Monthly Archives: May 2021
The Beginning Of An Awakening?
Many people join organizations hoping that they will fulfill the promise of helping to create a society where opportunities are equal. Sometimes those organizations work toward worthwhile goals, and sometimes those organizations are fronts for goals that are destructive. The title Black Lives Matter is a good one–black lives do matter, just as all lives matter. However, the tenants of the organization do not line up with the title. Unfortunately, there are many black Americans who have not yet realized this, but some black Americans are waking up. The Epoch Times posted an article yesterday about one black American who joined Black Lives matter hoping that they would be involved in activities that would help the black community. Unfortunately, he was wrong.
The article reports:
A Black Lives Matter chapter founder in Minnesota has resigned, claiming that the organization isn’t concerned about helping black communities or helping improve the education quality in Minneapolis, according to a video published last week.
Rashard Turner, the founder of a Black Lives Matter chapter in neighboring St. Paul, said he started the branch in 2015 but became disillusioned roughly a year after becoming “an insider” within the left-wing organization, according to a video released by TakeCharge—a group that rejects various provisions promoted by Black Lives Matter, including critical race theory-linked claims that the United States is inherently racist.
“After a year on the inside, I learned they had little concern for rebuilding black families, and they cared even less about improving the quality of education for students in Minneapolis,” Turner said in the video.
“That was made clear when they publicly denounced charter schools alongside the teachers union. I was an insider in Black Lives Matter. And I learned the ugly truth. The moratorium on charter schools does not support rebuilding the black family. But it does create barriers to a better education for black children. I resigned from Black Lives Matter after a year and a half. But I didn’t quit working to improve black lives and access to a great education.”
Please follow the link to the article to view the video. I hope that many more Americans will learn what Rashard Turner has learned.
The Lady Needs A New Speechwriter
The New York Sun posted an editorial today about the speech Vice-President Kamala Harris gave to the midshipmen at Annapolis.
The editorial notes:
…Ms. Harris talked to our midshipmen trained for naval warfare of the perils of climate change and the niftiness of solar panels. Not a peep about how Russia, Iran, and Red China are maneuvering for conquest.
What a wan note on which to begin the Memorial Day weekend at which we remember our fallen. It’s similar to the blunder that President Obama made when, as we were at the height of the global war on terror, he went to West Point and tried to inspire the cadets by lecturing them on how not every problem has a military solution. The New York Post headline called it “The Long Gray Whine.”
The remarks of Ms. Harris, like those of Mr. Obama, fit the strategy of retreat and appeasement that seems to have been favored by the Democratic Party in recent decades. It started, in our view, with Vietnam and since has marked the party’s policies in one theater after another — right now in the Middle East and Afghanistan. And it’s not that our liberal traditions don’t offer a prism through which to understand our military academies.
The article concludes:
…The “threats” Ms. Harris spoke of were climate change, infectious disease, and “criminal hackers.” In her politically correct condescension she failed to mention even once the threat from, say, Communist China. What an oversight, particularly at Annapolis. It is to the Pacific that so many of our newest ensigns are headed, and it is China who will meet them there.
This is not a moment to offer platitudes about the weather and joking references to gender. It was and is a moment, even if it’s not usually done, to talk about, say, serious strategy and to pledge support — for, say, the Navy’s Pacific Deterrence Initiative that is now coming before the Senate over which Ms. Harris presides. She could have pledged to give the middies the materiel they need and sought to summon their martial spirit.
I can only pray that America will survive the Biden administration.
Disappointing, But Not Surprising
There has always been a lot of conversation about the money in politics. Generally speaking, that conversation has centered around campaign donations, but in recent years there has been another aspect of money in politics that needs some serious scrutiny. Basically it has to do with how middle class Americans become millionaires after a few terms in Congress. Congressmen make less than $200,000 a year, so even if you had no expenses at all it would take you five years to become a millionaire. Many do it through selling influence through donations to their ‘charitable organizations’ where the only charity goes to themselves. Others do it through insider trading. Some do it by getting exorbitant speaking fees from companies of countries that coincidentally have matters before the legislative or executive branches of our government. You can find examples of all of these activities in recent history with very little research. Recently, we had another example of questionable campaign donations.
Yesterday Fox News reported the following:
President Biden and his allies raked in campaign cash from a top Russia lobbyist in 2020, just months before his administration’s decision to scrap sanctions on a controversial firm building a Russian oil pipeline to Germany.
Richard Burt, a managing partner at McLarty Associates and a former U.S. ambassador to Germany during the Reagan administration, ponied up $4,000 for Joe Biden in October 2020 and dropped another $10,000 in the lefty-aligned political action committee Unite The County in March 2020, FEC records show.
In addition to violating Biden’s own campaign pledge not to take lobbyist cash, the money from Burt is particularly noteworthy as he is currently directly engaged in lobbying activities for Nord Stream 2 AG.
“When Richard Burt donated to Biden Victory Fund, he failed to acknowledge that he was a registered foreign agent and was therefore ineligible to contribute,” a Democratic National Committee spokesman told The Post. “Because Burt also listed a different employer than on his [Foreign Agents Registration Act] registration, he was not flagged during our vetting process.”
The DNC said it returned the cash on Thursday after The Post’s inquiry.
The Switzerland-based Nord Stream 2 — controlled by an ex-East German stasi officer and close ally of Vladimir Putin — is currently engaging in sanctionable activity, according to the State Department. Team Biden raised eyebrows, however, after declining to enforce sanctions, citing U.S. national interests, Axios reported.
Critics worry the project will allow Russia dangerous influence over European energy supplies and increase their overall political leverage on the continent.
Somehow I am not convinced that the cash was fully returned rather than simply funneled somewhere else. Unfortunately this would have gone unchecked but for the efforts of the reporter at The New York Post who wrote the article.
Not Surprising
On Saturday Newsmax posted an article about the ‘For The People Act,’ House Bill 1 and Senate Bill 1. The bill is not for the people–it’s for the Democrats to insure victories in upcoming elections. The bill federalizes and politicizes elections in favor of the Democrats who now essentially control Congress and the White House.
