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Ruth King

Setting Up a Siege? Antifa Has Armed Guards, Stockpiled Weapons at Portland Autonomous Zone By Tyler O’Neil,

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/12/09/setting-up-a-siege-antifa-has-armed-guards-stockpiled-weapons-at-portland-autonomous-zone-n1200966

The antifa occupiers at the autonomous zone that sprung up in Portland this week appear to be preparing for a siege. As PJ Media’s Victoria Taft reported, antifa squatters took over a house in Portland and when the government rightly evicted them, they set up an autonomous zone.

On Wednesday, Portland’s police chief reported that antifa has fortified barricades, stockpiled weapons, set up armed guards, and threatened to kill police officers. Both the police chief and the mayor have urged the rebels to lay down their arms, but it appears they are refusing to do so.

“We want a peaceful & safe resolution to the occupation of public space on N Mississippi Ave. We are greatly concerned about the fortification of barricades, stockpiling of weapons, armed sentries, attacks on journalists & threats to kill officers in graffiti in this public space,” Chief Chuck Lovell tweeted on Wednesday. “I encourage those involved to reach out to our demonstration liaisons so we can discuss a peaceful outcome.”

“We are aware of the stockpile of weapons and the presence of firearms. We are aware of the threats to the community, to media, to police. We’ve seen the attacks. The Portland Police will enforce the law and use force is necessary to restore order to the neighborhood,” Lovell added in a brief speech about the autonomous zone.

Ravishing Propaganda Though gorgeously filmed and acted, Netflix’s Mank is, at bottom, a stale Hollywood lecture. Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/ravishing-propaganda-bruce-bawer/

Since debuting with Aliens 3 in 1992, the director David Fincher has racked up an impressive list of no-nonsense, fast-moving pictures, mostly thrillers, and mostly terrific: Seven, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, Zodiac, Benjamin Button, The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl. It’s a rare filmmaker today who has such a solid list of credits.

Fincher’s latest film, the much-hyped Netflix offering Mank, is not a thriller but is, rather, the latest contribution to another major genre, the movie about Hollywood movie. Hollywood has always loved making movies about Hollywood, for the same reason that Narcissus loved looking at his reflection. Mank is about Herman Mankiewicz, nicknamed Mank, who, depending on which story you believe, either co-wrote Citizen Kane with Orson Welles or wrote it alone, only to see Welles slap his own name on the script.

When we first meet him, in 1940. Mank (Gary Oldman) is a rumpled, drunken, self-destructive has-been who’s been fired from MGM and planted by Welles in a house in the California desert, where he dries out while fitfully writing Kane. But Mank’s stay at that house turns out to be simply a frame for a story that, like Kane’s, is told mainly in flashbacks. Most of this movie, indeed, takes place in the 1930s, chiefly at MGM, where Mankiewicz wrote or co-wrote dozens of screenplays, and at San Simeon, the seaside estate of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst, the model (needless to say) for Charles Foster Kane, who was (who knew?) a chum of Mank’s.

Facebook Hit With Antitrust Lawsuits

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-hit-with-antitrust-lawsuit-by-federal-trade-commission-state-attorneys-general-11607543139?mod=hp_lead_pos1

WASHINGTON—The Federal Trade Commission and 46 states sued Facebook Inc. on Wednesday, accusing the social-media giant of buying and freezing out small startups to choke competition.

The FTC’s sweeping antitrust case seeks to force Facebook to unwind its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram, two of its landmark deals. The states filed a separate and similar lawsuit, alleging a lack of competition has harmed consumers, including by weakening privacy protections.

The lawsuits come weeks after the Justice Department brought a case alleging Google was illegally maintaining a monopoly in its search business. Collectively, the cases reflect U.S. concern about the power of dominant online platforms.

“Facebook’s actions to entrench and maintain its monopoly deny consumers the benefits of competition,” said Ian Conner, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition. “Our aim is to roll back Facebook’s anticompetitive conduct and restore competition so that innovation and free competition can thrive.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, asserted that Facebook “has used its dominance and monopoly power to crush smaller rivals and snuff out competition, all at the expense of everyday users,” and made “billions by converting personal data into a cash cow.”

Facebook fired back by noting the FTC had previously approved the Instagram and WhatsApp transactions.

Los Angeles Voted For More Crime — And They’re About To Get It ‘Good And Hard’

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/12/10/los-angeles-voted-for-more-crime-and-theyre-about-to-get-it-good-and-hard/

The acerbic wit and writer H.L. Mencken once famously said, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” The good people of Los Angeles are about to find out exactly what he meant.

