and they’re going to kill you."
"One of their sayings is, 'The Americans have the clock, but we have the time,'" he added, warning against the threat of a future attack. "They're going to adapt."
9/11 should serve as a memorial to not only those who were lost in the attacks but as a reminder of shared American values.
"My biggest concern is the division in this country," O’Neill said. "Most people are good to each other. But the anger and the division gets the ratings, and that’s what people hear. A lot of people know if they keep people divided they can stay in power and it’s wrong."
House committees are currently crafting a $3.5 trillion budget plan that will serve as the blueprint for President Biden's economic agenda.
Raise the top individual income tax rate to 39.6%. That new top rate reverses part of the Trump-era Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Raise taxes on capital gains and dividends for higher earners. The top capital gains tax would climb to 39.6% from 20%.
The president plans to keep an existing Medicare surcharge in place, bringing federal tax rates as high as 43.4% for some Americans.
The president also wants to eliminate the so-called stepped-up basis. Under current law, when heirs inherit an asset that has appreciated in value, they get a "step-up" in basis, meaning they receive the holding at its current market value. Beneficiaries can sell those assets and pay capital gains based only on the time they receive the asset and the time they sold it, allowing them to minimize the tax bite.
End the private-equity tax break.
Hike taxes on corporations. Biden has also called for higher taxes on businesses, including hiking the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%, rolling back a key part of Republicans' 2017 tax law.
"The government does not view taxpayer money as your money. They view it as the government's money that the taxpayer has no right to."
New York received a 48 ranking – with one being the highest ranking and 50 being the lowest – while California received a 39 ranking
Factors measured included average workweek hours, employment rate, idle youth, average commute time, average leisure time spent per day, and others.
California has also struggled with widespread unemployment fraud. The state admits it could have paid up to $31 billion to scammers, including to organized crime organizations in China and Russia.
Most federal unemployment programs related to the pandemic expired this week, which has some business owners in New York expecting workers to now make it back to their jobs. "Now that my unemployment is up I’m ready to come back," said one worker.
This is how Socialist programs make conditions worse. People stop trying; they become increasingly lazy.
"Normally when you’re getting unemployment, the whole idea is that’s temporary, and you need to be looking for work to be able to get off unemployment," Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said.
Alaska claimed the top spot for most hard-working state, while North Dakota and Nebraska came in second and third place,.
Grocery-store chains are still battling supply challenges that some executives said are as bad as what they saw in spring 2020, when hoarding left holes in stocks of some staples.
Industry executives say new problems are arising weekly, driven by shortages of labor and raw materials. Groceries remain scarce as some food companies anticipate disruptions lasting into 2022. A wider range of products is running short and logistical challenges are compounding for many retailers.
Supermarkets are sometimes receiving as little as 40% of what they order. Many grocery chains said that it is hard to predict how complete or on-time their deliveries will be due to limited guidance from suppliers. Executives say there is often little recourse when trucks show up with a fraction of what was ordered.
Food manufacturers now are confronting new problems. Resin, aluminum and other raw materials used for packaging are running short, and many producers are giving priority to their most popular items.
Industry executives said manufacturers are unable to produce enough items to meet demand, with many employees staying home
because of the coronavirus or because they have received rounds of stimulus checks.
Welcome to the the problem with Socialism. The easier it is for people to be lazy and avoid work, the more people will decide to be lazy, and productivity suffers.
The more taxes are increased to pay for Socialism, the more people decide that working harder just to pay more taxes is foolish wasted effort, and productivity suffers even further.
Meanwhile, politicians who enjoy power for its own sake promise more Socialism as the solution to all problems. Socialism is a destructive spiral doomed to failure and that culture is doomed to destruction from the beginning.
Maine became the fourth state in America to abolish civil asset forfeiture, a procedure in which law enforcement seizes property they only suspect is associated with criminal activity, and keep it, even if the person who loses the property has never been convicted of any crime.
“Civil forfeiture is one of the most serious assaults on due process and private property rights in America today,” said Lee McGrath, senior legislative counsel for the Institute for Justice, in response to the action of the Maine Legislature and its governor. McGrath said that the law “ends an immense injustice and will ensure that only convicted criminals — and not innocent Mainers — lose their property to forfeiture.”