The article reports:
The Senate will vote on a bill that would dramatically change how elections are run next month.
According to a memo sent out by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the bill known as the “For the People Act,” or H.R. 1 or S. 1, will be voted on in June.
Democrats view the sweeping reform bill as anti-corruption legislation that will combat “restrictive” voting bills from their Republican colleagues. The act would federalize parts of the election system, eliminating qualifications such as photo identification and allowing same-day registration on any day that voting is permitted.
“In my state in Oklahoma, we have great voting engagement. We want to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. S1 takes away a state’s ability to hold people accountable for cheating,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said, according to The Epoch Times.
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., described the bill as a massive federal “takeover of elections.”
Democrats, however, largely support the legislation.
I have previously reported on H.R. 1 (article here). It truly is a nightmare for those who want honest elections in America. Among other things it forbids the use of voter id to insure that voters are who they say they are. It also changes the non-partisan Federal Election Commission into a partisan body by creating an uneven number of Commissioners.
The article at Newsmax concludes:
At a caucus lunch on Capitol Hill, Schumer told reporters, “it was made clear how important S1 is to the country, to our Democratic majority, and to individual senators, and those discussions are going and I have a lot of faith in them.”
The Senate is currently divided 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats. Passing the bill would require at least 60 votes.
Schumer plans to bring other pieces of legislation up for a vote in June, including the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would hold the Department of Labor to study pay disparities between men and women while making their results public. He also said he might force another vote on the riot that occurred on Jan. 6 at the Capitol.
If these bills do not pass (which I hope is the case), we can expect to see the Democrats move to end the legislative filibuster. That will be the end of our country as we know it. It will give the Democrats free reign and not require any sort of negotiations or compromises with the Republicans. That is not good for our Republic.
Rolling Thunder Lives!
The following is taken from the Rolling Thunder website. As some of you may remember, President Biden refused the park permit for the gathering using the coronavirus as an excuse. Well, other plans were made, and Rolling Thunder is coming to Washington for Memorial Day.
The website reminds us that there are still 86,177 unaccounted for American soldiers.
When The Chickens Come Home To Roost
Yesterday Legal Insurrection posted an article that illustrates the duplicity of the Biden campaign and the Biden presidency.
The article reports:
In October 2020, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden privately told U.S. miners he would support boosting domestic production of metals used to make electric vehicles, solar panels, and other products crucial to his climate plan.
The U.S. Democratic presidential candidate also supports bipartisan efforts to foster a domestic supply chain for lithium, copper, rare earths, nickel and other strategic materials that the United States imports from China and other countries, the sources said.
Just last month, Biden persuaded the nation’s largest coal miners’ union to support the move away from coal and other fossil fuels in exchange for a “true energy transition” that includes thousands of jobs in renewable energy and spending on technology to make coal cleaner.
Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, said ensuring jobs for displaced miners — including 7,000 coal workers who lost their jobs last year — is crucial to any infrastructure bill taken up by Congress.
“I think we need to provide a future for those people, a future for anybody that loses their job because of a transition in this country, regardless if it’s coal, oil, gas or any other industry for that matter,″ Roberts said in an online speech to the National Press Club.
“We talk about a ‘just transition’ all the time,″ Roberts added. “I wish people would quit using that. There’s never been a just transition in the history of the United States.″
Unfortunately the coal miners’ union forgot that President Biden has a long history in politics–some of it indicating that his word might not be trustworthy.
The article notes:
This month, Biden “forgot” the promises. Biden’s team said it will rely on ally countries to supply the bulk of the metals needed to build electric vehicles and focus on processing them domestically into battery parts. The move is part of a strategy designed to placate the Democratic Party’s eco-activists.
The plans will be a blow to U.S. miners who had hoped Biden would rely primarily on domestically sourced metals, as his campaign had signaled last autumn, to help fulfill his ambitions for a less carbon-intensive economy.
We can debate whether or not it is foolish to expect any politician to keep his promises, but you might want to include in that debate that President Trump did keep his promises.
The article also notes:
The plan will reportedly rely on metals imported from Canada, Australia, and Brazil. This is not a trivial economic move, either. Biden plans to make the entire federal fleet electric.
That includes 245,000 in various federal agencies… 225,000 in the United States Postal Service… and another 173,000 in the military.
That adds up to a grand total of 643,000 cars, trucks, and vans set for an upgrade on the U.S. government’s dime. And after the year we’ve seen for EVs in 2020, this should come as no surprise.
As an extra bonus, electric car manufacture will also be outsourced.
This does not sound like the coal miners’ union will be benefiting at all from the energy policies of the Biden administration.
What An Incredible Coincidence!
Yesterday The Epoch Times reported that job searches in 22 Republican-led states jumped 5 percent on the day those states announced that they were ending the government’s supplemental unemployment benefits. What a coincidence!
The article reports:
Job searches jumped by 5 percent in 22 Republican-led states on the day each announced it was moving to end the Biden administration’s pandemic unemployment benefit boost, a Thursday analysis shows, suggesting a link between the jobless compensation top-up and peoples’ interest in looking for a job.
While the analysis, authored by Jed Kolko, Chief Economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, notes that the increase in job searches was “temporary, vanishing by the eighth day after the announcement,” it may be viewed as an arrow in the quiver of those who contend that generous unemployment benefits are creating a disincentive for people to take up jobs.
“It is, of course, still unclear how this temporary boost in search activity will affect hiring or wages,” Kolko wrote in the analysis. “And the premature end of these benefits in June and July could well have a different effect on search activity, hiring, and wages than these announcements in May did,” he added.
A possible factor as to why the effect faded quickly is media buzz around the date of the announcement, as well as the opt-outs of the supplemental federal unemployment programs are not due to come into force until June or July. Kolko told the Washington Examiner that there could be a jump in job searches when the benefits actually expire.