In November’s election, the city’s voters had the poor judgment to elect a George Soros-backed district attorney, far-left “justice reform advocate” George Gascon. They’ll be paying for their mistake for years to come.

The payment is coming due already, thanks to the socialist billionaire Soros. The Cuban-born Gascon had already served as both chief of police and district attorney in San Francisco, where he basically stopped prosecuting many crimes.

He was aided in that by California’s notorious Proposition 47, which after its passage in 2014 redefined many drug and theft offenses as misdemeanors.

How did that work out? The once-beautiful city by the bay’s streets are now filled with homeless drug addicts, the mentally ill and criminals of every stripe. Violent crime, drug use and theft have all soared. Residents and tourists alike must negotiate the city’s vomit- and feces-strewn sidewalks, and dodge people shooting up drugs and accosting passersby for “spare change.”

Break-ins and “property crimes” of all types are now common. Those who voted for this madness in San Francisco are now fleeing the city in droves.

Ask those who have left what kind of “job” Gascon did.

‘Bought by Beijing’: Pompeo Warns of China’s Threats to US Colleges

https://www.theepochtimes.com/bought-by-beijing-pompeo-warns-of-chinas-threats-to-american-colleges_3611289.html?utm_source=newsnoe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-12-09-5

American colleges are becoming “hooked on Chinese Communist Party cash,” while Beijing works to siphon cutting-edge U.S. research to China, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned on Dec. 9.

“So many of our colleges are bought by Beijing,” Pompeo said during a speech at the Georgia Institute of Technology, outlining Beijing’s aggressive efforts targeting U.S. research institutions. He added that the Chinese regime’s influence on American academics and students jeopardizes academic freedom, as it seeks to suppress critical voices on campus.

“Americans must know how the Chinese Communist Party is poisoning the well of our higher education institutions for its own ends, and how those actions degrade our freedoms and American national security. If we don’t educate ourselves, if we’re not honest about what’s taking place, we’ll get schooled by Beijing,” Pompeo warned.

The state secretary cited a recent investigation by the Department of Education, which found that universities received almost $1.5 billion in contracts and gifts from China from 2014 to 2020.

“We cannot allow this tyrannical regime to steal our stuff to build their military might, brainwash our people, or buy off our institutions to help them cover up these activities,” Pompeo said.

America’s Forlorn Hope of a Quiet Life John O’Sullivan

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/12/americas-forlorn-hope-of-a-quiet-life/

Almost the oddest feature of the US election result—which as I write is a Joe Biden victory with a very small question mark attached—is the complacency with which centrist opinion, the media, Wall Street, moderate Democrats and establishment Republicans have greeted it. One might have expected that the election of an undistinguished seventy-seven-year-old hack politician of the Left, whose vice-president is a leftist of a more radical temper, would have made the possessing classes at least a little apprehensive, especially in conditions of civil disorder, pandemic and economic anxiety.

Instead, when the media jumped the gun by certifying Biden’s election as president-elect while the votes of five states were still being counted, there were street carnivals of rejoicing in New York and other hubs of urban America but also quiet satisfaction in the suites of America too. Wall Streeters joined Republican consultants in congratulating America on achieving an almost perfect political compromise: a radical Democrat president restrained from doing anything by a Senate in safe Republican hands. And an almost mystically united coalition of the media, corporate America, Big Tech, journals of opinion and independent commentators welcomed the result, called for all sides but especially Republicans to set aside things said in anger, and prayed for the new president.

God must have been pleased, if only because he was hearing from some of those in the congregation for the first time ever.

But this “era of good feelings” proved to be very short as eras go. That wasn’t because President Trump refused to concede until the courts had pronounced on the disputed vote counts in key swing states. Trump was denounced on this score (essentially for not being a good sport), but he was perfectly entitled to defend his legal right to a fair election.

DOJ Suspended Hunter Biden Investigation During Election: Now Back On Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/12/doj-suspended-hunter-biden-investigation-during-daniel-greenfield/

We already knew Hunter Biden was under investigation.

Remember that laptop story the media buried? The laptop was taken by the FBI. The case number suggested money laundering.  But, according to Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller, the investigation may actually go back to 2018. 

According to a Hunter Biden statement released by the Biden-Harris campaign, he only learned about this for the first time yesterday. That seems wildly implausible.

But if you parse the statement, that’s not what he’s really saying.

“I learned yesterday for the first time that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs.:

Read that like a lawyer and it actually says that Hunter Biden learned for the first time that the office told his lawyers yesterday that they were investigating his taxes.