Proponents of civil asset forfeiture (CAF) argue that it is needed to combat drug trafficking and organized crime, because CAF targets the fruits of their crime. In other words, because the alleged crimes are so serious, such niceties as property rights and due process of law should be ignored.
There have even been bizarre cases in which, because a drug deal occurred in one unit of an apartment complex, legal authorities have seized the entire complex! (Of course, it is probable that very few apartment complexes in America have never had any illegal activity such as that take place in at least one of their units.)
Civil asset forfeiture laws are legal abuse and the practice of tyrannies. They have no place under the U.S. Constitution.
States with Republican governors are leading the U.S. economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, while those run by Democrats – which tended to impose lengthier and stricter lockdowns on businesses – are faced with significantly higher unemployment rates.
Labor Department data published last week shows the 10 states with the lowest unemployment rates are all led by GOP governors – while the 10 states with the highest percentage of out-of-work Americans are run by Democratic governors. Just 13 states led by Democrats have recovered at least two-thirds of the jobs lost during the pandemic.
Blue states including Nevada (7.7%), New York (7.6%), New Mexico (7.6%), California (7.6%) and New Jersey (7.3%) had substantially higher unemployment rates than the national average of 5.4% in July, the data shows.
By comparison, red states – such as Nebraska (2.3%), Utah (2.6%), New Hampshire (2.9%), South Dakota (2.9%) and Idaho (3%) – were well below the national average.
Already, 23 states – all but one of which is led by a Republican governor – have ended the unemployment programs, a move intended to help businesses that are struggling to hire workers.
Even within the U.S. capitalist-leaning overall economy, the greater socialism of the blue states clearly is more harmful to peoples' lives and well-being. Socialism does not work. Freedom is better.
Former National Security Advisor says China 'badly' wants Taiwan. General Secretary Xi [Jinping] says he will reunite Taiwan with China and he’s going to do it one way or the other.
Former National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien warned the Biden administration Thursday to not underestimate Xi Jinping’s desire to reunite Taiwan with China. After the world witnessed the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan; the US needs to be "very careful."
China is running major military operations all the time. They’re spending a fortune to build up their military.
Biden was asked about how other countries – in particular Taiwan – should view the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan. Many asked if the U.S. could be viewed as a reliable ally. Biden's response: "We have made—kept every commitment. We made a sacred commitment to Article 5 that if, in fact, anyone were to invade or take action against our NATO allies, we would respond. Same with Japan, same with South Korea, same with Taiwan. It’s not even comparable to talk about."
Biden has made it clear that China is the biggest geopolitical challenge for the U.S. In February, he announced the formation of a Defense Department China Task Force to assess the future challenge from China; earlier this month, G7 member states agreed to an initiative aimed at challenging China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Taiwan and China separated amid civil war in 1949 and China says it is determined to bring the island under its control by force if necessary. The U.S. switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979, but is legally required to ensure Taiwan can defend itself and the self-governing democratic island enjoys strong bipartisan support in Washington.
Beijing officials consistently express skepticism that Washington would act against its own interest, risking, as one Chinese general put it, "Los Angeles for Taipei."
Last month, China's President Xi Jinping marked his Communist Party’s 100th anniversary from Tiananmen Square and struck a bellicose tone, reconfirming China’s ‘historic mission’ to control Taiwan while warning other countries not to interfere.
Clarissa Ward, CNN's chief international correspondent who's been reporting from Kabul, called what she's witnessed an "absolute mess" and offered a stunning rebuke to Biden's claim that the pullout of troops out of Afghanistan which quickly resulted in a takeover by the Taliban was not a "failure."
Later in the day, CNN’s counterterrorism analyst Phil Mudd went off on the State Department for failing to say how many Americans are left in Afghanistan. "That was pathetic!"
An analysis piece published on CNN's website also offered a scathing response to Biden's defense of the Afghan withdrawal.
"Biden is failing to adequately explain why he so badly failed to predict the swift collapse of the Afghan state. And his credibility has been sullied because his confident downplaying of the risks of the withdrawal has been repeatedly confounded by events. Seven months into his term, Biden no longer gets credit simply for not being Donald Trump," CNN White House reporter Stephen Collinson wrote on Thursday. "Biden's defensiveness, imprecision and apparent changes of position hardly project confidence or competence during an extraordinarily sensitive crisis on hostile foreign soil. Anytime a commander-in-chief does not appear in control or is in denial of obvious developments is a moment that threatens to inflict political damage."