I think it’s time some common sense wandered into this discussion. If I can make more money staying home than working, I am going to stay home. If I have to prove that I am looking for a job in order to collect increased benefits, I will probably look for a job. If I can simply sit home and watch television and collect increased benefits, I will do that. Human nature is pretty obvious here–would I rather stay home in my pj’s and get paid or would I rather get up, shower, and go to work only to be paid less? Seems pretty clear.
Is There A Cure?
The American Thinker posted an article today about a change in the severity of the Covid-19 outbreak in India.
The article reports:
India has been suffering horrendously from COVID of late, and the complete death toll may never be known. But in the capital city of Delhi, mass distribution of ivermectin began and the results have been stunning.
The article includes the following graph of Covid cases in India:
The article notes:
In poorer countries, where vaccines are unavailable to too expensive for mass use, they have been forced to resort to ivermectin. This has had the effect of conducting a mass experiment (albeit not with the double-blind, randomized, controlled conditions that “gold standard” medical research requires. Maybe that will enable the ivermectin deniers to maintain their posture of self-righteousness.
Note that the emergency use authorization under which the experimental mRNA vaccines have been approved for mass use would not be given if there were an accepted effective alternative therapy. Billions of dollars flowing into the hands of vaccine makers would not have happened.
Meanwhile on May 1st, Mountain Home Magazine posted an article about ivermectin.
The article reports:
An earlier Australian study, reported in the journal Antiviral Research, showed that Ivermectin, which blocked other RNA viruses like Dengue virus, yellow fever virus, Zika virus, West Nile virus, influenza, the Avian flu, and HIV1/AIDS in vitro, decimated the coronavirus in vitro, wiping out “essentially all viral material by 48 hours.” But more research was needed in human beings.
But by October Marik’s concerns were answered. The studies were well-designed university trials that showed amazing anti-COVID-19 activity at the normal doses used to treat parasites. Though small and endlessly diverse by large, Western big pharma “one-size-fits all” random control trials, the Ivermectin studies were a mosaic of hundreds of scientists and many thousands of patients in trials all over the world, all showing the same remarkable efficacy against all phases of COVID-19 no matter what dose or age or severity of the patient. “Penicillin never was randomized,” Marik says. “It just obviously worked. Ivermectin obviously works.”
Marik was astonished. “If you were to say, tell me the characteristics of a perfect drug to treat COVID-19, what would you ask for?” he said. “I think you would ask firstly for something that’s safe, that’s cheap, that’s readily available, and has anti-viral and anti-inflammatory properties. People would say, “That’s ridiculous. There could not possibly be a drug that has all of those characteristics. That’s just unreasonable. But we do have such a drug. The drug is called Ivermectin.”
If it was universally distributed at a dose that costs ten American cents in India and about the cost of a Big Mac in the United States, he said, Ivermectin would save countless lives, crush variants, eliminate the need for endless big pharma booster shots, and end the pandemic all over the world.
There were no effective, lifesaving, approved COVID-19 treatments that doctors had used to slow down or stop the coronavirus in the history of the pandemic, in any phase of the disease, except the one, corticosteroids, that Marik and company had discovered.
Now they had discovered another treatment, even more powerful, that could save the world.
Please follow the link to read the entire article in Mountain Home Magazine. It details the legal hoops a family had to go through to get the ivermectin treatment for their mother that saved her life. At some point we are going to have to look at whether or not there is a financial aspect of pushing the coronavirus vaccine rather than focusing on the treatment of the virus. I truly believe people have died due to conflicting financial interests.
We Can Expect More Of This In The Future (Unfortunately)
Yesterday The New York Post posted an article about the Port Washington High School Senior Prom. The prom will host about 500 people at the Village Clubs of Sandpoint.
The article notes some of the rules for the event:
Forget popular kids and dorks — seniors at one Long Island high school dance will be divided by whether they are vaccinated or unvaccinated against COVID-19, The Post has learned.
The school said that, per state and CDC guidelines, kids who are vaccinated will be able to attend maskless — while those who aren’t will need to wear a face covering.
Students will need to show proof of inoculation to attend mask-free, and will be given wristbands to signify they’ve gotten the jab, Dr. Ira Pernick, the school’s principal, said in a video sent to the senior class this week and seen by The Post.
In addition to wearing masks, those who haven’t been vaccinated will need to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test before the party, Pernick said.
The article concludes:
The state Department of Health said that their implementation of the CDC guidelines “does not require vaccinated and unvaccinated attendees to remain in separate sections.”
Dr. Michael Hynes, superintendent of the Port Washington Union Free School District, said the year-end celebration was adhering to all state Health Department and federal rules.
“The health and safety of our students, staff and community are the Port Washington School District’s foremost priorities,” Hynes said in a statement. “The district is in close contact with local and state health officials and will continue to regularly monitor any changes in guidance.”
It should be mentioned at this point that none of the vaccines have full FDA approval at this time. The vaccines are approved for emergency use only. Pfizer and BioNTech have already started their application process for full U.S. approval of their Covid-19 vaccine. Rival Moderna is expected to submit for the same process for its shot later this month. Why are we in such a rush to put these vaccines into school populations when school populations are the least impacted by the virus?
Voting With Your Feet
Yesterday The Epoch Times posted an article about the population migration that is currently taking place in America. People are fleeting states with high taxes, liberal policies, and shaky finances and coming to the southeast.
The article reports:
The shortages and rising price of fuel due to the ransomware attack that temporarily halted all of the Colonial Pipeline networks were devastating to many businesses in the American Southeast. But despite the rising costs of construction materials, business is booming for Southeastern contractors.
According to Stephen Smith, owner of Geneva Construction in Orlando, Florida, the $250,000 in materials he would have spent to build a home a year ago cost him around $300,000 today.
“Plywood is ridiculous,” Smith told The Epoch Times, describing how a 4-foot by 8-foot sheet of three-quarter-inch plywood he paid $25 for two years ago now costs him $72 to $75.
