Remember, America got nothing out of this deal. It endangers our closest ally in the Middle East. And Iran is the greatest state sponsor of terror in the world.
There is absolutely no upside to this deal. For America or its allies.
[T]he Biden administration appears willing to go to any lengths to entice Iran back into full “compliance” with the agreement begun during the Obama administration. Instead of taking small steps to build trust that Iran would keep its word, the U.S. now appears willing to lift all remaining sanctions on Iran in exchange for the promise of later negotiations.
You can’t even spin this in a way that’s good for America. There is absolutely nothing in it that benefits America in any conceivable way. Pursuing it is madness, or complete ineptitude, or complete idiocy. Or possibly all three.
In the newly unsealed 2018 call with public relations firm Laundry Service, Schnatter discussed efforts to manage his public image as a major representative of the company. At one point near the end of the call, he complained about what he said was a double standard afforded to another fast food magnate, Kentucky Fried Chicken founder Colonel Harland Sanders.
"What bothers me," Schnatter said during the call, "is Colonel Sanders called blacks 'n------.' I'm like, I've never used that word ... Yet we use the word debacle and we get framed in the same genre. It's crazy. The whole thing's crazy."
I don’t even like his pizza, but again, I believe in freedom of speech and in treating people fairly and honestly. I hope he gets whatever he’s suing for and more.
At least 39 unaccompanied migrant children have been in the temporary processing facility for more than 15 DAYS, Acting Executive Officer for RGV Operational Programs Division, Oscar Escamilla, told reporters.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday said he would "strongly support" moving the Major League Baseball All-Star Game out of Atlanta in response to Georgia's newly passed voting law that critics say restricts voting access.
"I think today's professional athletes are acting incredibly responsibly," Biden told ESPN's Sage Steele in an interview. "I would strongly support them doing that. People look to them. They're leaders."
Biden's comments joined a growing chorus of voices that have called on the MLB to move its marquee summertime game out of Cobb County, as part of a larger effort to boycott organizations headquartered in the state that have remained silent on the voting rights issue, as well as major sporting events, including golf's annual Masters Tournament.
This is extortion. This is using economic power to alter laws you don’t agree with. We have a number of just ways to alter laws in America. If MLB wants to lobby their beliefs to the state legislature and the residents of Georgia, they can do so. If they want to take the state of Georgia to court, they can do so.
What they cannot be allowed to do is to blackmail Georgia into changing their laws.
The fact that such as thing is supported by the President of the United States is despicable. His term can’t end soon enough.
A news article posted by CNN claims outright that there's no way to know a baby's biological sex at birth. Yes, this story was classified as news. No, the claim is not even remotely accurate.
The story, by Devan Cole, is about the new executive order signed by Governor Kristi Noem in South Dakota that bars biological males from competing in women's and girls' athletics. It reads:
"The orders also reference "biological sex," a disputed term that refers to the sex as listed on students' original birth certificates. ?It's not possible to know a person's gender identity at birth, and there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth."
Strange. Both my wife and I were able to do it looking at the ultrasound, months before birth. And we have advanced medical knowledge. it was very simple: “oh look—there’s nothing there.”
MOST OF THEM WERE JUST PEOPLE IN THE PEOPLE’S HOUSE. Most Capitol protesters won’t be jailed. Media angry. “34 years ago the Supreme Court ruled that burning the flag is not a crime. The people who defended that decision now contend that waving a flag is. . . . The problem is there was no insurrection. Yes, 5 people died. 4 were protesters, including an unarmed Ashli Babbitt whom a Capitol Police officer shot and killed. The officer was never publicly named.”
Imagine if Derek Chauvin’s name had been kept secret for months.
Plus: “While violent assaults in the Capitol are rare, protests and acts of civil disobedience — such as disrupting congressional hearings or even House and Senate floor sessions, are more common. That means prosecutors and judges will have to weigh how much more punishment a Trump supporter who invaded the Capitol during the Electoral College count deserves than, say, an anti-war protester chanting at a CIA confirmation hearing or a gun-control advocate shouting in the middle of the State of the Union address.”
Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
Maybe it’s true and maybe it isn’t. In fact, most of these types of allegations in Washington, D.C. turn out to be true, so the odds are against Gaetz.
On the other hand, every single time we got a story like this about Trump with no one with direct knowledge willing to go on the record, it turned out to be false.
The New York Times is running with a story that claims “the Justice Department is said to be” “inquiring” into an “unclear” report that it’s “possible” Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz was involved with a 17-year-old girl two years ago.
There’s not much that’s solid there. A lot of “unclear” and “possible” events.
The Times says that “people who have been briefed” say an “inquiry” – note the word “investigation” is not used – was opened at the end of the Trump administration, according to “people briefed on the matter.”
Gaetz claims its an extortion racket, and that he’s been in contact with the FBI, not as the target of an investigation, but as the victim.
Kelly Tshibaka, Alaska’s Commissioner of Administration, has announced that she will be challenging Murkowski for her Senate seat. Fox News reported that she described herself as someone from “a new generation of Alaska conservatives” who as a candidate will portray herself as a candidate who will rebuild Alaska’s economy, defend and rejuvenate small businesses and fight to protect the jobs of Alaskans in the energy industry.
A campaign video for Tshibaka described her as conservative, pro-life, and pro-Second Amendment, with the slogan, “America First. Always.”