"The President's image abroad is also taking a beating. His goal of reviving US relations with allies after declaring 'America is back' following the Trump administration have been complicated by dismay over the possibility that interpreters and other workers who helped US troops over 20 years could be left behind to face reprisals from the Taliban."
The DOJ seems to be dragging its feet in sifting through the “evidence” against the January 6 rioters, some of whom have been in custody since January.
Judge McFadden scolded the government for its backwards process. “You would not arrest [someone] then gather evidence later. That’s not how this works.” When Fifield said full discovery is in the best interest of the defendant, McFadden shot back: “Freedom also is important to the defendant.” The Trump-appointed judge raised concerns over Sixth Amendment violations. “This does not feel what the Constitution [and] the Speedy Trial Act envisions.”
The DOJ has been rather tight-lipped about what is going on with the people detained for the Jan. 6 riot, and there have been reports of mistreatment. Even Republicans in Congress can’t seem to get answers.
Clearly, these are politically-based jailings! These peoples' Right to a speedy trial is clearly being violated.
President Biden’s economic agenda has boosted wages, but millions of American workers are still being left behind as inflation has more than wiped out salary gains.
U.S. wages grew at a 4% year-over-year pace in July, but trailed the 5.4% annual increase in inflation – real wages are falling. inflation had been absent since the 2008 financial crisis.
"Call it the ‘Biden pay cut’. Rapid inflation and declining real wages are the direct result of the Biden administration’s historic spending that is overheating the economy and creating disincentives to work."
Biden has long touted his "Build Back Better" economic agenda which aims to create jobs, cut taxes and lower costs for working families.
Instead, Biden’s economic agenda plan stalled job growth, raised taxes in the form of higher gasoline prices and has eaten into the wage gains won by American families.
Both the Biden administration and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell say that the current period of inflation is "transitory," and that rising prices will recede as supply-chain disruptions are remedied. However, Wall Street economists are concerned those predictions may be off the mark. "Inflation is likely to be more persistent and pervasive than predicted by the Federal Reserve. With consumer inflation expectations also on the rise the case for earlier policy stimulus withdrawal is building."
Outside of the Fourth of July, the Sturgis Rally must be one of the most iconic celebrations of freedom in the country. And where better to celebrate than in South Dakota, the freest state in the nation?
Many of the visitors say they’re coming to South Dakota specifically because it reminds them of the America they grew up in. Free. Independent. Unburdened by the constraints and headaches that big cities and liberal ideology forced upon them.
The rights of individuals are what birthed this nation and that independent spirit is what drove America to become the leader of not just the free world, but the whole world.
And yet, bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. and the media cast aspersions on the Sturgis Rally while ignoring concertgoers, lavish birthday parties, and the continuing crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.
It’s a double standard that gives a free pass to so-called elites to do as they please and mandate others to do as they say. It’s a failure in leadership on their part and why more and more Americans are fleeing big cities and blue states for places like South Dakota.
Under God, the people rule -- and ride free on the open roads of South Dakota!
624 pages of records from the office of the Secretary of State of Iowa reveal how state officials pressured social media companies (Twitter and Facebook) to censor posts about the 2020 election.
Included in these records were emails from Iowa state officials to representatives of Big Tech pressuring these companies to remove Judicial Watch’s posts.
The emails show how the state agency successfully pressured Facebook to censor Judicial Watch’s post about Iowa’s management of its voter rolls.
The records show that officials in the Iowa Secretary of State office on multiple occasions contacted officials from Facebook and Twitter to try to have these companies remove Judicial Watch posts that raised concerns about Iowa’s failure to maintain accurate election rolls.
Dictatorships label antithetical views as inaccurate and spread lies about their accusers.
Politicians dedicated to freedom make the evidence available and provide their accusers with actual facts.
"How bad does this atmosphere we’re living in have to get before the people who say cancel culture is overblown admit that it is in fact an insanity that is swallowing up the world?"
"Young people have to stop flattering themselves that they’re Nostradamus and would have foreseen had they been around back then everything that is unacceptable now," Maher told his audience. "Why do we allow the people who just want to b*tch always win?… This is called a purge. It’s a mentality that belongs in Stalin’s Russia."