Still, Smith said his business is going strong. In fact, because of the demand for construction work in his area, he’s having a hard time finding enough skilled contractors to help him keep up with his workload.
The only thing that makes Smith angry is a proposal by the Commerce Department this week to double lumber tariffs on shipments of Canadian lumber into the United States from 9 percent to 18.32 percent.
“What an idiotic thing to do,” Smith asserted. “This is not the time to start levying tariffs on Canadian lumber. Why Biden is doing this, I have no idea, but it sure isn’t helping our industry at all.”
This is not the time to start a trade war with Canada.
The article concludes:
Contractors are also in high demand in Travelers Rest, South Carolina. Ed Tolson, owner of Carolina Home Improvement, told The Epoch Times that prices are high but there isn’t a shortage of people who are willing to pay. The challenge is getting the materials required to do the job.
“You go to Lowes and Home Depot and plywood is $48 a sheet when they cost $14 a year ago. A 2″ by 4″ went from $2.25 to $8 each.”
It’s also Tolson’s observation that the shortages in construction materials might be due to the same phenomenon that sparked the shortages and panic-buying of fuel in the Southeast—hoarding.
During a recent trip to 84 Lumber, Tolson said he saw signs posted everywhere saying there was no Oriented Strand Board (OSB) Plywood. Yet thousands of sheets of OSB Plywood could be seen stacked in the lumber yard. After speaking with a couple of the major contractors in his area, Tolson said these companies admitted they bought it all.
“They buy it when it comes in so they’ll have it when they need it,” Tolson asserted. “They’re hoarding it. They buy it all up so the little guy is left with nothing.”
“I invested in silver years ago,” Tolson mused. “I wish I had known then about plywood. I would have invested in plywood.”
Plywood has become the new toilet paper.
Much Needed Legislation
Being elected to Congress is a wonderful thing–the prestige, the recognition, joining a very select group of people, and seemingly the opportunity to increase your net worth significantly.
The following Tweet by ZeroHedge was tweeted on September 28, 2020:
Wow! An amazing increase in personal wealth that didn’t actually involve inventing or marketing a product! Unfortunately this is not an isolated example.
The article includes a few more examples from Business Insider:
Burr (North Carolina Senator Richard Burr), who endured a months-long federal investigation into his personal stock trades, last week reported making several recent stock sales along with his wife, Brooke Burr.
The Burrs sold up to $165,000 worth of stock in Enterprise Products Partners, a natural-gas and crude-oil pipeline company, between April 28 and April 30. The company’s stock price has remained effectively level since then.
Brooke Burr also reported selling up to $100,000 in MetLife Inc. floating-rate noncumulative preferred stock and up to $100,000 in US Bancorp depository preferred shares.
Burr, who wasn’t charged, made a flurry of stock sales on February 13, 2020, six days after cowriting an opinion article on FoxNews.com that sought to ease public concern over the threat COVID-19 posed to the US.
“Thankfully, the United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats, like the coronavirus, in large part due to the work of the Senate Health Committee, Congress, and the Trump Administration,” Burr wrote along with then-Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican.
But on February 27 of last year, Burr — then chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee — told a more dire story to a small, private luncheon gathering at Washington’s tony Capitol Hill Club.
“There’s one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history,” Burr said, according to a secret recording obtained by NPR’s Tim Mak. “It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.”
The Justice Department’s investigation of Burr’s February 2020 stock trades, together valued at more than $1.7 million, centered on whether the senator made his trades based on insider information obtained during senators-only briefings about the COVID-19 threat.
Burr says he is not planning to run for reelection in 2022.
Business Insider also mentions Jim Inhofe:
An aviation enthusiast who announced his 2020 reelection bid by piloting a propeller plane upside down, Sen. Jim Inhofe, a Republican of Oklahoma, has regularly made news over the years for close-call incidents while flying.
More recently, Inhofe sought to remedy another aircraft situation — this time on paper.
In a May 17 letter to the US Senate Secretary Julie Adams, Inhofe acknowledged understating the value of the assets — most notably, airplanes — held by The Padre Company LLC, a limited-liability company that the senator controls.
As of 2019, Inhofe’s LLC held three aircraft together valued at up to $1 million: a 1979 Grumman Tiger, a 1999 RV-8, and a 1979 Cessna 340. It also included real estate.
Inhofe wrote that his letter provided a “total reconciliation of the life of my assets” within The Padre Company LLC, which formed in 1999.
In short, Inhofe had not been previously factoring in the value of the real-estate property as part of his public disclosure of the LLC. Now he is, which is why the reported value of the LLC has increased.
“Ahead of filing his annual disclosures each year, Senator Inhofe discusses it with the Ethics Committee to maximize transparency and ensure he is adhering to the spirit of the law, not just the letter of it,” the spokesperson Leacy Burke told Insider. “Previously, it had been understood that these were considered personal properties and exempt, unreportable assets. This year, in the interest of greater transparency, he was encouraged to file the amendment and include them, as you can see he did.”
It pays to be in Congress, and an attempt to end the insider trading that seems to be rampant there is coming from a rather unlikely source.
Zero Hedge reports:
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) wants to end what is effectively legalized insider trading by members of Congress by barring them from trading individual stocks ever again.
Warren first attempted to push through similar legislation with the Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act she introduced in 2018 and then again in 2020. Both bills unsurprisingly died in the Senate Finance Committee, which Warren sits on.
The renewed push comes as several members of Congress have come under recent scrutiny for profitable stock trades in recent months, according to Business Insider. The include Sens. Richard Burr (R-NC), Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) and former Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia.
Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn sometimes.
The First Amendment Under Attack
Yesterday WND posted an article about California Governor Newsom’s lockdown of churches during the coronavirus.
The article reports:
Just as California Gov. Gavin Newsom was being ordered to pay $1.35 million for the legal fees of a church whose members sued him over his coronavirus-related lockdown orders, another fight has erupted over the same problem.