Sounds great, but Murkowski is a formidable opponent. And has the backing of the corruptocrats in Alaska. She’s already survived one primary defeat and managed to hold her Senate seat despite not even being on the ballot.
I’ll believe Murkowski can be defeated in a general election once it actually happens. Not before.
Conservatives can whine about it all they want, but it’s coming.
They’re correct about the assault it brings upon individual freedom, but it’s coming anyway.
The state and federal governments receive quite a bit of cash from gasoline taxes. When gasoline consumption goes down, they’re going to need to replace that revenue somehow.
Of course such a tax would hit families making far less than $400,000. Which President Joe Biden (D-USA) promised us wouldn’t happen.
That was always completely laughable, but I’m sure that some people believed it.
I’m not going to quote from Ditch this time. He makes some good points, but he’s tilting at windmills. The tax is coming. Maybe not in 2021. Maybe not even before the next Presidential election. But it’s coming. Conservatives would be better off writing about fights we can win, rather than one whose fate ha already been decided.
But in this case, I find the phrasing significant. I bet at least half of that 36% don’t fell that Cancel Culture is a threat to their freedom. It may be a threat to your freedom, but that doesn’t bother them.
The information comes from a Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey released exclusively to The Hill showing that 64% of the respondents to the survey stated “that there is ‘a growing cancel culture’ that is a threat to their freedom, while 36 percent said they did not view it as a threat to their freedom.”
This next bit is true.
Mark Penn, the director of the Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey released by The Hill, said, “It is a chilling finding that most people in the country now are afraid they would be fired if they expressed their real views on social media … The public generally gives negative ratings to social media companies and sees the movement as more about censorship rather than trying to correct wrongs. It is growing as a national issue.”
Back when I used social media, I was very expressive on Twitter, but much more reserved on Facebook. I was self-censoring myself. That’s one of the reasons I went back to blogging.
[I]f the filibuster is an extension of racism — and if the Democrat Party is the party of anti-racism — why did they use this racist practice a whopping 327 times just last year?
Good question. I guess it wasn’t racist in 2020.
But wait. I thought according to the current rules we are supposed to judge people by what they did in the past.
Time to kick all of these racist Democrats out of the Senate.
“Oh, I think it’ll be a long time,” McEnany said of when there will be another press conference. “Look, they are very clear in their preference not to have him in this format, also not to have him in the format of a long address, like a joint address to Congress, which he hasn’t done. They keep him in as a sound-bite president. I think there was a lot of pressure put on him to do that one. I venture to say it’ll probably be another 100 days or at least until the media drumbeat pipes up and says we need another before we’ll see him in that format again.”
BREAKING: CDC Director Rochelle Walensky warns that she feels “impending doom” with the Covid case trajectory. “Right now I’m scared.” pic.twitter.com/MSJDQWRifA
“Impending doom” seems excessive. “Scared” might be reasonable. Let’s take a look at the numbers. These are all 7-day rolling average:
Worldwide
United States
Indiana
Cases - Current
589.598
60,122
1,037
Cases – Recent Min
358,964 Feb. 21
47,418 Mar. 14
745 Mar. 4
Cases – Recent Peak
761,164 Jan. 22
227,593 Jan. 8
5,379 Jan. 10
These are all pretty significant increases. Walensky is also correct that often when things start going up, we get an explosion. There is plenty of reason here to be concerned, possibly even frightened.
However, the numbers for fatalities are generally more promising:
Worldwide
United States
Indiana
Deaths - Current
10,357
733*
9
Deaths – Recent Min
8,409 Mar. 16
733 Apr. 6
7 Apr. 5
Deaths – Recent Max
16,255 Jan. 24
3,061 Feb. 5
88 Jan. 2
*Ended with April 6 data. April 7 had 2500 fatalities, which is almost certainly a correction. And it is skewing the current results.
Worlwide fatalities are up, by a decent margin. However, in the U.S. and locally here in Indiana, we’re basically at our recent lows.
I’ve been fooled by the numbers before. I am very concerned by the rising case counts, and confused by them as well. With rising vaccination rates, and the huge numbers of people who have already had the disease, case counts shouldn’t be rising. As long as vaccinations keep going up and fatalities stay down, I’m not scared yet.
There are reasons to be hopeful this is just a short-lived bubble. But history is against that, sadly.
It’s hard to prove to the center and to the left that you’re not crazy when there are statements like this.
According to Mike Lindell, President Trump could be back in office by August. The MyPillow CEO made the comment during a weekend video appearance on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast.
Lindell said all the evidence he’s compiled showing fraud in the 2020 presidential election will be shown to the Supreme Court. He expects that evidence will be enough to overturn the results of the election.
The Supreme Court is not overturning the election. There is zero percent chance of that happening. Accept that. Understand it. Move on.
I don’t know what they will decide. They may decide that many of the states violated voters Constitutional rights. They won’t see evidence of fraud, but they might see evidence that fraud was possible.
But I can guarantee you that once SCOTUS is done, Joe Biden (D-USA) will still be President.
Police said the girls, 13 and 15, assaulted an Uber Eats driver with a Taser while carjacking him, which led to an accident in which he was fatally injured. https://t.co/N6RpLoTu8x
The suspects, who police say are ages 13 and 15, have been charged with murder in the death of Anwar.
One of the girls told D.C. police officers that they had set out with a stun gun to steal a car on Tuesday, according to court testimony from homicide unit Detective Chad Leo.
The girls got into Anwar’s car around 4:30 p.m. at the Navy Yard Metro Station as he was making deliveries, Leo said.