Judicial Watch announced today that it received 540 pages and a supplemental four pages of documents from the office of the Secretary of State of California revealing how state officials pressured social media companies (Twitter, Facebook, Google (YouTube)) to censor posts about the 2020 election.
The documents show how the state agency successfully pressured YouTube to censor a Judicial Watch video concerning the vote by mail and a Judicial Watch lawsuit settlement about California voter roll clean up.
Deputy Secretary of State and Chief Communications Officer Paula Valle: "I am not necessarily comfortable with his line of questions and the additional doors that this will open."
The questions included concerns from citizens who were targeted by the “Misinformation Tracker,”: "Both individuals wanted to know how their posts ended up being labeled misinformation and how, given their relatively small following, they came to the attention of the Office of Election Cybersecurity?"
“These new documents suggest a conspiracy against the First Amendment rights of Americans by the California Secretary of State, the Biden campaign operation, and Big Tech,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “These documents blow up the big lie that Big Tech censorship is ‘private’ – as the documents show collusion between a whole group of government officials in multiple states to suppress speech about election controversies.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. calls Dems' spending package a 'tax and spend dream of the socialist left'.
Graham condemned the Democratic spending package and said that, if needed, he will follow the lead of the Texas House Democrats who fled their home state in an effort to kill GOP-backed voting legislation.
Graham noted that he would support the roughly $950 billion infrastructure plan for roads, bridges and ports, but stressed that "the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package designed to pass without a single Republican vote" is "not infrastructure." He added that the reconciliation package is "a liberal wish list," which contains "all kinds of new social programs unrelated to infrastructure."
Graham asserted that the only way to pay for the reconciliation package is "through a massive tax increase" and that passing the bill would cause inflation to soar "through the roof."
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and three other House Democrats affiliated with the far-left Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have so far remained silent while the DSA appears to back Cuba's communist regime against protesters demanding freedom.
Ocasio-Cortez, Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman and Missouri Rep. Cori Bush make up the four DSA members in Congress. All four members have yet to speak out about the ongoing protests in Cuba.
The DSA International Committee on Monday declared its solidarity with the "Revolution" – the term used by the communist regime – "in this moment of unrest."
South Carolina General Assembly is doing well on the issues
State Rep. Garry Smith reports – "Here are just a few of the major accomplishments from this year’s session:"
A Conservative Budget – We passed the most conservative budget in South Carolina history! This budget funds only the essential functions of the State while protecting taxpayers and preparing for weather or health-related disasters. For the full budget, visit
https://www.scstatehouse.gov/CommitteeInfo/housewaysandmeans.php
Here are some of this year’s top conservative budget highlights:
• $50 million in a Preparedness Relief Fund in the case of a natural disaster
• Investment in rebuilding tourism to recover the pandemic’s hardest-hit industry
• $650 million to local governments to allow them to cut taxes on SC residents
• 75% expansion of the state’s 4-K program and $1,000 raise for every teacher (in addition to a STEP increase) bringing teacher pay in South Carolina above the South East average
• $36 million for the growth of South Carolina’s charter school system
• A full-time nurse and school resource officer in EVERY school in the state
• 2.5% pay raise for state employees
• STEP pay raise for law enforcement officers & PTSD treatment for law enforcement and firefighters
• $8.3 million to pay down state debt
• $200 million for the S.C. Port to avoid high-interest debt
• Conservative budgeting and years of responsible planning allows for over $643 million in reserves!
Cutting Taxes
Free & Fair Elections
Checks and Balances
Preserving Life
Military Personnel Tuition Rates
Death Penalty
Second Amendment Fortification - The “Open Carry with Training Act"
• Blocks the federal government’s efforts to confiscate or over-regulate our Second Amendment rights by making South Carolina a Second Amendment Sanctuary State.
• Relaxes the qualifications to become a CWP holder and addresses the shortage of ammunition by altering the CWP test from 50+ rounds to 25.
• Eliminates the $50 CWP fee to SLED, lowering the cost to become a permit holder and responsible gun carrier.
• Allows churches that meet on school property to choose if they will allow CWP holders to carry.