…The case that just was settled was brought by Liberty Counsel on behalf of Harvest Rock Church of Pasadena, whose leaders were “threatened with daily criminal charges” for staying open and claiming constitutional protection for their actions.
The case went to the Supreme Court where the justices decided 6-3 that the church could allow larger crowds.
The other, and continuing, fight concerns Santa Clara’s war against Calvary Chapel San Jose.
Most recently, a decision denied the county’s demand that it be allowed to see the church’s financial information.
Now both sides have submitted a letter to a judge hearing the case asking for guidance on the looming fight.
Santa Clara County is insisting on access to “Calvary’s sources of revenue, loans, and budgets, claiming these requests are relevant to determine how much Calvary ‘profited’ during the pandemic,” according to a statement from Advocates for Faith & Freedom, which is working on the case.
The article notes:
The county already had sent “two threatening letters” to the church’s bank, which “coerced the bank to temporarily sever the relationship.”
“The first letter informed the bank that Pastor (Mike) McClure had been held in contempt of court and that he and the church were facing fines and sanctions of over $1 million. The second letter was to inform the bank that Santa Clara County Superior Court had set a contempt hearing and that the county would seek further fines and sanctions against the church. The letters made no mention of an appeals process, that the church was challenging the constitutionality of the fines, or the recent Supreme Court decisions vindicating California churches,” the legal team explained.
The article concludes:
The church charges that the county’s goal is to assess “excessive and burdensome fines” against the church.
“The county falsely equates a church to a commercial enterprise, revealing a fundamental misunderstanding of a church’s distinct purpose and unique legal protections,” the letter said. “Unlike a business, churches do not function to earn a profit.”
The church has not claimed it lacks funds to pay the county’s fines; it alleges the fines “are altogether illegal or, at best, the amount of the fines is excessive considering the nature of the offense and the fact that it was the county, not the Calvary, that broke the law.”
The county claims the church “profited” during the pandemic and so its revenue is pertinent to “the fines.”
Unfortunately the taxpayers of California will be the ones who are hurt by this action. They will pay the legal fees for the county. The county (or the state) has no business looking into the finances of a church. If a private citizen wants to do that, I suspect they could–most churches are fairly transparent about their finances. However, it is not a county or state matter.
Something To Watch
NewsMax is reporting the following today:
U.S. orders for big-ticket manufactured goods dropped unexpectedly in April for the first time in 11 months as a shortage of computer chips disrupted auto production.
The Commerce Department reported Thursday that orders for factory goods meant to last at least three years fell 1.3% in April after rising 1.3% in March. Transportation orders skidded 6.7%. Excluding transportation, which can swing sharply from month to month, durable goods orders were up 1% in April.
Factories have been hamstrung by a shortage of supplies as the U.S. economy reopens from the COVID-19 pandemic and demand for goods and services rebounds rapidly. Orders for auto parts, disrupted by a shortage of computer chips, dropped 6.2% in April. Orders for military capital goods dropped 25.8% after falling 11.7% in March.
Economists had expected durable goods orders to rise about 0.7% last month. Despite the unexpected decline, the April report also contained hopeful signs: A category that tracks business investment — orders for nondefense capital goods excluding aircraft — increased 2.3% last month on top of a 1.6% gain in March.
Recently my husband and I were told by a car salesman that the number of cars his dealership would be receiving in June was significantly reduced from their monthly average. In an average month, they would receive about 100 cars to sell. In June they were expecting 30 because of the shortage of computer chips. This shortage could negatively impact the economic recovery expected by most experts.
This Would Be Funny If It Were Not Tragic
Townhall is reporting today that Secretary of State Antony Blinken has asked the United Nations not to give the $75 million in aid America is giving them for aid in the Gaza Strip to Hamas. Where does he think the money to build the terror tunnels into Israel came from? Some of it came from Iran, but much of it came from international humanitarian aid that was never used to help the people of Gaza.
The article reports:
“There’s a recognition we need to continue to discuss and have conversations with our key partners in the region, who played an instrumental role in getting to the point we reached last Thursday, and also to discuss the path forward on rebuilding Gaza,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki recently said. “And as you noted, Mike, we know that won’t be easy, in part because we want to prevent funding from going to Hamas.”
While the West lines up to write “relief” checks, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is boasting about endless support from Iran.
“We have our own funds. We have our own income. We don’t need to take any of the money from the fundings that come for reconstruction. In this case I’d also like to say we need to thank the Islamic Republic of Iran which also has not stopped at any point of assisting Hamas and other Palestinian factions with money and arms, with experience and support,” Sinwar said during a press conference this week in Gaza. “They were with us. Really although they weren’t present in person, they were with us. Through that capability that they gave us, we were able to hit the enemy and terrorize the enemy.”
Is Secretary of State Blinken really naive enough to think that the humanitarian aid will actually be used for humanitarian purposes?
The Story You Weren’t Told
On Tuesday, Just the News posted an article about Nikole Hannah-Jones, the creator of The New York Times’ 1619 Project.
The article reports:
The creator of The New York Times’ 1619 Project is joining the University of North Carolina journalism faculty in July, funded by a Knight Foundation grant.
The academic world has not greeted the news with jubilation, but rather outrage — because Nikole Hannah-Jones was not given tenure to start.
“Political pressure from conservatives,” particularly a North Carolina-focused education think tank, led the university to offer Hannah-Jones a fixed five-year term, according to NC Policy Watch, a project of the progressive North Carolina Justice Center.
Evidently that is not the reason Ms. Hannah-Jones was denied tenure.
The article continues:
The UNC trustee who oversees lifetime appointments, Charles Duckett, postponed the tenure review for Hannah-Jones in January, three months before UNC announced the hire, board chair Richard Stevens told reporters last week.
Duckett “asked for a little bit of time” to ask Hannah-Jones to clarify her background, since she does not have “a traditional academic-type background,” according to Stevens. She accepted the five-year term, which lets her continue as a New York Times journalist, before the full Board of Trustees voted.