Anwar drove the girls to Nationals Park where he pulled his car over and a struggle ensued between them. Officials, citing police, said Anwar partially left the car and was pinned between the door and the driver’s seat as the teens allegedly put the vehicle in gear, the New York Post reported.
The car then lurched forward, causing Anwar to be fatally flung out as the car made a sharp right turn, causing it to roll over on its side and crash into two parked cars.
I’ve been saying for a couple years now that if you visit CNN for anything other than pure entertainment value, you are incredibly naïve.
The factual analysis of the Court of Appeals — that Munchel and Eisenhart didn’t actually do anything other than entering the Capitol through an open door where Capitol Police were standing and allowing the crowd to enter — reflects some of the problems which the AP story highlights, i.e., the evidence the government is bringing before the courts doesn’t measure up to the rhetoric used by prosecutors and federal agents in their early comments, both in the courtroom as well as sworn affidavits.
And the AP says:
[A]s the sprawling investigation has unfolded, prosecutors have sometimes struggled to maintain a consistent narrative and had to walk back statements made in court hearings or in papers. It has created an opening for defense attorneys to try to sow doubt in the case.
As I have said all along, this whole thing has been blown ridiculously out of proportion.
The University of Cincinnati has not renewed the contract of a faculty member who used the phrase “Chinese virus” in an email to a student last year. The university’s administration viewed the phrase as xenophobic.
The University is wrong. But even if it were correct, making assumptions on whether or not a person may be xenophobic is wrong. And I’ll go even farther. If Uecker is a xenophobe: so what?
I don’t support the Thought Police in any environment, including at school.
The Associated Press agrees with President Biden’s White House that the situation along the U.S. southern border is not a "crisis," and it instructed staffers not to use the dreaded c-word when reporting thousands of unaccompanied children have attempted to enter the country.
Ok, can I call it “twisted”, “sick”, “vile”, “revolting”, “disgusting”, and how about “pathetic”?
January 6th was an “insurrection”, and what’s going on at the border is not a “crisis”.
The prospect of failing to attain the level of economic development before its elderly population places an unbearable strain on the country’s economy while simultaneously coping with tens of millions of idle and alienated young men may present the vaunted Chinese Communist technocracy with a challenge beyond its capabilities. “At some point, governments [will] consider how they can export their problem, either by encouraging emigration of young adult men or harnessing their energies in martial adventures abroad.”
A fired Yale psychiatry professor who said Trump supporters are suffering from a “spread of shared psychosis” on Twitter is suing the university for wrongful termination. The lawsuit claims that her termination violated her First Amendment free speech rights.
She can say whatever she wants to on Twitter, as long as it’s her personal account, and it’s not incitement to violence. Her employer cannot fire her for using her First Amendment privilege.
And you thought I only defended Trump supporters?
Shame on you. Howe many times do I have to tell you that I am the closest person to a free speech absolutist that you are likely to ever meet.
According to her lawyers, her comments are “clearly protected by the First Amendment and Yale’s guarantees of academic freedom.”
The suit seeks her reinstatement and “compensatory economic and non-economic damages” and legal fees and related costs.
The Republican who is sitting in Stacey Abrams’ chair just signed a despicable voter suppression bill into law to take Georgia back to Jim Crow. The Senate must pass the #ForThePeople Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Act immediately – our democracy is at stake tonight. https://t.co/xDolZO9Bf3
Twitter has made it plain that you’re not allowed to use their platform to say that elections are unfair. I assume they will be going after Senator Warren just as they did President Donald Trump (R-USA).
I didn’t write the loopholes you exploit, @amazon – your armies of lawyers and lobbyists did. But you bet I’ll fight to make you pay your fair share. And fight your union-busting. And fight to break up Big Tech so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets. https://t.co/3vCAI93MST
First, the attitude. Yes, Amazon is powerful enough to heckle Senators. My dog is powerful enough to heckle Senators. We don’t have royalty in this country, Senator. So, sit down and shut up, and listen when your betters are talking about you? Who are your betters? Everyone in America who isn’t a politician.
Second, you just admitted that lawyers and lobbyists write the laws, not the Senators. If that’s the case, WTF are you doing up there on Capitol Hill? Go get a real job, if you can. Because you’re certainly no good at the one you have.
I hope they win big. Between this and Nick Sandmann and Sarah Palin suing The New York Times, it’s a bad time to be in the left-wing news media.
Flynn’s brother and sister-in-law, Jack and Leslie Flynn, sued the network in U.S. District Court in New York City for allegedly portraying them and their family as supporters of QAnon, an online conspiracy theory. The Flynns claimed that CNN deceptively edited footage in a Feb. 4 segment on the conspiracy to implicate the Flynn family, according to the Daily Beast.
The question, of course, is why did US incomes suddenly explode after decades of tepid growth? The answer is not difficult to find.
The year 2017 saw massive deregulation and passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). Estimates placed the deregulation savings at $2 trillion. But what was likely even a bigger factor was the cut businesses saw in corporate taxes.
Prior to 2017, the US had the highest corporate tax in the developed world (if not the whole world). With a top bracket of 35 percent, its corporate tax rate was higher than Communist China and socialist Venezuela.
Huh. We lowered corporate taxes. I think I’ve mentioned before that’s a good idea.
[S]tudies show that workers bear between 50 and 100 percent of the brunt of corporate income taxes.
I think that I’ve mentioned that before too.