Which is to say, he learned for the first time yesterday the message that was passed on yesterday. In short, it’s meaningless, but meant to sound like it’s coming as a surprise to him.

Former VP Joe Biden’s statement says that he’s proud of his son. Unclear which part he’s proud of more, the drugs, the foreign dealings, or having a baby with a stripper.

Or an official investigation.

There is an interesting tidbit from CNN though, two actually…

After pausing in the months before the election, federal authorities are now actively investigating the business dealings of Hunter Biden, a person with knowledge of the probe said…

That would mean the probe was shut down during the election.

Jim Jordan: Trump Shouldn’t Concede, Everyone ‘Instinctively’ Knows Election Has Problems By Jack Phillips

https://www.theepochtimes.com/jim-jordan-trump-shouldnt-concede-everyone-in

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) called on President Donald Trump not to concede the Nov. 3 election.

In response to a statement on Newsmax about whether he should, Jordan said, “No, of course not, and you remember this is a president [who] gets things done.”

“This is a president who does what he told the American people he was going to do, accomplishes what he was elected to do and this is just one more example of him getting something done that’s valuable and important to the country,” Jordan said.

Going further, Jordan said that “instinctively, everyone knows there are problems with this election.”

Since Nov. 3, Trump said that the election was stolen from him and has mounted a legal campaign to overturn the results in several states. Meanwhile, his lawyers have lobbied the state legislatures and governors to either not certify the results of the election or for state lawmakers to reclaim their constitutional authority to call electors.

The Epoch Times has not called the election for either Trump or Democrat Joe Biden.

Jordan, the ranking Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee, suggested that Trump performed too well in other places and among certain demographics to lose.

In Facebook Rants, MI Dem Rep. Cynthia Johnson Calls on ‘Soldiers’ to ‘Rise Up’ and Make ‘Trumpers’ Pay By Debra Heine

https://amgreatness.com/2020/12/09/in-facebook-rants-mi-dem-rep-cynthia-johnson-calls-on-soldiers-to-rise-up-and-make-trumpers-pay/

A Michigan Democrat State Representative seemed to threaten President Trump’s supporters on video Tuesday, by saying “we ain’t playing with you,” and calling on “soldiers” to “make them pay.”

In a three minute long Facebook live video, the far-left State Rep. Cynthia Johnson said “Trumpers” had better “be careful,” and “walk lightly.”

In a subsequent rant, Johnson suggested that was calling on “soldiers of Christ,” and soldiers for black and brown people” to “rise up” and make Trumpers pay.

Johnson, who made a name for herself by trying to intimidate election fraud whistleblowers during the hearings in Michigan earlier this month, took office on January 1, 2019.

Addressing her Facebook friends on Dec. 8, she said: “I wish I could be talking to y’all in a private room, because, uh, I just wish I could, but we’re public so …”

She told them, “you don’t have curse anybody out, you don’t have to call people names … hit their asses in the pocketbook.”

17 States File Brief at the Supreme Court in Support of Texas Lawsuit Challenging 2020 Election By Debra Heine

https://amgreatness.com/2020/12/09/17-states-file-brief-at-the-supreme-court-in-support-of-texas-lawsuit-challenging-2020-election/

Seventeen U.S. states filed a brief at the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday supporting the Texas lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results.

“In the context of a Presidential election, state actions implicate a uniquely important national interest, because the impact of the votes cast in each State is affected by the votes cast for the various candidates in other States,” the brief states. “For the President and the Vice President of the United States are the only elected officials who represent all the voters in the Nation.”

The filing concludes:

The allegations in the Bill of Complaint raise important constitutional issues under the Electors Clause of Article II, § 1. They also raise serious concerns relating to election integrity and public confidence in elections. These are questions of great public importance that warrant this Court’s attention. The Court should grant the Plaintiff’s Motion for
Leave to File Bill of Complaint.

https://twitter.com/kylenabecker/status/1336777382410194946?s=20

As American Greatness’ Julie Kelly reported on Tuesday, the Texas lawsuit “accuses four states currently ‘won’ by Joe Biden of using the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to violate the Electors Clause and the 14th Amendment.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin for usurping the sole authority of state legislatures to create election law and charges that millions of absentee ballots were unlawfully processed by local election officials.

The state of Texas is asking the court to extend the December 14, 2020 deadline to certify each state’s electoral slate.

The suit also asks the court to declare that the four states—Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin—“administered the 2020 presidential election in violation of the Electors Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment” and to block the Electoral College votes of those states.