Asked what he specifically wanted to know from Hannah-Jones, Duckett told Just the News no one had asked for his side until now. “I cannot comment today due to issues outside my control,” he said. “I normally do not respond at all but appreciate the question.”
The article notes a possible explanation:
A spokesperson for the journalism school told Just the News last week it wasn’t sure why the board “did not act on her tenure package” but was told “there was reluctance to grant tenure” to a non-academic.
“The University and the journalism school very much wanted Nikole to join us, and she was offered a Professor of the Practice 5-year fixed term contract,” Susan King, dean of the journalism school, said in a statement.
The 1619 Project has been denounced as an opinion piece rather than an accurate reporting of history. To grant tenure to someone who has no academic background and has published opinions as fact would not be a good move for a university.
“CHOP” Comes To Austin
KXAN in Austin, Texas, posted an article yesterday (updated today) about an encampment around Austin City Hall.
The article reports:
For weeks, people experiencing homelessness have surrounded City Hall with their tents in protest of Austin voters reinstating the city’s camping ban.
Council Member Mackenzie Kelly tweeted that she was harassed as she walked out of City Hall on Monday. In the tweet, she said that she saw one man with a metal pipe and at least one knife, making her feel unsafe.
Kelly put out a call for people to contact her fellow council members about the situation.
Interim Police Chief Joseph Chacon responded to her tweet, saying, “Council member Kelly, I encourage you to make a police report if you were threatened so @Austin_Police can follow up. I have officers keeping an eye at City Hall daily.”
Kelly told KXAN Monday’s incident was one of three times she’s been harassed by those camping outside City Hall. She says on Monday, police were there and witnessed what happened. However, she hasn’t filed a police report for any of the incidents.
“Honestly, I don’t want more work for the officers, and what’s going to happen? Some detective’s going to have to be assigned to the case and it’s not going to get prosecuted by the County Attorney’s office, ultimately.”
Camping isn’t allowed at City Hall or in city parks. It was illegal even before the citywide ban.
“I’ve been told by the City Manager’s office and APD that this is a protest and a free speech zone, and so, as such, they’re not moving these individuals right now,” Kelly said.
APD has given campers a move-out date of August 8th so there’s time to educate them. The department says as with other new ordinances, there must be a public education period.
“I’m frustrated, very frustrated that the city’s not moving faster to do something about the situation at City Hall, and despite my situation and things that happen to me and speaking to city staff and Chief Chacon, nothing’s been done,” Kelly said, adding that her office has heard gotten similar reports of threats outside City Hall from others. ” It’s beyond any reason at this point, to me. Common sense would say that this is a public health and safety risk, and it needs to be shut down.”
Does anyone remember?
The Capitol Hill Occupied Protest or the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP), originally Free Capitol Hill, and later the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), was an occupation protest and self-declared autonomous zone in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington.
Horace Lorenzo Anderson Jr., was killed in the CHOP zone on June 20. The sort of anarchy we saw in Seattle and now see in Austin needs to be stopped with arrests and jail time for those who are breaking the law. Free speech does not include illegal camping.
Following The Money Trail
I have previously noted that Dr. Fauci has stated that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Well, this is one of those statements that may not tell the whole story.
The U.K. Daily Mail reported the following yesterday (updated today):
Anthony Fauci has defended the United States’ ‘modest’ and ‘very respectable’ funding of the Wuhan laboratory – which is now at the center of speculation as a possible source of the COVID-19 virus.
Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), appeared before a Congressional budget committee on Tuesday.
He defended allocating $600,000 to a group called EcoHealth Alliance, which then paid the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study the risk that bat coronaviruses could infect humans.
Under the terms of the funding, the money could not be spend on ‘gain of function’ research – a controversial practice which explores how viruses mutate and become more transmissible or more dangerous.
Fauci said the research was essential, pointing out that the SARS outbreak in the early 2000s was eventually traced back to bats.
‘I would have been almost a dereliction of our duty if we didn’t study this, and the only way you can study these things is you’ve got to go where the action is,’ he said.
Considering the events of the past year or so, does anyone actually believe that the money was not spent on ‘gain of function’ research?
Please follow the link above to the article–it chronicles the misreporting during the past year about the coronavirus. All of us remember that anyone early in the year who suggested that the virus was the result of a laboratory leak was accused of presenting a conspiracy theory. It is interesting to see how much of what the mainstream media chose not to report in the past year has turned out to be true.
Good News From The Senate
One of the questions all of us have had during the past year has been, “Where did the coronavirus come from?” There are a log of theories, some more believable than others. The current theory is that is was a mistake in the Wuhan Lab when the Lab was doing ‘gain of function’ research on viruses.
Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about one aspect of the discussion.
The article reports:
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) claimed Dr. Anthony Fauci committed perjury over his gain of function comments related to Communist China’s Wuhan lab.
Paul was asked on Real America’s Voice’s The Water Cooler show, “do you believe he [Fauci] perjured himself?”
“Absolutely, he lied to the America people. There was gain of function research going on with Dr. Shi Zhengli at the Wuhan Institute,” Fauci explained.
In her paper, she actually thanked Dr. Fauci and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is a part of National Institutes of Health (NIH) that Dr. Fauci runs,” Paul continued.
“It’s listed at the end of the paper. This paper was fined by NIAID research and it lists a ten digit number that identifies the research money she got from from the United States. Was it gain of function?” Paul asked.
“Well it took a SARS virus, which is a coronavirus, that’s 15 times more deadly than COVID, and it added to it S protein, which is something in the surface of it, to make it more easily infectious to epithelial cells for the respiratory tract. That to me is gain of function,” he said.
Paul went on to highlight two scientists, one from Rutgers University and another from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who confirmed the paper studies gain of function.
Senator Rand Paul is a doctor and has paid close attention to this epidemic.
Yesterday YouTube posted a video of the Senate cheering after an amendment Senator Paul added to a bill passed unanimously. The amendment bans all U.S. funding of gain of function research in China.
Here is the video:
That’s good news for America.