So in 2017, when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was signed into law, companies saw their tax rate fall from 35 percent to 21 percent. Just that fast, businesses suddenly had more capital to spend to grow their business, improve productivity, and hire more workers—and few things attract workers more than higher wages.
This gets a “duh” from me, but apparently it was too much for our media to grasp.
Media scoffed at the possibility that corporate tax cuts would actually result in wage increases for US workers. But the data speaks for itself: Families saw incomes increase faster than at any time in generations.
Trump was right. I expect to say that quite often over the next four years.
Our current President wants to raise the rates again. Apparently, we need to stop this economic growth before people stop being dependent on government.
I haven’t kept up with the various investigations surrounding him. I do find it surprising that they’re not all front page news. I’m trying to imagine the same being the case if this was 4 years ago and it was one of Trump’s children.
I’m just going to link here and say I know nothing about it.
On Oct. 23, 2018, President Joe Biden’s son Hunter and daughter in law Hallie were involved in a bizarre incident in which Hallie took Hunter’s gun and threw it in a trash can behind a grocery store, only to return later to find it gone.
Huh. Again, I can’t believe this isn’t the lead story in every paper in America.
But I’ll just stick with my headline. The man is complete scum. As far as I know, he has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. And he’s a loser.
Did he do something wrong here? Innocent until proven guilty even with loser scumbags.
Ok, I know that most of the China Virus anti-vaxxers are Trumpers. And they’re idiots.
But Larry Elder does a great job here of rolling the tape:
On May 15, then-President Trump announced Operation Warp Speed, a $10 billion program with a goal of producing 300 million vaccine doses to administer to Americans by January. But three days earlier, Fauci testified before Congress and said, "There's no guarantee that the vaccine is actually going to be effective." Two days after that, Rick Bright, the former head the federal government's Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, testified: "Normally, it takes up to 10 years to make a vaccine. ... A lot of optimism is swirling around a 12- to 18-month time frame, if everything goes perfectly. We have never seen everything go perfectly."
And:
Immediately after Trump's announcement of Operation Warp Speed, CNN analyst Jessica Huseman tweeted, "Go ahead and flag this tweet for when we do not have that vaccine by the end of the year." Joe Lockhart, former Bill Clinton White House press secretary, tweeted: "There is not an objective scientist on TV right now that believe anything that was said at the press conference who believes anything like this can be done by the end of the year. Caveat, I'm not watching Fox." Then-Sen. Kamala Harris, in September, said: "There is very little that we can trust that comes out of Donald Trump's mouth." Later that same month Joe Biden said: "I trust vaccines. I trust scientists. But I don't trust Donald Trump. And at this point, the American people can't, either."
These people told us for almost a year that the vaccine couldn’t or wouldn’t happen in the timeline suggested by Trump, and that if it did it wouldn’t be safe or effective.
Like so many things from 2017-2020, Trump was correct, and his critics were wrong. In fact, were his critics right about anything?? I can’t recall a single one.
Good thing we got rid of someone who accomplished to much and replaced him with a lying, incompetent, senile old man.
In a study done for the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, Rice University economists John Diamond and George Zodrow examined the expected impact of Warren's previously proposed wealth tax (a 2% annual tax on wealth over $50 million, rising to 6% for wealth over $1 billion). They found long-run GDP loss of 2.7%, thanks in large part to a 3.7 % decline in the capital stock. Economists Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Gordon Gray of the American Action Forum also found that Warren's wealth tax would cost workers 60 cents of earnings for every dollar of revenue raised, or approximately $1.2 trillion in lost earnings over the first 10 years.
Well, that’s pretty predictable. When you take money away from investors, they don’t invest. When they don’t invest, companies can’t afford to hire or pay more. When companies can’t afford to hire or pay more, employees lose money.
When all of these things happen, you destroy the economy.
But that’s a goal of Democrats anyway.
If you're skeptical of economic predictions, consider that these scenarios have already played out in the real world. A detailed analysis by the Tax Foundation shows that while many Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries have tried a wealth tax, only five of those countries still have one today.
Wealth taxes weren't widely abandoned because these governments suddenly embraced free-market principles. Instead, implementing the tax put reality on a collision course with the same theoretical myths now being spread in the United States. These taxes don't rake in the revenue or solve the supposed problem of inequality. For starters, wealth taxes aren't paid by rich people who reduce their consumption as a consequence. They reduce their investments, which reduces capital formation, which slows productivity and wage growth. In other words, wealth taxes may be originally paid by wealthy folks, but the economic burden falls heavily on workers.
I think I just said that. There’s one other problem too. Will Veronique de Rugy get it too? I bet she will. She’s damn smart.
Previous wealth taxes also triggered capital flight to other countries, which explains the relatively small amount of revenue actually collected. Declining capital stocks then slowed economic growth and depressed overall tax revenues. The Tax Foundation notes, "Among those five OECD countries collecting revenues from net wealth taxes, revenues made up just 1.2 percent of total revenues on average in 2019." And high administrative costs due to a more complex tax made even the little bit of revenue raised unappealing. That's why so many countries gave up.
Yep, there it is.
You either flunk basic math by supporting such a thing, or you are deliberately trying to destroy the economy. There are no other possibilities.
And no, I’m no conspiracy theorist. I’m not even saying that the election was unfair. I am simply saying that there’s no way that we can confirm that it was. I said almost a year ago that whoever lost the election of 2020 would have substantial reason to doubt the election integrity. And I was correct.