The House also passed a “Constitutional Carry Bill” providing that any person can carry a handgun, concealed or open, without a permit. It passed the House and is currently in the Senate where it can be debated as we enter into the second half of the session in January.
We have worked hard this session to protect and fortify our Second Amendment rights. South Carolina is now a Second Amendment Sanctuary State -- no federal law that requires seizure of firearms will be enforced by state law enforcement officials in S.C.
Santee Cooper Reform
Education Overhaul – We are always trying to improve the quality of education in South Carolina for both our students and educators!
• We championed legislation requiring all schools to offer five-day, in-person classroom instruction as of April 26. It also increases the current teacher earnings limitation for retirees to $50,000.
• We passed legislation that allows school districts to establish Schools of Innovation.
• STEP pay increases were reinstated for teachers and we secured a $1,000 raise for every teacher, bringing teachers’ salaries above the southeast U.S. average.
• It is important that schools educate students, but also allow children to think critically and form their own opinions. All public high schools and institutions of higher learning must require students to pass a course in the essentials of the US Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Federalist Papers. Critical race theory is prohibited from being taught in K-12 schools.
• Finally, wearing a mask or receiving a COVID-19 vaccine is a deeply personal decision, so we worked to prohibit the mandating of wearing a face mask in K-12 schools. Colleges and universities are prohibited from mandating COVID-19 vaccinations or facemasks, too.
Getting Down to Business - This year we focused on reopening businesses after the pandemic and ensured they were able to thrive in South Carolina. We passed the COVID-19 Safe Harbor Liability Act, giving businesses that follow appropriate safety guidelines immunity from certain liabilities. This was an important step in getting South Carolina back to business. The “Gallo Winery Bill” amends and expands our state’s ‘quirky’ liquor laws to allow for wine tasting facilities and micro-distilleries.
This was one of the most productive years in the history of the South Carolina General Assembly. Not only did we recover from the pandemic, but we prospered and progressed by leaps and bounds, achieving many of our goals. I look forward to reconvening in September to take up redistricting and again in January for the second half of session. Until then, if I can be of service or assistance to you, please do not hesitate to contact me at my office in Columbia: 803 734-3045
American universities are at a tipping point, where their very mission is being reconsidered. In prior decades and centuries, the mission of “the academy” was to discover truth. One could not hijack a debate if their position was not grounded in truth.
Today many, if not most academics see the mission of our institutions of higher learning as social and racial justice.
One of the most esteemed members of the UNC faculty, in lamenting the depths of where the culture of colleges has sunk, told me of an instance where he had a student come up to him after class and openly lecture him on why he needed to stop making statements as fact when he was just exhibiting his white supremacy. This was an undergraduate student chastising a highly acclaimed physics professor who was teaching irrefutable scientific principles.
The single most under-represented minority among Tar Heel faculty is conservatives. Of the UNC faculty registered to vote, only 4% are registered Republican, among the lowest in the nation. This is at the leading public university in a state where an equal number of voters support each party.
How can a student be expected to respect diverse perspectives when they are only exposed to a single viewpoint in the classroom and fear being canceled if they express a contrary belief? The faculty selection process needs an overhaul. Conservatives shun academia for many reasons, especially because of a well-founded fear of how they would be treated by their peers. Department chairs need to start developing, recruiting and serving up tenure candidates that won’t raise the volume in the echo chamber with the same fervor they invest in attracting other under-represented minorities. Or stop professing to care about diversity.
COVID Testing Has Become Ridiculous & Even Counterproductive
Real Wages Declined 0.5% in October Amid Mounting Inflation
Veterans Day – George Washington: America’s Most Indispensable Veteran
China’s Xi Jinping rewrites history to secure his political future
Where is surging inflation hitting Americans the hardest?
not ignore them," he emphasized in his victory speech, also saying, "a campaign that came from nowhere ... turned into a movement."
Biden hypocrisy: Wall for his safety, but not for American citizens
Biden policies ‘dramatically’ impacted supply chain crisis, inflation
The Fake Biden Presidency
Featuring professional monitors and lighting, it is the same set Biden used to show himself receiving a third dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.
People were suddenly desperate to leave Afghanistan once it became apparent
TRAITOR! General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, usurped the authority of the Commander in Chief during Trump’s final days in office.
Maine Latest State to Abolish Civil Asset Forfeiture
"Under God the People Rule."