This Is Just Wrong
This may not qualify as a news article for some people, but for me it hits close to home. I drive a Mustang convertible. It is the second Mustang convertible I have owned, and it is the perfect car for me. I am heartbroken over what Ford Motor Company has done to the Mustang for 2021.
This is a picture of the new electric Mustang:
No. Just no. I doesn’t look like a Mustang, and I suspect it does not sound like a Mustang. This is just wrong.
Telling The Truth Causes An Uproar
The latest adolescent fad being promoted on social media is transgenderism. Unfortunately it is a fad that can do permanent damage to a young person who simply follows what he or she sees on social media. Recently “60 Minutes” did a segment about state regulations on transgenderism and included people who as teenagers underwent medical procedures to change their sex and then regretted it later.
Today Legal Insurrection posted an article about the reaction to the “60 Minutes” segment.
The article notes:
A recent 60 Minutes segment talked about red states denying hormones and surgery to transgender youth. However, the news program made the grave mistake of including a part about young people who regret transitioning.
The left is furious that 60 Minutes included dissenting voices.
This is one of the stories included in the “60 Minutes” piece:
One young woman described her experience after she went on hormones, had her breasts removed, and then detransitioned all in one year. Transcript via the Daily Wire:
Lesley Stahl: Did the therapist not question you about how deep the feeling was and what it was stemming from?
Grace Lidinsky-Smith: She didn’t go — really go into what my gender dysphoria might’ve been stemming from. We only did a few sessions.
Lesley Stahl (NARRATION): Because she was over 18 and didn’t need parental consent, she says she merely signed an informed consent form at a clinic and got hormone shots.
Grace Lidinsky-Smith: They asked me, “So, why do you wanna go on testosterone?” And I said, “Well, being a woman just isn’t working for me anymore.” And they said, “Okay.”
Lesley Stahl: So, that was that. You got your prescription for testosterone?
Grace Lidinsky-Smith: Uh-huh. Yup.
Lesley Stahl (NARRATION): Just four months after she started testosterone, she says she was approved for a mastectomy, what’s called top surgery, that she told us was traumatic.
Lesley Stahl: You know, I’m kinda surprised because, based on everything you’ve said up to now, I would’ve thought you’d have a great sense of relief.
Grace Lidinsky-Smith: I started to have a really disturbing sense that like a part of my body was missing, almost a ghost limb feeling about being like, there’s something that should be there. And the feeling really surprised me but it was really hard to deny.
Lesley Stahl (NARRATION):And so she detransitioned by going off testosterone and then went back to the clinic and, she says, complained to the doctor that the process didn’t follow the WPATH guidelines.
Grace Lidinsky-Smith: I can’t believe that I transitioned and detransitioned, including hormones and surgery, in the course of, like, less than one year. It’s completely crazy.
The article also includes one reaction to the segment:
Jezebel called the report an “attack” on trans kids:
60 Minutes’ Segment About Republican Attacks On Trans Kids Was Itself an Attack On Trans Kids
This is not an issue that needs both-sidesing. But on Sunday, CBS’s 60 Minutes did something even worse—the primetime show decided to air a segment that, while ostensibly addressing the Republican-led assault on trans young people’s health care, ended up focusing heavily on the favorite topic of conservatives who would like nothing more than for trans people to not exist, and who wish to paint transition as a painful, regret-suffused process—people who have detransitioned.
First of all, Republicans are not attacking trans kids, they are simply trying to prevent teenagers from doing something irreversible during a period in their lives when their decision-making process is not fully developed. Secondly, this is not health care–it is serious surgery that cannot be reversed and needs to be entered into with extreme care. In a few years there will be many young adults walking around seriously regretting what they have done with no way to correct their mistake. That is sad.
Unfortunately Justice In America Is Not Blind
The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article (updated today) about a appeal by the Biden administration’s justice department to prevent a memo about the Russian collusion charges against President Trump from being released.
The article reports:
The Biden administration said Monday that it would appeal a judge’s order directing it to release a memo explaining why Attorney General Bill Barr didn’t choose to prosecute President Donald Trump for obstruction of justice by allegedly thwarting Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
But it also agreed to make a brief portion of the document public, which shows that two senior Justice Department leaders advised Barr that, in their view, Mueller’s evidence could not support an obstruction conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson earlier this month ordered Biden’s DOJ to release the entire March 2019 memo as part of a public records lawsuit from a Washington-based advocacy organization.
She said the department, under Attorney General William Barr, had misstated the purpose of the document in arguing that it was legally entitled to withhold it from the group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
In a motion filed late Monday, the deadline for deciding whether it would comply with the judge’s decision or appeal it, the Justice Department said that it continued to believe even that the full document should be exempt from disclosure.
It appears Biden’s DOJ took the decision to avoid setting a new precedent where more sensitive internal documents would have to be released, Politico reported.
Presidents and administrations of both parties have constantly fought to keep these documents secret.
The article concludes:
The department said the decision before the attorney general was not whether to prosecute Trump since the indictment of a sitting president is precluded by longstanding Justice Department policy. Rather, the question that the memo set out to address was whether the facts gathered by Mueller could warrant a criminal case. That question, the government says, was a genuine decision that had to be made.
‘The Attorney General´s determination on that point – and on what, if anything, to say to the public about that question – undoubtedly qualifies as a decision, even if it could not have resulted in an actual prosecution of the sitting President,’ Justice Department lawyers wrote.
‘There was no legal bar to determining that the evidence did or did not establish commission of a crime, a determination the Attorney General made and announced,’ they added.
In a letter to AG Merrick Garland on May 14, Senate Democrats urged him not to appeal the court’s order to ‘help rebuild the nation’s trust in independence after four years of turmoil’.
The group of Senators lead by Majority Whip Dick Durbin wrote: ‘DOJ’s actions in this case, and in another recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case seeking information about President Trump’s activities, have raised doubts about DOJ’s candor when characterizing potential evidence of President Trump’s misconduct to courts.