Democrats don’t want to see more election integrity laws passed. Why is that?
Anyway, let’s see what Lennox has to say.
The bill also enhances election security by requiring identification when voters request an absentee ballot instead of relying on subjective signature matching. Voters will use a valid state ID, ID number, or other form of identification when requesting an absentee ballot. When voting in person, Georgians provide a photo ID, and there is simply no reason that absentee requests should not carry the same requirement.
Good. I’d still prefer no absentee ballots or mail-in ballots of any kind, but this is a step in the correct direction.
The law also expands early voting for the general and primary elections as a compromise, adding additional Saturdays and Sundays to the days to vote before Election Day. This provision is not a Republican preference because early tabulating of absentee ballots is also allowed. Drop boxes, a huge election security risk, may only be placed in early-voting locations and may only be accessible when the site is open.
That’s a mixed bag. I’m somewhat in favor of limited early voting, and I don’t mind it on weekends. I don’t like long term early voting periods. Actually, I would prefer a universal voting period nationwide. Everyone starts at 6 AM on election day EST, and continues for exactly 72 hours. And the lights are off at the 72 hour mark. None of this “anyone in line gets to vote”. You didn’t make it in 72 hours, too bad for you.
The state legislature has also severely limited the modifications that can be made by the Secretary of State and county election boards independently to address a crisis like COVID-19. The legislature has reserved the right to suspend such changes and require that any modifications must involve public notice and specific notification to the legislature. The law will also prevent county election offices from receiving “Zuck Bucks” from outside interest groups.
This is a solid set of wins. Secretaries of State who re-wrote state election laws on their own were one of the biggest problems in 2020.
The pandemic is over. It’s time to return to secure elections. This bill increases accessibility, decreases long wait times, and changes the subjective signature verification to an objective form of I.D.
You could argue that the pandemic is not yet over, although it almost certainly will be by next election day. Many of these ridiculous changes in 2020 were made in response to the China Virus. As Lennox says, it’s time to undo all the crap we did.
Now we just need the other 49 states and D.C. to pass similar legislation, and we can all breathe much easier at night.
Parler, the social media platform popular with right-wing users, worked with the FBI to target accounts suspected of encouraging violence prior to the January riot at the Capitol, making more than 50 referrals leading up to the violence, the company said Thursday.
In a letter to House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Parler accused “Big Tech” of waging a “coordinated and widespread disinformation campaign” against the platform intended to “scapegoat” it for the deadly riot.
So, they were helping law enforcement prior to the “riot”.
“Far from being the far-right instigator and rogue company that Big Tech has portrayed Parler to be, the facts conclusively demonstrate that Parler has been a responsible and law-abiding company focused on ensuring that only free and lawful speech exists on its platform,” Parler’s attorneys Michael S. Dry and Ephraim “Fry” Wernick wrote in the letter.
While election-related disinformation circulated on Facebook and Twitter, only the conservative-friendly social media site Parler faced significant blowback over the riots.
Google, Apple and Amazon all removed Parler from their platforms days after the riot.
Apple accused Parler of not doing enough to monitor “threats of violence and illegal activity.”
Well, Twitter & Facebook should be treated the same as Parler.
Any “journalist” that used the words “sedition” or “insurrection” to describe the events of January 6th is not worthy of a job in any sort of media.
I’ve seen more violence at block parties.
Reuters reports that none of those 400 who have been charged have been charged with sedition, which would be an incitement of rebellion. Instead, the most serious charge brought against any of the defendants has been assault. Two of the men who were charged with assault on Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick used bear spray in the attack.
This was all a big nothingburger, used to frighten and enrage the American public so that we’d all be sheep to the Democrats desires for more power and control over us.
And most of you fell for it, hook, line and sinker.
Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 4.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020 (table 1), according to the "third" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP increased 33.4 percent.
But a picture paints a thousand words:
Wow, sure glad we got rid of the guy that engineered that comeback.
That’s a tricky end around on the 2nd Amendment. You have the right to keep & bear arms. In your own home.
George Young applied twice for a firearm carry license, but was denied. He unsuccessfully sued Hawaii officials over the restrictions.
“There is no right to carry arms openly in public; nor is any such right within the scope of the Second Amendment,” the court ruled in an “en banc” decision that involved 11 of the panel’s judges.
“We can find no general right to carry arms into the public square for self-defense,” the majority wrote, claiming that the Second Amendment applies to the “defense of hearth and home.
I think that to make this argument work, you to have to show that was the Founders intention, or at least show some other right that the Founders implied you have, but only in the privacy of your own home.
I’m not sure that’s doable. And I think it sets a dangerous precedent on how we interpret the Constitution if such a ruling is allowed to stand. Can we then argue that freedom of speech is only allowed in your own home as well? What about the Eighth Amendment? You are only protected from “cruel and unusual punishment” inside your own home?
I have a hard time believing that you can even get most of the liberal justices on the Supreme Court to go along with this, but I’ve been surprised before.
[Governor Holcomb (R-IN)] spoke from his office at the Statehouse and referenced the combination of a steep decline in coronavirus hospitalizations and death rates as well as the number of fully vaccinated people as the basis of his reasoning. The numbers are looking good in Indiana. After a year of the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic in the state, which includes the death of 13,000 people, the governor is hopeful that Indiana is now seeing the “tail end of this pandemic”.