‘To be clear, these misrepresentations preceded your confirmation as Attorney General, but the Department you now lead bears responsibility for redressing them.
‘In that light, and in order to help rebuild the nation’s trust in DOJ’s independence after four years of turmoil, we urge DOJ not to appeal D.C. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s May 3 decision to order the release of this OLC memo.’
One of the true successes of the Trump administration was to expose the corruption that runs rampant in Washington. It is not surprising that the cadre of people who fought so hard to keep President Trump from exposing that corruption are still fighting to keep their actions hidden. I agree with a friend who posted on Facebook that Washington is not a swamp–it’s a sewer–a swamp has some ecological value!
Twisting The Concept Of Voting Rights
I would like to go on the record to say that my definition of voting rights is that every American who is legally entitled to vote would be able to cast their vote without government interference and that every person in America who is not legally entitled to vote would be prevented from voting. Every illegal vote cast cancels out a legal vote. Most Americans want their votes to count. Unfortunately there are those in power in America who do not share my definition.
On Friday, The Hill posted an article about the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act which is currently proposed in Congress (it seems that HR1 is not receiving the support needed to pass it).
The article reports:
Beware the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — a backdoor way of implementing some of the worst provisions of H.R. 1 and stopping commonsense election reforms like voter ID.
This legislation summons the ghost of Eric Holder, the former attorney general who abused federal power under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to badger states such as Texas, South Carolina, Florida and North Carolina over election integrity laws.
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is a permanent, nationwide provision that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. Section 5 was a temporary measure that required the worst states — places like Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi — to get pre-approval (or preclearance) of any changes in their voting laws from the U.S. Justice Department. The conditions prevailing there in 1965 justified this impingement on state sovereignty, but those conditions no longer exist. Eight years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out Section 5, ruling in Shelby County v. Holder that 40-year old data did not justify continued federal oversight.
The newly introduced act would resurrect the Section 5 preclearance process and give control over state elections to leftwing lawyers in the Biden Justice Department. Lawyers in the voting section of the civil rights division — where both of us once worked — would have the power to approve or reject the smallest change in state election procedures, from polling locations to redistricting to voter ID laws.
We witnessed this power being abused while we were at Justice. But, the Holder Justice Department took abuse of preclearance power to a whole new level, blocking states from implementing citizenship verification and voter ID requirements.
Please follow the link to the article to see exactly how this power would be used.
The article concludes:
In the entire history of the Justice Department, it has never interfered with, nor investigated, a single election audit. That’s because it has no legal authority to do so. Karlan (Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Pam Karlan) even made the claim that auditors can somehow retroactively “intimidate” voters whose ballots were already cast.
The DOJ’s actions in the Arizona case exemplify the dangers to come under any Voting Rights Advancement Act scenario that would give partisan political appointees in the civil rights division the power to veto any state election law or rule they don’t like — without having to go to court to prove that it is actually discriminatory.
Leftist voting groups may be willing to trade H.R. 1 in the short run for the Voting Rights Advancement Act today. Doing so would return the center of gravity back to D.C. on voting process issues and remove power further from the people, which is exactly what they want.
Unfortunately under the Biden administration, our elections and our freedoms are at risk.
I Don’t Think He Is A Right-Wing Extremists
The Epoch Times posted an article today about John Earle Sullivan, a political activist who reportedly attended Black Lives Matter protests last year. Mr. Sullivan was part of the crowd that entered the Capitol Building on January 6th. The Department of Justice (DOJ) seized $90,000 from Mr. Sullivan for selling footage of Ashli Babbitt being shot during the Jan. 6 Capitol breach. He has also been charged with new weapons charges.
The article reports:
According to the court documents, Sullivan portrayed himself as an independent journalist who was reporting on the chaos, but he actually encouraged other participants to “burn” the building and engage in violence.
Sullivan is accused of having a conversation with others who breached the building and allegedly told them: “We gotta get this [expletive] burned,” according to court documents in his case.
“There are so many people. Let’s go. This [expletive] is ours! [Expletive] yeah,” he allegedly cheered after he and protesters entered the Capitol, the DOJ documents said. “We accomplished this [expletive]. We did this together. [Expletive] yeah! We are all a part of this history,” and “let’s burn this [expletive] down.” The documents accused him of calling on others to burn the Capitol down multiple times.
At one point, he’s also heard saying, “I am ready bro. I’ve been to too many riots. I’ve been in so many riots,” the documents said. “It would be fire if someone had revolutionary music and [expletive],” prosecutors said Sullivan told others on Jan. 6.
…After leaving the Capitol later on Jan. 6, Sullivan was seen, according to prosecutors, telling another individual that he “brought my megaphone to instigate [expletives]” and wanted to “make these Trump supporters [expletive] all this [expletive] up.”
Sullivan recorded a video of the confrontation between rioters and police near the House chamber that included the shooting of Air Force veteran Babbitt and, according to court filings, bragged to a witness that “my footage is worth like a million of dollars, millions of dollars.”
Sullivan sold that footage to several news outlets for a total of $90,000, according to a seizure warrant. The news outlets were redacted from the warrant.
The article concludes:
Black Lives Matter leaders in Utah earlier this year disavowed Sullivan, calling him a “loose cannon.”
And on Jan. 2, just days before the breach, Sullivan’s account wrote: “[Expletive] The System – Time To Burn It All Down. #blm #antifa #burn #[expletive]thesystem #abolishcapitalism #abolishthepolice #acab #[expletive]trump.”
Sullivan’s lawyer had no comment on the case when he was contacted on Sunday.
The man’s lawyer, Steven Kiersh, wrote in court documents that the government should not sieze his money, arguing, “The proceeds of the seized bank account are not the product of criminal activity alleged in the indictment” and that his client was being deprived of the money “in violation of the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution.”
Mr. Sullivan simply does not appear to be a Trump supporter. The information about him adds to my suspicion that the assault on the Capitol was a ‘false flag’ operation. It may not have actually been a ‘false flag’ operation, but that is the way Democrats in Congress are using it.