Holcomb isn’t making any claims of victory or encouraging others to just throw caution to the wind when April 6 arrives. He said he’ll continue to wear a mask in public places for the time being. He is following the lead of states like Texas where the governor eases mitigation mandates while giving the authority to local businesses and public officials to keep mandates in place. It is up to individual businesses and local governments to manage their spaces when it comes to mitigation measures.
Great. I get my 2nd dose of the vaccine on the 13th. So by the end of the month I’ll stop wearing my mask any place that I’m allowed to do so.
Critics say it is too soon and worry that what happened in past months will happen again. When Gov. Holcomb lifted some restrictions last fall, the numbers went back up and then spiked.
But some health experts worry it is premature to lift the statewide restrictions, pointing to the steep increase in hospitalizations and deaths the state saw beginning in September after the governor lifted most business restrictions before reinstating crowd limits after winning reelection in November.
“We put a lot of restrictions in place last year, there was some initial hesitation by some parts of the population to comply with some of those orders,” said Brian Dixon, an epidemiologist at Indiana University’s Fairbanks School of Public Health. “And then what we saw in the fall is that rates went up, they skyrocketed because people were not following precautions.”
This is disingenuous to say the least. Yes, there was quite a spike here in Indiana last fall. It coincided with a spike nationwide, though. So, unless Holcomb is to blame for what happened all over the country, blaming his easing of restrictions for what happened in Indiana seems like a stretch.
I look forward to moving back one step closer to normality.
No, it really wasn’t. But let’s see what Toto has to say before I give my thoughts. The movie wasn’t wholly bad.
We now have director Zack Snyder’s version of “Justice League,” the movie he tried to tell in 2017 before a personal tragedy consumed his world.
This four-hour behemoth is bloated, no doubt, with moments that scream cutting room floor. In a way that’s not the point. The film exists to placate fans, the group who helped will the project into existence.
For them, “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” may be nirvana. For everyone else it’s a rich improvement over the Joss Whedon version but a tale that can’t measure up to the best Marvel movies.
Hmm. I can’t disagree with too much here. I think the moments that scream cutting room floor is the point, so I’d have to quibble on that one, but let’s move on.
The film, rendered in full screen, gives us a far richer villain in Steppenwolf, at least visually speaking. He’s no Thanos, to be clear, but his power and presence make him a worthy foe for our assembled heroes.
Of course Superman returns, again, with Cavill showing once more he doesn’t just look the part. Too bad Hollywood isn’t always sure how to convey a Boy Scout in our anti-hero age.
The point about Superman is a great one, and is one of the key problems with the DC films, frankly since about Superman II, back in the early 80s. Superman is the ultimate Boy Scout. He is the goody two shoes of goody two shoes. And the directors and writers of the DC films can’t figure out how to make that work. They try to make him darker & edgier, and more human. But it never quite works out right. They lose the “superhero” in him when they try. Here is a place that DC can take a cue from Marvel. Captain America is similar, but Marvel makes his “aww shucks” good guy image play. He’s the most heroic of the Avengers, the one character that constantly stands up for what he believes in, and when they need him to, his boyish outlook on the world makes for good humor.
As in these cuts from Avengers: Age of Ultron:
Amazingly enough, DC has the exact opposite problem with Batman. Batman really is dark and edgy. In fact, let’s be honest with ourselves. Bruce Wayne is a sociopath. He’s seriously mentally disturbed and walks a fine line between vigilante and villain. But movie super heroes that are that dark don’t work either. Look at what Marvel has done with Deadpool and also to Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow.
Deadpool is just as crazy as Batman, and Romanoff has the dark history that is at least somewhat similar to Bruce Wayne’s. Romanoff is a better example, so I’ll stick with her. They don’t play her dark except when they need to. The hint around the darkness “I have red on my leger” and show glimpses of it (I’m sure we’ll see more in Black Widow when it’s released), but mostly she and Hawkeye are there to remind us of the humanity of the Avengers. DC could do something similar with Bruce.
(Side note: another Marvel character that’s dark and edgy is Wolverine, and again, Marvel usually manages to balance the light and the dark with him, again by showing us his humanity)
These are the two biggest characters in the DC universe, maybe the two biggest characters in all of comic book superheroes, and the DC folks cannot figure out how to portray them on screen. This is DC’s biggest problem.
But enough about DC movies in general, we’re talking about Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
Back to Toto:
Mild spoiler -- the film caps with a half-hour epilogue that feels like pure fan service.
Then again, had Snyder resisted his passion for slo-mo sequences the entire project could come in at a neat three hours.
Maybe two.
Oh God, the epilogue. After 3 1/2 hours, a half hour epilogue is a killer. By that time you’re long past looking at your watch wondering when this movie is ever going to end. And Toto nails it here. The many slo-mo sequences just kill things. They’re too long, and there are too many of them.
The biggest problem with this film in particular is that 4 hours is both way too short and way too long. There is far too much packed into this one film. The extra details on Cyborg are wonderful. Deserving of their own film, in fact. And Marvel would never have done this as just one movie. It would have been at least 3, probably more like 5 or 6.
Despite that, there are scenes that are Star Trek: The Motion Picture slow. There’s a slo-mo sequence with the Flash that is just agonizing to watch. When watching the epilogue, you’re looking around for Sharon Stone’s ice pick from Basic Instinct to use on yourself.
I’m glad I finally got to see it. I don’t know if I’ll ever watch it again. Is it better than the version that was released in theaters? Parts of it are. I liked the extended Cyborg storyline. I liked Da’saad and Darkseid, but their parts were too short (back to that whole “Marvel would have done this in 5 or 6 films” thing). But there are too many parts that I’d frankly have to fast forward through to watch it again.
Although in this case, the treatment sounds a lot more dangerous than the vaccine.
The clinical candidate, PF-07321332, is a “protease inhibitor with potent anti-viral activity against SARS-CoV-2.” Protease inhibitors attach to a viral enzyme (named a protease) and prohibit the virus from replicating in a cell. The company’s statement adds that such inhibitors have been successful in the past “at treating other viral pathogens such as HIV and hepatitis C virus, both alone and in combination with other antivirals.”
What else does it prevent from happening in your body? Or allow to happen in greater amounts than you’d like? Questions, questions.
During the presser, the reporter claimed without evidence that DeSantis gave COVID-19 vaccination rights to Publix because the chain previously donated $100,000 to his political committee, according to Forbes.
Hmm.
DeSantis noted that the first pharmacies that had the COVID-19 vaccine in his state were CVS and Walgreens, not Publix. “
Oops.
Read the whole thing. Lots of useful…what do they call ‘em? Oh yeah, “facts” in there.
On Monday, the founder of the non-profit journalism group Project Veritas, James O’Keefe, posted a video showing a compilation of the photos, taken at the Texas Immigrant Detention Center in Donna. O’Keefe claimed there were “thousands of illegal immigrants packed into tight spaces and wrapped in space blankets on the floor.” He also alleged there were more than 50 migrants who are COVID-19 positive.
So, what happened?
Twitter was accused of censoring photos showing overcrowding at the cells holding illegal migrants at the United States’ southern border, hiding the content behind a filter warning as “potentially sensitive.” When questioned, the platform later removed the filter, saying the suppression was an error.
Ah.
Good to know.
The photos posted by O’Keefe make the situation at the southern border clearer. Government officials, including the White House Press Secretary and the head of Homeland Security have been denying there’s a crisis at the southern border.
However, Biden insists that his administration’s approach is better since “we have people there helping them.”
If this is the Democrats idea of “help”, I’ll pass.
Neither the Ohio Catholic high school nor the Diocese of Columbus, which operates the school, will explain what policies she violated or provide the context in which the statements were made that led to her termination.
Well, I’m sure it was awful.
“That’s not necessarily true,” Deborah DelPrince, a former theology teacher at the school, said in response to a student’s Zoom profile photo of LeBron James wearing an “I Can’t Breathe” shirt.
Teaching kids to be neoracists. Note how the assumption in this story is that this is a self-evident good. Not a single source suggesting this has critics. Not a one. This is propaganda. https://t.co/kQc79MfC1l
Following the tax cuts, the Congressional Budget Office projected a sustained increase in business investment. Through 2019, actual investment outpaced the government scorekeeper’s projections.
Tax cut-driven turnaround in investment also showed up as a spike in new manufacturing orders, small-business optimism, and new-business applications. Those forces helped boost gains for workers.
New job openings surged in 2018, the year following the tax cuts, and about 83,000 more people voluntarily left their jobs for better opportunities at the end of 2019, compared with the pre-reform trend.
The beginning of 2018 also marked a significant increase in wage growth.
President Joe Biden wants to save you from all that economic prosperity. Good thing we brought him in.
The Democrats goal for 2021 is simple. Change enough of the rules so that they never have to fear losing power again. They want America to become a one-party state, and nothing must be allowed to stand in the way of that.
A solid majority of voters think President Biden's proposed tax hikes will raise taxes on middle-class American workers, according to a new Just the News Daily Poll with Scott Rasmussen.
The Biden administration has signaled that its major proposed tax hike will hit individuals earning $200,000 and households earning $400,000 or more. The hike is expected to pay for major economic initiatives the administration plans to undertake including one to upgrade U.S. infrastructure.
Yet among the U.S. voters who responded in the poll, 62% said they expect that the proposed hikes "will include tax increases on middle income Americans."
Definitely put me in the 62%. And if you’re in the remaining 38%, you’re living in denial. I will point you back to this post, once you see your new taxes.
But hopefully it will never pass. You’d have to be a horrible person or a complete idiot to raise taxes during an economic downturn caused by a pandemic, wouldn’t you?
Oh wait, I just described Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-12) and President Joe Biden (D-USA), didn’t I?
We treated Japanese Americans better than this during World War II.
These photos were taken within the last few days. There are eight pods with eight cells each in the facility. At any given moment there are an average of 3,000 people in custody here. The illegal immigrants are separated by age or physical size depending on room. pic.twitter.com/kFmZgTG2Iv
That President Joe Biden (D-USA) is allowing this to happen shows that he is either a sick, twisted person or totally clueless as to what’s going on in his own administration.
This is appalling.
Good thing we got rid of President Donald Trump and brought in this guy.
Democrats don’t care about facts. They care about your feelings and how they can abuse them to make you think what they want you to think. This is now they attack every issue.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) knocked Democrats for weaponizing mass shooting incidents to pass new gun control laws. During Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun violence and the House background check bill, Cruz defended the GOP from Democrats who claim “the right’s only plan to combat gun violence is to ‘do nothing.'”
“What happens in this committee after every mass shooting is Democrats propose taking away guns from law-abiding citizens,” Cruz noted.
It’s worked for them for decades, and they know that even when it fails, it moves the needle a little bit. So they keep coming back to the same attack, over and over, moving the needle just a little bit every time, until they win.
For everyone that is suing @Twitter for clear cut bias— they have written to me to let me know that sending klansmen hoods to black people does not violate any of their rules.
For the past four presidential administrations, I have accompanied U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents and photographed their encounters with migrants as they enforced immigration policy. No longer. Last week, when I documented migrant detentions in El Paso, I had to do so from the Mexican side of the border, taking long-range shots. Until now, journalists haven’t had to stand in another country to cover what is happening in the United States.
Most asylum seekers cross the Rio Grande into South Texas on land controlled by federal agents. For decades, the U.S. government has let journalists accompany Border Patrol agents and other officials as they surveil the land. But since the change in administration, those agents have been physically blocking journalists from the riverbank. For example, after being turned down for official access on a trip in February, I followed a Border Patrol transport bus in my own vehicle to where agents were detaining migrants. They stopped me before I got close enough to take pictures. They called a supervisor, and ordered me to leave immediately.
We have gone from the Trump-era “zero tolerance” policy toward immigrants to a Biden-era “zero access” policy for journalists covering immigration. This development is unprecedented in modern history.
They don’t want you to know. Funny, I thought we had freedom of the press in America. Not in President Joe Biden’s (D-USA) America, apparently.
FYI:
Today Moore writes that even when the Trump administration was taking a major hit from his photos, they didn’t try to prevent journalists from riding along with the CBP. “The image caused a public-relations crisis for the Trump administration, but still, officials did not deny me access during subsequent trips to the border.”
Read that closely. They are launching an investigation because a factual, publicly available report was posted on a bulletin board.
Telling the truth has become a crime in our society.
Duke University has launched an investigation after a student found a copy of George Floyd’s toxicology report posted on a bulletin board commemorating Black History Month.
This gets really rich.
According to the criticism of his comments, the dean said that the posting of the report and the commentary should be treated as just an opinion.
It’s a factual toxicology report. No one made it up.
“Just an opinion”.
Wow.
But apparently, even that wasn’t enough for the poor snowflakes at Duke.
“I just felt really uncomfortable with him calling it an opinion instead of a racist statement,” student Emily Prudot Gonzalez told the campus paper.
Another student Michael Manns, said that the dean, who is black, “invalidated” claims of racism.
“I was met with distasteful remarks that seemed to invalidate my feelings and experiences while simultaneously epitomizing just how insincere Duke’s anti-racist platform truly is,” Manns told the Chronicle.
Michael Manns is in for a rude awakening when he enters the real world and people don’t care whether or not his feelings are validated.
Idiocy piled upon further idiocy.
I think we need a good long devastating war to remind people that there is real suffering in the world, and it’s far more important than your “feelz”.
Jonas Ludvigsson undermined the political argument that schools couldn’t reopen in person with his research findings about COVID-19’s negligible threat to children and minor threat to teachers.
Good so far.
The professor of clinical epidemiology at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute faced such hostility for his findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, that he’s now given up on researching COVID-19, much less debating it.
Uh oh.
How are we supposed to learn things if we don’t do any research and discussion? That’s not science. That’s ideology.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) lashed out at Joe Biden on Monday in an open letter to him in which he called on the president to be more transparent with the media about the migrant crisis at the U.S./Mexico border.
It’s more than hypocrisy. You know who else kept people in cages and didn’t let the media know about it? Yeah, that guy.
“But it is not enough for members of the Senate to see what is happening — the American people must see,” he added. “That is why I requested that members of the media be allowed to join us. But your administration clearly and emphatically refused to offer press access. This is outrageous and hypocritical.”
Not stopping there, Cruz slammed Biden for pledging “truth and transparency” and already breaking that promise weeks into his presidency.
“At the beginning of your administration, Press Secretary Jen Psaki stressed the importance of ‘truth and transparency’ and a ‘deep respect for the role of a free and independent press,'” Cruz wrote. “At the beginning of the month, Secretary Mayorkas stated that he would adhere to principles of ‘openness and transparency.’ But now, when your administration faces a crisis of your own making, you are refusing to allow the very transparency you promised and that you demanded from prior administrations.
Well, if you believed President Joe Biden (D-USA) on any of that, you were a sucker.
Or perhaps they are, but they realize this is political suicide.
Multiple Democrats are coming out to oppose their party’s alleged attempt to overturn the election result of Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District, which saw Rep. Marianette Miller-Meeks (R) beat out Rita Hart by a total of six votes.
Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH) said, “This election result was certified by the State of Iowa and Rep. Miller-Meeks was sworn in nearly three months ago…it’s time to move on.”
“Losing a House election by six votes is painful for Democrats,” Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) wrote on Twitter. “But overturning it in the House would be even more painful for America. Just because a majority can, does not mean a majority should.”
TSA said it screened 1.54 million people Sunday, the highest single day since March 13, 2020 and the 11th consecutive day screening volume exceeding 1 million per day.
These are spectacular numbers. Still, we should be closer to 2 million per day, at least on heavy days. So there’s still a way to go.
Still, U.S. air travel demand was down Sunday about 30% versus pre-COVID 19 levels. International and business travel demand both still remain weak.
For the last week, trade group Airlines for America said passenger demand was down 47% over pre-pandemic levels, while international travel demand was down 68%.
Real Life got to me there for a bit. I’ll be catching up on some old news and blogging about it. Some of these posts may be out of date by the time they’re posted. Still useful as a memory tool though.
